The Democrats' pathetic whataboutism over anti-Semitism

Democrats, you're better than this

Ilhan Omar.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Alex Wong/Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons, javarman3/iStock)

The ugly controversy over freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) and her comments about Israel took on new life last week, when she made a remark during a panel discussion about "the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country." Then on Sunday she tweeted that she "should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country," seemingly playing into anti-Semitic tropes about dual loyalty. Instead of quietly meeting with Omar, as they did after her "It's all about the Benjamins, baby" tweet, Democratic leadership has taken the unprecedented step of scheduling a floor vote to condemn dual-loyalty smears, albeit without referring to her by name.

You can think of about 300 things that would be better use of the Democratic Party's time in Congress, especially as committees are finally ramping up their investigations of the president's long and sordid business and political history. But the circling of wagons on the left around Omar, together with a tendency to 'what about' her comments — what about Steve King, what about the president noting that there were some 'very fine people' at a rally where people were chanting "Jews will not replace us," what about the constant and racially coded invocations of George Soros as a Democratic Party puppeteer by leading Republicans, what about the Republican Party's near-universal embrace of Islamophobia — is also problematic.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.