Two years late, the Democratic National Committee has finally withdrawn support for the Women’s March, withdrawing sponsorship just days before the official annual March.
The March’s leadership have since the beginning served as public agents for vile anti-Semites from Louis Farrakhan and Rasmea Odeh. Yet the straw that broke the camel’s back for the DNC seems to be Women’s March Co-President Tamika Mallory’s outright refusal to denounce the anti-Semitic and homophobic ideals spewed by Farrakhan.
Maybe it’s too little, too late. Maybe it’s a move enacted out of sheer political calculus and public relations strategy. But you know what? It’s the right move, and so I’ll take it.
To the DNC, I sincerely say thank you.
Our culture would be better off, not worse, if we behaved differently when people and groups changed their minds. Yes, Democrats have been — and in some ways still are — woefully tolerant of anti-Semitism.
And on the other side of the aisle, yes, it’s an absolute disgrace that Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, has remained in office for 16 years, with Republicans endorsing and courting him, even after keeping a Confederate flag on his desk (despite hailing from a proud Union state), promulgating the white supremacist replacement conspiracy, endorsing neo-Nazis in foreign elections, and conflating Western civilization with white supremacy.
But actors on both sides have shown that it doesn’t have to be this way. Just weeks into the job, new House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has put his foot down on King’s career, stripping him of all of his committee assignments and forcing the GOP to step in line and condemn him. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., have taken it even further, calling on the congressman to resign.
Things have been quieter on the Left, but there are promising moments, nonetheless. 2020 hopeful, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, recently condemned the anti-Catholic bigotry demonstrated by Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, during their questioning of Brian Buescher on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., a Blue Wave freshman often lumped in with Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar in media hype, actually denounced Alice Walker, who has a lengthy history of public anti-Semitism.
We can’t be sure of any of these politicians’ intentions, and it would be easy to be cynical and deny the benefit of the doubt to our political adversaries. But it’s time for a detente.
It’s a toxic political environment when we attack people at the moment they revoke support for unsavory figures. This environment is how we got to a Clinton vs. Trump election. Feminists should have denounced the Clintons for their treatment of women from the get-go and allowed Democrats to have a real primary to secure a noble candidate. Family values conservatives should have had no problem calling for Trump to drop out of the election as his own rocky past with women emerged. But neither really did, at least not en masse. We can now, but only if we’re conscientious about it.
When the damning interview emerged of King defending white supremacy and conflating it with Western civilization, a number of conservatives who had previously given him the benefit of the doubt or remained silent on the matter came out in droves to excoriate him and apologize.
Second Amendment advocate Antonia Okafor, who is black, encapsulated a large chunk of conservatives’ feelings for King on Twitter.
“I attributed the recent surge in calumny [about King] to [sic] an soon approaching midterm elections date. I reasoned that this was just an attack from the mass media eager to unseat a Republican and help grow their ‘blue wave,'” wrote Okafor. “I can no longer accept his excuses as to why something was again ‘taken out of context’, an excuse he has given me multiple times now. I am sorry to anyone I have hurt or misled by vocally supporting this man & therefore, in my silence, his words & actions.”
Yet many conservatives, notably commentator Ben Shapiro, faced left-wing ire for apologizing and admitting that they had given King too much benefit of the doubt.
If we want more decades of charlatans, bigots, and con artists, that’s the way to do it. If we want to take a step back and incentivize good behavior, we’re going to have to hold our horses.
Politicos will continue to turn blind eyes toward bad actors on their team, but the sooner we recognize the importance of grace for our adversaries and the worth of admitting fault, the better our political culture can be.
