A few weeks ago, a Detroit lawmaker publicly credited President Trump for advocating for a therapeutic drug that she believes helped her body fight the coronavirus. Now, she’s being ostracized from her own party as a result.
Michigan Democrats in the 13th Congressional District Democratic Party Organization will vote this weekend to censure state Rep. Karen Whitsett and bar other party members from endorsing her in the future, according to the Detroit News. That’s all because she met with and thanked the president.
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This is a ridiculous, immensely petty reaction, and it’s even worse when you consider the magnitude of Michigan’s public health crisis — a crisis that demands a serious, unified response.
Whitsett contracted COVID-19 earlier this month and began taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that Trump had discussed, referring to it as a possible “game changer.” The drug has not been scientifically proven as a treatment for the coronavirus, but Whitsett believes it saved her life, and she said she would never have asked to try hydroxychloroquine had Trump not publicly made a case for it. She later met with Trump and thanked him.
“I didn’t know that saying thank you had a political line,” Whitsett told the president.
Apparently it does, according to Jonathan Kinloch, chairman of the 13th Congressional District’s Democratic Party: “At the end of the day, we have political systems. We have political parties, and political parties exist for a reason,” Kinloch told the Detroit News. “[Democratic politicians] do not belong to themselves. They belong to the members and precinct delegates of the Democratic Party.”
Democrats have become so entrenched in their identity as Trump’s antagonists that they not only instinctually oppose everything the president says or does, but they also reject anyone who does not do the same — even if that person is one of their own. This rigidity is not noble, as Democrats seem to think, nor is it productive. The division they’ve sown has already given Trump an advantage, and he’s been quick to use it, urging Whitsett to join the Republican Party in a tweet Friday morning.
Whitsett has no intention of doing so. She said she’s committed to the Democratic Party, regardless of the censure. But it’s clear that Whitsett no longer has a place among the party she’s called home for years, first as a voter and now as an elected official.
There was a fair and respectful way to go about this. Whitsett’s colleagues could have released a statement distancing themselves from Whitsett’s decision to tout hydroxychloroquine, since it is untested and therefore unreliable. Instead, they made this about Trump: Whitsett “endangered the health, safety, and welfare of her constituents, the city of Detroit, and the state of Michigan” not because she praised hydroxychloroquine but because she “has repeatedly and publicly praised the president’s delayed and misguided COVID-19 response efforts,” according to her colleagues’ resolution.
A party that does not allow its members to use their own brains is no more than an echo chamber. Whitsett deserves better — as we all do.
