PHILADELPHIA — California Sen. Kevin de Leon stood before the Democratic Convention and claimed that Democrats were inclusive and supportive of everyone.
He made his remarks in contrast to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, painting the New York businessman as divisive while Democrats are apparently loving and accepting and all things wonderful.
“Democrats don’t alienate, isolate, exclude or demonize; and we don’t manufacture fear. That’s a sign of weakness. We look to solve inequality, empower the forgotten and the overlooked and expand the winner’s circle for everyone irrespective of who you are, where you come from, the language you speak or the hue of your skin.”
Now, bear in mind here, we’re talking about a party whose main pitch is one of fear. Think of all the exaggerated economic sob stories; the insinuation in an era of reduced gun crime that every gun owner is a mass shooting waiting to happen; the baseless claims that every word and deed from Republicans reveals their intention to return us to Jim Crow or wage a “war on women.”
But the comments are extra amusing considering just who it was delivering them. De Leon especially has done all of the things he claims Democrats don’t do, whether through legislation or in speeches.
In 2014, de Leon embarrassed himself and gun control activists by making a speech in which he spewed false statement after false statement.
“This is a ghost gun,” de Leon said, holding a homemade gun. “This right here has the ability with a .30-caliber clip to disperse with 30 bullets within half a second. Thirty magazine clip in half a second.”
Anyone who has even minimal knowledge of guns knew immediately de Leon didn’t know what he was talking about. The gun he was holding couldn’t hold a “.30-caliber clip” to fire bullets. He should have said “30-round magazine.” Also, “caliber” refers to the size of the bullet or gun barrel not the number of bullets a magazine can hold.
Further, the gun de Leon was holding couldn’t possibly fire 60 bullets in a single second. At most it could fire maybe 120 a minute.
That right there is de Leon “manufacturing fear” by making Americans believe it’s easy and common for their fellow citizens to create their own weapons with that much power. He was also making the false claims in the context of gun control, a genre of rhetoric that seeks to demonize, isolate, demonize and exclude law-abiding gun owners.
De Leon is also the architect of California’s “affirmative consent” policy, which essentially turns requires every college sexual encounter into a question-and-answer session that puts the burden of proof on the accused student. The policy and similar legislation is based on a debunked survey claiming 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted while in college. So yet again, we see de Leon manufacturing fear.
At the same time, affirmative consent policies have helped create an air of suspicion around accused students and worked to eviscerate due process rights on college campuses. How does that not alienate, isolate, exclude or demonize?
And considering that many of the accused students are of foreign or minority descent, and most of the push for these policies is coming from Democrats, that would seem to indicate the Left is not trying to help people in the winner’s circle who speak another language or are of a different race.
De Leon may try to claim that Trump is the one who is demonizing, but he is engaged in the same tactics — the difference is that the California senator is getting his fear mongering and exclusion into law.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
