DNC Prepares To Elevate Muslim Congressman Ellison To Chief

If you thought the Democrats would respond to Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election by attempting to woo back some of the white blue-collar voters they lost over the last eight years, you’re sadly mistaken: they’ll be doubling down on the Obama coalition.

The proof: on Friday, support built dramatically among Democratic insiders like incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) as head of the Democratic National Committee.

Ellison is a black Muslim from Minnesota – not exactly a reflection of the crowd the Democrats lost in 2016. He’s also a radical leftist on economic policy, endorsed by socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. As Jack Heretik of Free Beacon points out, “He supported impeaching then-Vice President Dick Cheney, compared President George W. Bush to Hitler, and blamed Bush for the September 11 attacks.” He’s radically anti-Israel, too; he compared Israel to South African apartheid, and wanted Israel to grant concessions to the terrorist group Hamas. Ellison was linked to the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam, and as The Weekly Standard reports, “he himself mouthed those views.”

This all presages a move by the Democratic Party to tack toward the full-on racial polarization President Obama cultivated during his tenure. Democrats, disappointed by their election results in 2016, will undoubtedly deepen the narrative that Republicans are racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic, and attempt to nominate a person of minority ethnicity in 2020 in order to cultivate that narrative further. Doing so, they think, will draw out a heavier minority turnout, driving them back to victory. They’re banking on the changing demographics of the country – as I wrote yesterday at National Review:

[T]he white vote represented 72 percent of the vote in 2012, compared with just 70 percent in 2016; the black vote represented 12 percent in 2016, down from 13 percent in 2012; the Latino vote inched up to 11 percent of the electorate from 10 percent in 2012. Trump did better than Romney among Latinos (he lost them 65-29, compared with 71-27 for Romney) and blacks (lost 88-8, compared with 93-7 for Romney) and young people (lost 54-37, compared with 60-37). Shift any of those numbers slightly and Trump loses the election. In 2020, Millennials will represent nearly 40 percent of eligible voters, and Latinos will represent 15 percent of the electorate; blacks will likely remain steady.

It’s a foolish move to continue alienating constituencies you’re losing. But that seems to be precisely the gamble Democrats are preparing to make.