Sometimes I think the Left is its own worst enemy. Take Saturday’s massive “No Kings” protest at Frank Ogawa Plaza, for instance. It was inspirational. Seeing so many people—young, teenaged, middle-aged, old—gathered to defend American democracy filled me with hope. The message of “No Kings” is something that resonates with every American.
Alas, the far-left liberals made their usual mistake of trying to cram too many disconnected causes under the same umbrella. There were pro-Palestinian tables with signs that read “From the river to the sea,” which is an offensive call for the genocide of the Jewish people in Israel. Native American Indians spoke; one of them talked about “the so-called United States of America,” thereby offending plenty of people who might otherwise be inclined to resist Trump but don’t hate our country. There were Black Panthers circulating among the crowd, holding signs that read “Forget the fists, remember the kitchens.” This was a reminder that the Panthers during their heyday had set up food distribution centers. But “forget the fists” is reminiscent of the memory holes in Orwell’s 1984, by which the ruling party attempted to rewrite history. We cannot and will not conveniently “forget” the violence and anti-White hatred the Black Panthers promoted, nor should we.
And so the No Kings message was diluted and polluted by irrelevant codes and false flags that reminded too many Americans of just why they’re so pissed off at the Democratic Party. As David Plouffe, a Biden-Harris strategist, remarked after the 2020 election debacle, “Never again can we as a [Democratic] party suggest to people that what they’re seeing is not true.” And what people are seeing is the Democratic Party unable to deliver a consistent message, but instead conflating it with, in most cases, hyper-partisan grievances that have no broad appeal among the American people.
A columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, Joe Garofoli, eloquently expressed the same thought yesterday when he warned that these far-left causes “hurt Democrats’ chances of rallying Americans outside their shrinking tent against Trump.” He was referring specifically to the violence that accompanies so many anti-Trump protests (such as in Los Angeles), but his warning equally applies to the hate America, hate White people, hate-the-cops, hate-the-Jews lunatics that pop up at every Democratic demonstration. The American people do not despise our country, nor are we especially sympathetic with allegations of “stolen land.” And we react viscerally to any suggestion of the violent termination of the State of Israel by pro-Palestinans, who want to shove nearly 80 years of anti-Semitic wars by Israel’s Arab neighbors into the memory hole. As long as the Democratic Party continues to allow these slurs—not to mention Los Angeles-style violence—it will continue to bleed support.
Meanwhile, the No Kings concept endures. Some members of the Coalition for a Better Oakland hate Democrats so much that they’re willing to tolerate a man as loathsome as Donald Trump. I, myself, am not, and I am not alone, as tens of millions of good Americans proved Saturday, coast to coast, in what historians may yet determine was the single largest mass protest in our nation’s history.