Posted on 06/23/2021 7:08:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
With all due respect to Kamala Harris and Howard Dean, it is Andrew Yang who holds the crown for the most awkward presidential campaign of the twenty-first century (so far). Or have you forgotten when he declared, “I’m the full service presidential candidate,” and gleefully squirted whipped cream into the mouths of kneeling supporters, until he was pulled away by a mortified aide?
Yang is now running for mayor of New York, and he seems to have learned his lesson: asked Sunday what he thought about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Gaza) likening the U.S. and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban, Yang offered neither whipped cream nor a single word in response. Instead, he just turned and walked away. Ignoring this problem, however, will not make it go away for him.
Yang was caught in the dilemma of the modern Democratic Party. Ilhan Omar and her fellow to-the-Left-of-Mao-Zedong Squad members represent its base, far more than Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer ever did, and Yang knows that full well, as does every Democrat on the national scene today. Omar was expressing the general views of the party’s base when she tweeted: “We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. I asked [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] where people are supposed to go for justice.”
The worst part of Omar’s statement was not that she lumped together forces that work hard to avoid civilian casualties with those that target civilians and glory in their deaths, but that so many online Leftists leapt to her defense in the ensuing furor and insisted that she was right.
In the face of that, what was Yang to do? He could have joined them and declared that Omar was indeed right, and that America is not great, was never great, and can never and will never be made great again. He could have echoed actor John Cusack, who is slightly to the Left of Joseph Stalin, and who recently tweeted: “We aren’t great – we aren’t even mediocre – we’re f***ing awful.”
If Yang had done that, however, he would have alienated the dwindling number of Leftists who think that maybe America is not entirely evil, and that national suicide may not be the best policy. There may even be a handful of such people in New York City itself. He would also have drawn the ire of conservatives and patriots, who still exist in sufficient as-yet-uncanceled numbers to cause him some public discomfort if he had decided to become the successor of Gotham’s worst mayor by promising to be even worse still.
If, on the other hand, Yang had decided to denounce Omar and defend his country, he would have been kissing his mayoral hopes goodbye. There is no quicker path to electoral suicide for Democrats today than to criticize Omar, AOC, or any other member of the Squad. There is no quicker path to electoral irrelevance among supporters of the Party of Jefferson and Jackson and FDR today than to be openly patriotic and say anything, however mild, in defense of America’s history, institutions, or present-day society.
Yang’s dilemma was thus clear, but it is also clear that he would have paid a far smaller political price among Democrats, and in New York City today, if he had defended Omar and denounced America than if he had defended America and denounced Omar. Open hatred for their own country is now mainstream among the Democrats’ base.
Think I’m exaggerating? Carry an American flag into an Antifa or Black Lives Matter demonstration and see what happens. Remember that in September 2020, Leftist demonstrators screamed “Death to America” on the streets of New York City, where Andrew Yang wants to be mayor. Just a few days before that, according to journalist Andy Ngo “around 700 black bloc militants and their supporters rampaged through Oakland, Cal. They chanted ‘death to America’ while starting fires and smashing cars and buildings.” The week before that, according to Townhall’s Julio Rosas, “An American flag was just burned outside the Kenosha County Courthouse. One woman screams, ‘Death to America!’ and kicks the fence.”
If Andrew Yang has any hope of being elected mayor of New York, those are the kind of people he needs to keep happy. But knowing that one has to feed the crocodile doesn’t necessarily mean that one wishes to become one. And so he chose to keep silent. He will likely be pressed on this question again, until he enunciates enough hatred for America to make himself worthy, in the eyes of the Left, to be mayor of its largest city.
He’s already conceded
He’s out, Jim........................
This is a wild exaggeration.
Thought that was Robert O'Rourke.
New York City is living on Biden funny money. Private and foreign investors are no longer investing in the city. The future new mayor Adams has the competence of David Dinkins without the charm and is a crypto Stalinist.
RE: The future new mayor Adams has the competence of David Dinkins without the charm
Excuse me, how do you know he will be the future new mayor?
In the movie Fail Safe (1964) Henry Fonda had the right idea about what to do with NYC
RE: He’s already conceded
This article may be a day late for the news, but still relevant. There are many Andrew Yang’s in the Democratic party and many of them face the same dilemma.
It ain’t just NYC.
Um... no.
RE: Um... no.
Could you be more specific as to what you are saying “no” to?
Yang doesn’t hate America enough to get elected anywhere as a Democrat.
An exaggeration, yes. A ‘wild’ exaggeration, I’m not so sure.
‘The Squad’ is pretty reflective of Dem voters under the age of 35. These are the Dems that embrace the ‘socialist’ moniker whereas there is still a cohort of reliable Dem voters who are a bit more traditional, old-time Kennedy/Clinton Dems. As those Dems die off, the direction the party will head is clear. Omar will be the ‘mainstream’ of the Dem party and I suspect that day will be here a lot sooner than many believe.
Of the RATS running he probably would have been the best. the big problem in NYC has been the vagrants taking over the streets, assaulting and in many instances killing innocent people. Yang said they had to be removed from the streets and put away. Adams is a racist loving Faraquan stooge while the other two are commies.
You are not relatively reasonable when your compromise position in order to keep Trump out of office leads you to the disaster that faces America.
And for the record, this is especially true for RINOs. Their position is not relatively reasonable. They are just a bunch of soft, corrupt, weak, self-dealing traitors.
I don’t even want to think about what is going on in that video.
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