Stay in Syria

National Review Online
Wednesday, December 19, 2018 6:15 PM

The American military intervention in Syria represents one of the most successful and cost-effective military operations of the post-9/11 era. At a minimal cost in American lives — through maximum cooperation with courageous Kurdish and Arab allies — the ISIS caliphate has been reduced to rubble, Russian and Iranian ambitions in Syria have been checked, and the United States has gained valuable territorial leverage in the negotiation for a permanent peace settlement in the Syrian civil war.

But there is work left to be done. ISIS is down but not out, our Syrian allies remain vulnerable, and Russia and Iran retain their own ambitions for regional domination. That’s why Trump’s advisers have repeatedly talked him out of making a serious error by abandoning Syria before the mission is complete. As recently as September he seemed to have reached a definitive decision. American forces would stay, and he’d begin a renewed “diplomatic push” for a sustainable peace.

Well, Trump has reversed course, and he’s about to make that serious mistake. Here’s the New York Times:

President Trump has ordered a rapid withdrawal of all 2,000 United States ground troops from Syria within 30 days, declaring the four-year American-led war against the Islamic State as largely won, officials said Wednesday.

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” the president said in a Twitter post on Wednesday morning. He offered no details on his plans for the military mission, nor a larger strategy, in Syria.

Rukmini Callimachi — the reporter who has likely done more than any other journalist to educate the public about ISIS — had an effective, fact-based retort to Trump’s declaration of victory:

Three separate reports including by the Pentagon Inspector General, by the United Nations and by @CSIS have estimated that ISIS still has between 20,000 and 30,000 fighters just in Iraq and Syria, but sure, let’s call the group “defeated.” #DejaVu

The ISIS caliphate, the physical nation-state they tried to build in 2014–15, is largely in ruins. ISIS the terrorist organization still exists, and it still has thousands of fighters. It is still a threat, and an American retreat gives it the potential to re-create safe havens in Syrian territory.

Moreover, Trump’s retreat empowers both Iran and Russia — granting a great strategic gift to two of America’s chief geopolitical foes. When Vladimir Putin intervened in Syria’s civil war to save the Assad regime, Barack Obama famously warned that Russia was getting sucked into a “quagmire.” In fact, Russia’s intervention has so far been an unmitigated success. He helped tip the balance of power in the civil war, secured continued access to Russia’s naval base in Tartus, and restored Russian influence in the region to a level not seen since the Cold War.

As for Iran, it has propped up its Syrian ally, and American withdrawal will only strengthen its hand as it deploys its assets in close proximity to Israel, raising the possibility of broader conflict with America’s closest Middle Eastern ally.

Trump’s decision also seriously weakens the very same Kurdish allies who fought and bled by our side in the campaign against the caliphate. They’ll now be vulnerable to Assad’s regime in the south and Turkish forces in the north. Without strong security guarantees, it is not too much to say that we are on the verge of abandoning the Kurds in Syria.

Finally, it’s important to note that Trump is reportedly disregarding the counsel of his own national-security team. They have allegedly talked him out of previous retreats, articulating many of the reasons outlined above, but today’s announcement is proof that, for all the supposed consolation that an inexperienced president has surrounded himself with capable national-security advisers, his decision is the one that matters.

America’s military presence in Syria did suffer from one quite serious flaw: It had not been approved by Congress. The invasion and occupation of the territory of a hostile foreign state is an act of war, and constitutionally only Congress is empowered to declare war. The proper course of action for the president would have been to stay the course and seek congressional approval. Instead, he is now remedying the constitutional defect in the worst possible way — by abandoning the field without even granting Congress the opportunity to authorize a sound strategy.

One would think that a GOP administration would have learned the lessons of Obama’s reckless withdrawal from Iraq. American retreats often create power vacuums that are often filled by American enemies. Now, after all the blood spilled and tears shed since the rise of ISIS, Donald Trump is set to make his own version of Obama’s deadly mistake.

Defeating ISIS: Separating Fact from Fiction

By David French
Thursday, December 20, 2018

Donald Trump’s precipitous decision to withdraw American troops from Syria has shocked advisers inside and even allies outside his administration. Lindsey Graham called Trump’s declaration that we have “defeated” ISIS in Syria “fake news.” Graham followed up with a blistering appearance on CNN, where he indicated that Trump’s decision was contrary to sound military advice. Even his most staunch allies, men such as Mike Huckabee, were alarmed:

I want troops home too, but leaving Syria abruptly is betrayal to Kurds who have sacrificed and shed blood for Americans and it leaves Syrian Christians as sitting ducks. Please @realDonaldTrump re-think this! Your friends and supporters hope you reconsider.

One of the many problems with skipping the constitutionally necessary congressional debate and authorization before launching a war is that the commander in chief doesn’t have to effectively explain the nature of the enemy, the nature of the conflict, and the scope of the mission. And when that doesn’t happen, even politically engaged and interested Americans can be left in the dark, with their understanding of the conflict limited to the occasional news story or presidential tweet. Barack Obama didn’t initiate this debate when he launched the counter-offensive against ISIS, and Trump has not remedied Obama’s constitutional defect.

Thus, I can understand why Americans could be confused. Hasn’t the war against ISIS been one of the great success stories of Trump’s presidency? After all, allied forces retook Mosul, they retook Raqqa, and people like, well, me have declared the caliphate defeated. So if the caliphate is dead, how is ISIS still alive? How is it possibly dangerous to leave Syria when ISIS has taken such profound and serious losses?

Put simply, ISIS is a terrorist organization that attempted to build a nation-state. The nation-state has been crushed, but the terror organization still lives. And that terror organization is far more numerous and potent than al Qaeda in Iraq (the precursor to ISIS) when Barack Obama failed to negotiate a new status of forces agreement and pulled out all American troops in 2011. The New York Times‘s invaluable Rukmini Callimachi has the numbers:

With Hajin gone, ISIS has lost all but 1% of the enormous territory they once held. Looks like they’ve been defeated yeah? Sadly territorial control is only one metric by which analysts measure the strength of the group. And according to the other metrics, ISIS remains a force. In 2010, the last time the group was considered vanquished they had almost no land and 700 fighters. Today, they have an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 fighters just in Iraq and Syria, according to the Pentagon’s Inspector General.

So while Trump deserves credit for stepping up the war that Obama began (though both presidents should have sought congressional approval), he is stopping short of short of complete victory. He won a war against a terror state, but he must make sure that state doesn’t reconstitute, and he must complete the campaign against the remaining terrorist force.

In pure military terms — given the strength of the enemy and the vulnerability of our allies — he’s making an arguably worse and more obvious mistake than his predecessor. Moreover, his messaging is self-contradictory and places far too much faith in Syria, Iran, and Russia:

So hard to believe that Lindsey Graham would be against saving soldier lives & billions of $$$. Why are we fighting for our enemy, Syria, by staying & killing ISIS for them, Russia, Iran & other locals? Time to focus on our Country & bring our youth back home where they belong!

While Assad and his allies clearly and obviously want to attain domination over the whole of Syria (which would mean routing and subjugating the allies who fought and bled alongside American troops), it is far less obvious that Syria, Russia, and Iran will annihilate the remnant of ISIS — so long as they can contain it and direct its aggression against the West. Assad was more than happy to harbor anti-American terrorists during the Iraq War, and he was more than happy to see them kill American troops and to destabilize the allied Iraqi regime. A 2007 DOD report detailed the Assad regime’s complicity in the Iraq insurgency:

Damascus appears unwilling to cooperate fully with the GOI [Government of Iraq] on bilateral security initiatives. Syria continues to provide safe haven, border transit, and limited logistical support to some Iraqi insurgents, especially former Saddam-era Iraqi Baath Party elements. Syria also permits former regime elements to engage in organizational activities, such that Syria has emerged as an important organizational and coordination hub for elements of the former Iraqi regime. Although Syrian security and intelligence services continue to detain and deport Iraq-bound fighters, Syria remains the primary foreign fighter gateway into Iraq. Despite its heightened scrutiny of extremists and suspected insurgents, Damascus appears to want to appease Islamist extremist groups. Damascus also recognizes that Islamist extremists and elements of the former Iraqi regime share Syria’s desire to undermine Coalition efforts in Iraq.

In plain English, if the Assad regime, Iran, or the Russians can wield terrorists as a weapon against the United States, they will. That’s why this Trump tweet is dangerous nonsense:

....Russia, Iran, Syria & many others are not happy about the U.S. leaving, despite what the Fake News says, because now they will have to fight ISIS and others, who they hate, without us. I am building by far the most powerful military in the world. ISIS hits us they are doomed!

We cannot outsource our national-security commitments to our avowed enemies. And if Vladimir Putin is upset about American withdrawal, he’s hiding it well. Yesterday, Putin called Trump’s retreat the “right decision.” He knows that Trump has handed him an immense strategic opportunity to maximize Russian leverage and harm American allies.

Finally, it’s worth emphasizing that Trump is ending what was proving to be one of the most successful, low-cost American military missions since 9/11. Unlike our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, our losses in Syria have been exceedingly light, we have deployed minimal forces, and we have accomplished impressive victories against formidable enemies without a substantial ground footprint. Our allies bore the bulk of the ground fighting, suffered the vast majority of the casualties, and now they stand to lose everything if we leave.

When Trump says ISIS is defeated in Syria, he’s not telling the truth. When he declares that Russia and Iran will pick up the torch and finish the fight, he’s delegating American defense obligations to American enemies. His decision is reckless and dangerous and in some ways represents a greater gamble than Obama’s ultimately disastrous withdrawal from Iraq. Let’s hope he changes his mind again, secures the victory against the caliphate, and finishes the necessary fight against ISIS. How many times must we make the same mistake? Withdrawal before victory is all too often the prelude to suffering and defeat.

Will the Nation Heed the Warning Jim Mattis Delivered Today?

By David French
Thursday, December 20, 2018

Defenders of Trump have long argued that his worst impulses can and will be tempered by the good men and women in his administration. And when they listed the good men and women, the first name on that list was always James Mattis. The legendary warrior. The honorable Marine.

But what does an honorable Marine do when he has an irreconcilable conflict with his commander? No, he does not write anonymous essays for the New York Times. He cannot disobey lawful commands. But he also cannot in good conscience execute plans and policies that he believes are destructive and wrong.

So the honorable man resigns and states the reasons for his resignation. That’s what Mattis did today, and America should heed his words. The full text of his resignation letter is here, and it is nothing short of a rebuke of the president’s habits, philosophy, and decisions.

I want to highlight two excerpts in particular. Both of them send a clear message to the president. Here’s the first:

One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies. Like you, I have said from the beginning that the armed forces of the United States should not be the policeman of the world. Instead, we must use all tools of American power to provide for the common defense, including providing effective leadership to our alliances. NATO’s 29 democracies demonstrated that strength in their commitment to fighting alongside us following the 9-11 attack on America. The Defeat-ISIS coalition of 74 nations is further proof.

It’s opening sentence is key: “One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.” He next says, “[W]e cannot protect our interests . . . without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies.” (Emphasis added.)

And which alliances does he choose to emphasize? NATO and the “Defeat-ISIS coalition.” The language is polite, but the meaning is unmistakable. Our alliances make us stronger. Our allies fight with us. They deserve our respect. And, critically, they need our leadership. He makes this statement one day after the president abdicated leadership in the fight against ISIS in Syria.

In the very next paragraph, Mattis calls for Trump to be “resolute and unambiguous” in his dealings with Russia and China. Then, he says this:

My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

Again he refers to treating allies with respect. Again he urges clarity in dealing with “malign actors.” The lead sentence of the following paragraph is devastating: “Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other matters, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position.” (Emphasis added.)

Donald Trump is at a pivotal moment. He can heed General Mattis’s warning — delivered publicly, firmly, and respectfully — or he can continue down his current, reckless path. This letter represents America’s most-respected warrior telling the nation that he does not believe the president sees our enemies clearly, understands the importance of our alliances, or perceives the necessity of American leadership. We should be deeply troubled.

But this isn’t just a pivotal moment for Trump. Republicans in Congress believed that General Mattis’s appointment was one of Trump’s best decisions as president, and Mattis’s very presence at the Pentagon reassured the party and (more importantly) the public that an inexperienced, impulsive, president would listen to wise counsel. After reading this letter, will Republicans in Congress retain their faith in Trump’s judgment? Will they continue to view him as the leader of the GOP, the man they defer to in politics and policy?

Now is the time for Republicans in Congress to declare their independence from the Republican in the White House and refuse once and for all to rubber-stamp Donald Trump’s whims and desires.

General Mattis has performed a profoundly important public service. He has served his country in combat. He has served in country in high public office. He has now served it well with his resignation. Will the nation heed the warning he delivered today?

Kicking Our Allies

By Mona Charen
Friday, December 21, 2018

President Trump’s behavior is unprecedented, but his decision to withdraw our troops from Syria, while unprecedentedly abrupt, is actually part of a tradition of unforced errors in American foreign policy.

Out of spite, or sometimes as a smokescreen to evade responsibility, Congress and past presidents have managed to lose wars that could have gone the other way. Seeking to make partisan points, we have cost ourselves dearly.

In June of 1973, with Richard Nixon wounded by Watergate, the Democratic-dominated Congress passed the Case-Church amendment, which forbade any further military action in Southeast Asia. We had withdrawn most of our troops the previous March. South Vietnam was attempting to fight the Viet Cong and North Vietnam (both backed by the Soviet Union and China) by itself. Congress liked to tell itself that this was “Nixon’s war,” conveniently airbrushing out John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, not to mention that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which passed the House with a vote of 416-0, and the Senate by 88-2. For 10 years, Congress had authorized the war through funding.

By 1973, however, most Democrats were endorsing a revisionist history that suggested that they had no role in the decision to fight; that it was forced on the nation by presidents. They passed the War Powers Resolution and cut funds for our ally, South Vietnam.

Could South Vietnam have withstood the onslaught with only American money and equipment? It’s impossible to say. What is clear is that a combination of pique and score settling caused Democrats to guarantee defeat. As Senator Edward Kennedy explained, aid would “perpetuate involvement that should have ended long ago.”

President Barack Obama opposed the Iraq War. Fine. But when he took office in 2009, Iraq was largely pacified. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had been defeated. ISIS did not exist. Iran was not pulling the strings in Baghdad, and no Americans were dying.

Obama could have said to the American people: “I opposed this war. I thought it was a mistake. But this is not 2003. More than 4,000 Americans have given their lives, and taxpayers have spent $757 billion to ensure a better future for this country and this region and to prevent the incubation of more terrorists to threaten us at home. A too hasty withdrawal could jeopardize what has been achieved. Accordingly, I plan to leave a residual force of 20,000 troops (fewer than we deploy to South Korea) to stabilize the situation.”

But Obama had a point to make. Instead of remaining to midwife a secure Iraq, he beat a retreat. Whatever you think of the decision to invade, at that moment in 2011, there was still a good possibility of stability. As Vali Nasr, a former State Department official explained to The Atlantic: The “fragile power-sharing arrangement … required close American management. But the Obama administration had no time or energy for that. Instead it anxiously eyed the exits, with its one thought to get out. It stopped protecting the political process just when talk of American withdrawal turned the heat back up under the long-simmering power struggle that pitted the Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds against one another.”

And so, we turned our backs on the Sunni tribes who had helped defeat al-Qaeda, as well as the moderate Shiites who sought to resist Iranian domination. The aftermath is well known: the rise of ISIS, the torment of the Yazidis and Iraqi Christians, the victory of Iran in controlling its neighbor, and the ongoing agony of Syria. At least Obama achieved one end — nearly everyone now says Iraq was a disaster. It needn’t have been.

Against the advice of everyone save Vladimir Putin, Bashar Assad, and Recep Erdogan, President Trump decided to pull all 2,000 American troops from Syria. This is a gift to our enemies and a betrayal of our friends — especially the Kurds, who fought ISIS when no one else would, and the Israelis, who will now have Iran more firmly on their doorstep. This is as foolish and short-sighted as Obama’s Iraq withdrawal, but with Trumpian flourishes, such as the claim that we have “defeated” ISIS (30,000 fighters remain) and that “Russia, Iran, Syria & others are the local enemy of ISIS. We were doing there work.” [sic] No, the greatest enemy ISIS faced were the Kurds, thousands of whom died fighting ISIS, and who currently hold 2,000 ISIS prisoners. Turkey is threatening an offensive against the Kurds, which would be unthinkable with Americans in the way.

On April 30, 1975, the last helicopters lifted off the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon. This betrayal of an ally is equally shameful.

The Left Lends Cover to Anti-Semitism

By Ben Shapiro

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

This week, The New York Times Review of Books printed an interview with Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple. The interviewer asked Walker to list the books on her nightstand. Most were unobjectionable. One was not: a book titled And the Truth Shall Set You Free, by David Icke. Walker described the book thusly: “In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about. A curious person’s dream come true.”

As Yair Rosenberg of Tablet noted, this is a bit of problem. As it turns out, Icke is a rabid anti-Semite, and And the Truth Shall Set You Free is a tome of vitriolic Jew-hating garbage. Rosenberg explains that in the book, “The word ‘Jewish’ appears 241 times, and the name ‘Rothschild’ is mentioned 374 times. These references are not compliments.” The book itself suggests that the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic hoax tract written in the late 1800s, was indeed genuine.

The Times itself has received the lion’s share of the blame for Walker’s reference. But the more interesting question is why Walker herself has been able to escape censure. As Rosenberg points out, Walker has repeatedly praised Icke’s work, has written openly anti-Semitic poetry (“Simply follow the trail of ‘The / Talmud’ as its poison belatedly winds its way / Into our collective consciousness”), and has personally refused to allow The Color Purple to be translated into Hebrew. Yet she is still a well-respected member of the leftist intelligentsia.

And Walker isn’t alone. In fact, anti-Semitism is often accepted by prominent black intellectuals on the left. Marc Lamont Hill trafficked in anti-Semitism for years before losing his CNN contributorship over preaching a Hamas slogan before the United Nations. Cornel West suggested that Israel was born because “Jews jumped out of the burning buildings of Europe in a Jew-hating Europe led by a gangster named Hitler, right? They landed on the backs of some Arabs in the 1940s.” Toni Morrison explained that “a lot of black people . . . believe that Jews in this country, by and large, have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.” James Baldwin suggested the same thing, explaining, “The Jew profits from his status in America, and he must expect Negroes to distrust him for it. The Jew does not realize that the credential he offers, the fact that he has been despised and slaughtered, does not increase the Negro’s understanding. It increases the Negro’s rage.”

And these are the intellectuals. A bevy of black “community leaders” have been similarly anti-Semitic, and survived and thrived. Rabid anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan was still welcome at Aretha Franklin’s funeral, where he hobnobbed with Bill Clinton. Al Sharpton, whose anti-Semitic record includes helping to incite a riot against Jews in Crown Heights in 1991 and an arson in 1995, has a show on MSNBC, and Democratic presidential candidates come to pay him homage. And while we tend to downplay it now, it’s rather telling that Barack Obama sat in the pews of anti-Semitic pastor Jeremiah Wright for two decades.

It’s a mark of the Left’s intersectional priorities that anti-Semitism from minority groups has been so widely ignored. It is a simple fact that anti-Semitism in the United States does not break down evenly by race. An Anti-Defamation League survey in 2016 found that 23 percent of black Americans had “anti-Semitic propensities,” as measured by an eleven-factor survey, compared with 10 percent of white Americans. That disproportion has been the norm since the ADL began the survey in 2007. Similar disproportionate anti-Semitism exists in the Hispanic community as well. But none of that draws any media coverage. As the New York Times admitted in its survey of anti-Semitic violence in New York City, “bias stemming from longstanding ethnic tensions in the city presents complexities that many liberals have chosen simply to ignore.”

Ignoring anti-Semitism depending on the perpetrator’s ethnicity or background is simply lending cover to anti-Semitism. Alice Walker should be just as toxic for her anti-Semitism as David Duke is for his. After all, they push the same message when it comes to Jews. Failing to acknowledge as much lends credence to the anti-Semitic idea that Jews have somehow earned their hatred from certain groups.

Do Democrats Have A White Man Problem?

By David Marcus             

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

In an interview with CNN’s Van Jones this weekend, Democratic Sen. Kristen Gillibrand was asked if it was a problem that a recent poll shows three white men are leading for the 2020 presidential nomination. Her answer, which grabbed headlines, was a blunt “Yes,” and drew a laugh from Jones.

Gillibrand explained her answer a bit, but only in very broad terms. She talked about the importance of Barack Obama’s first black presidency, then said, ““I aspire for our country to recognize the beauty of our diversity in some point in the future and I hope some day we have a woman president.”

This answer seems to indicate that at the moment Democratic voters don’t recognize the beauty of our diversity. Their top three choices — former senator Joe Biden, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, and kinda almost senator Beto O’Rourke — represent in Gillibrand’s view an electorate that has not advanced to a full understanding of equality and diversity.

This take seems a bit harsh to Democratic voters, whom by the way Gillibrand may be wooing for her own run at the Oval Office. There are good reasons these three are the current leaders. Biden was vice president, Sanders came in second for the nomination last time, and O’Rourke has received the most celebratory media coverage since the Beatles came to America.

There’s also the fact that the last time the Democrats nominated a white man was in 2004. Granted, all the ones before that were white men, but over the past two decades it’s been a different set. Democrats elected a record number of women into office in 2018 and are handing the gavel back to the first woman to be speaker of the House. So is it really a problem that the three leaders for the nomination are white men?

There are two basic ways to address this question. The first is electoral, and the second is ideological. From the point of view of pure voting math, there are good arguments for and against a white male candidate. Proponents would say that it could help in Trump’s forgotten America. Detractors would argue that today’s Democratic Party must mirror the Obama coalition and pump up minority turnout.

A third option exists: most voters care far less about a candidate’s race and sex than most in the media and on the far left think they do, and it won’t matter very much at all. In looking at all of these electoral possibilities, it doesn’t seem accurate to say that fielding a white male candidate is a problem for Democrats.

That leaves the ideological problem as the one that is truly at issue here. It isn’t merely symbolic. Sure, somebody not white or male polling over 10 percent would be the kind of PR win Democrats got with the photos of their wave of new female legislators. But for many Democrats, apparently including Gillibrand, equal representation on the basis of race and sex really does go beyond campaign narrative and is a driving principle of the party itself.

Many Democrats feel a pressure that if they talk the talk they must walk the walk. Institutions diversify when they decide to do so intentionally, when they decide to make people’s identifiers of sex, race, etc. a key component in hiring, publishing, and promoting. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Even Mitt Romney once famously asked for binders full of women because he wanted more of them serving in his administration.

But in general it is Democrats who favor more aggressive quota policies in forms like affirmative action. While conservatives at least in rhetoric focus on the importance of equal opportunity, progressives focus on equal outcomes. From this perspective, the unequal outcome of three white men sitting atop the polls must be the result of bias or discrimination in the system.

If Democrats really do think they have a problem, there are things they can do as an institution to ameliorate the situation. The party could aggressively set quota goals for elected offices. It could take race and sex into account for levels of candidate support. In all likelihood, soft forms of this kind of thing probably are happening. In some sense, the core identity of the Democratic Party today is that it is diverse and inclusive, so maybe it really is a problem for them that only white men are scoring significantly in their presidential polls.

The political calculus that the Democratic Party and progressives in general must think about is how far they want to push the agenda of decreasing white men’s power. Jones’ laugh and Gillibrand’s reaction seemed to show that they both thought she was saying something radical, or at least something that pushes boundaries.

Frankly, in the context of modern progressive thought and its influence on the Democratic Party, this was not a particularly radical thing to say. But in the context of presidential politics and the centrist smoothing of the Electoral College, it may be. There is a risk that many voters will look at conversations like the one between Gillibrand and Jones and at best roll their eyes, at worst accuse them of divisiveness, or even racism or sexism.

Over the next year and a half, Democrats not only have to find the person who can beat Donald Trump, they must find the one who can do so while representing and defining the values of their party. I deeply hope that a candidate’s race and sex plays an insignificant role, if any, in judging his or her fitness. But what we are hearing from Democrats lately makes me wonder if that will be the case.