The Democrats’ Convention Is The Victim Group Olympics

The Federalist - Thursday July 28, 2016

by John Gibbs

The Democratic National Convention this week in Philadelphia is Democrats’ chance to offer their vision for America. With the Republican National Convention ending last week, Democrats and their allies in the media attempted to paint Donald Trump and the RNC’s message as “dark.”

However, it’s actually the Democrats’ strategy of dividing America into victimized groups that is truly dark, as it creates discord and division for political gain. Let’s look at this week’s speaker lineup at the DNC to see this divisiveness in action.

Exploiting Family Tragedies

The speaker lineup includes a group called Mothers of the Movement, which consists of the mothers of black men killed either by police or someone else, including Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Dontré Hamilton, and Sandra Bland, among others.

Consistent with their strategy of dividing America into groups of victims that Democratic Party handouts and programs must save, this group’s messaging consists of three components: 1) Blame police for the deaths of black men they shoot, 2) Blame (white) racism for black people killing each other in such dramatically high numbers, and 3) Blame guns for the problems of crime and violent interactions with police in the black community—then call for further restrictions on gun rights.

Let’s be clear: everyone, myself included, sympathizes with the suffering and the loss of these women. I can’t imagine the pain of losing a child. Yet the message of Mothers of the Movement backs the Democrats’ dark strategy of division and victimization. For one, the gun control agenda they push amounts to punishing law-abiding American gun owners for the actions of criminals, who are made out to be victims of guns, not products of failed families, a dysfunctional culture, and failed policies that keep black people locked in poverty.

Second, blaming our police when criminals fight back or resist arrest makes it appear that the Democratic Party is defending criminals as victims while attacking the good guys as oppressors. Third, blaming white people for the dramatic problem of crime in black communities—a major plank of the Black Lives Matter platform—seems unfair, and as if they are avoiding a central cause of this problem, which is deep dysfunction in the black community. For example, many Americans watching this week are asking, “Where are the fathers?” and “Why did your son become a criminal or fight with the police in the first place?”

The GOP should capitalize on the Democratic strategy of division and victimization by defining itself as the party that stands for police and all law-abiding citizens of every race. They should contrast themselves with the Democratic Party, which defines black people as victims and the police, gun-owning Americans, and whites as enemies for the sake of securing a minority voting bloc.

Enabling and Apologizing for Law-Breakers

Further consistent with the theme of dividing America into victim classes, another group speaking at the DNC are “DREAMers.” “DREAMer” is the word Democrats use to describe the children of illegal immigrants who were also not born in the United States. A big agenda item of President Obama and the Democrats (and even Jeb Bush, which is one reason he lost the Republican primary so spectacularly) has been to push for legal status for this group.

Yet to many Americans, pushing to legalize those who came here illegally seems like an attack on fairness and law and order, rewarding lawbreakers who cheated our system. Further, studies show illegal immigration harms the poorest Americans and carries the threat of increased terrorism.

The GOP response should be to define itself as the party of fairness and of defending Americans from external threats, including illegal immigration. This is in contrast to the Democrats, who’ll go to any length to create a new victim group if positioning itself as the savior of that group will produce political gain, regardless of the division created and the harm to Americans accrued in the process.

Projecting Wrong Motives Onto Violence

Additionally, survivors of the horrible Charleston church shooting will speak. That shooting was of course an unspeakable, indefensible act. But I expect this presentation to further reveal the Democratic strategy of cultivating victim groups and then making itself the savior of those groups against their alleged oppressors—in this case whites and those who fly the Confederate flag. (As if the Confederate flag is making 5,500 black people kill each other every year!)

This approach also reveals another fundamental problem with Democrats’ philosophy: their willingness to claim systematic racism for the isolated act of a crazy, despicable individual such as Dylann Roof. They do such things while also typically claiming there is no systematic problem with Islamic terrorism despite repeated, consistent attacks from Muslims in the name of their religion on behalf of ISIS.

This presents an opportunity for the GOP to not only clearly showcase the Democrats’ confused beliefs towards extremism, but also to point out their willingness to divide the nation by designating gun owners and the Confederate flag as enemies for political gain, even though those are not the cause of this horrible incident.

Mischaracterizing Paperwork Mistakes for Political Gain

Next up, a young woman from Kansas named Jensen Walcott tells how she was fired by her employer, Pizza Studio, for asking why she was paid less than her male counterpart who started the same job on the same day. The obvious implication is that her lower pay compared to her male co-worker was due to discrimination, and she was fired because the company supported this discrimination.

But further investigation shows her lower pay was not due to discrimination or bias at all (her boss was a woman), but a paperwork mistake! Indeed, Ashleigh Siefker, Pizza Studio’s executive director of operations and a woman, has personally instituted anti-discrimination policies at the company, and indicated the pay discrepancy in this case was an HR mistake, not discrimination. The boss who incorrectly set Walcott’s pay was fired for the mistake. But don’t expect something as minor as the truth to stop the narrative of victimization that is the bread and butter of the Democratic Party.

Walcott’s story and the DNC’s shameless twisting of the facts in an attempt to show discrimination that wasn’t actually there is yet another example of creating division for political gain, this time with the victim group being women. This presents a great opportunity for the GOP to highlight Democrats’ negative and divisive strategy of dividing people into groups, then declaring each one a victim of discrimination, even when no discrimination is actually taking place.

The Democratic strategy is on full display this week: divide America into victimized groups, then showcase speakers and viewpoints that tell the victim narrative while blaming the alleged oppressors. The victim groups of choice this week will be blacks, illegal immigrants, gays, and women. The oppressors are those bad Republicans, whites, Christians, and men.

Time will tell which party’s approach gets the moderate swing voters. The GOP has a strong chance if they clearly highlight the harm done to national unity by Democrats’ dark strategy of division, victimization, and blame.

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