Why Ilhan Omar Won (and the mistakes her detractors made)

Two simple answers:  1)  She received more votes than her opponents; and 2)   She was the incumbent.  The first answer is obvious, so is the second, but neither are the end of the story and there are lessons to why she won and what it may mean going forward.

Congressional incumbents have significant advantages, that is why their normal re-election rate is 95-98%.  Those advantages are name recognition, money, use of office for constituent service, generally a pre-existing campaign structure in place, and prior experience in winning.  Omar had all this.  Yet as I noted in my piece in The Hill, the best time to put an incumbent is when they first run for re-election.  When that happens and the challenger narrows or eliminates the incumbent cash advantage, the latter’s chance for re-election approaches 50-55%.  That is where Omar was—she was still the favorite and Antone Melton-Meaux had to run a great campaign and have a perfect storm to win.  He did not.  He and his supporters made several mistakes, and Omar did not.

            First, what Omar did well was yet again recreate her social media campaign strategy that got her elected to the Minnesota House in 2016 and the US House in 2018.  She used that social media strategy effectively to reach Millennials in two previous campaigns and appears to have done that again.  Most of the mainstream media and analysts failed to observe this campaign technique—it is the 2020 version of private lawn signs or phone calls to supporters. She held her base, got out her supporters, and therefore received more votes than her opponent.  Moreover, Minneapolis and the Fifth District are but one example of a generational and demographic shift in the US where control of the Democratic Party is shifting to Millennials and Gen Z and away from Baby Boomers.  Omar benefitted from this.

            Melton-Meaux made several mistakes.  One, as was party of their strategy according to many I talked to—was to maintain a stealth campaign and not announce until the last minute in order to have the element of surprise.  But this surprise campaign came at a big cost—not providing sufficient information to voters about who he was or that he was even running.  Stealth campaigns produce stealth candidates who generally lose.

            Second, Melton-Meaux apparently had no or little social media campaign.  At a time of decreased mainstream television viewership, especially among Millennials and Gen Z, the failure to reach out via social media was a problem.  But connected to this issue is what appears to be a third failure—a limited ground game.  With all the money going into this race both to his campaign committee and via PACs, they seemed to think that television advertising or air wars was enough to win.  Ground wars, get out the vote, phone banking, contacting voters, is critical and this was missing from the campaign.

            Melton-Meaux not being the endorsed candidate meant he did not have the DFL party to support him.  The big winner in Minnesota on Tuesday was the DFL whose muscle provided the ground game for all endorsed candidates, including Omar, and that made a difference.  Again, as a stealth candidate lacking a campaign infrastructure, he was at a marked disadvantage to Omar.

            Finally, but perhaps not the last reason, Melton-Meaux worked for a law firm with a union-busting reputation.  This made him an excellent target for labor.  Had Melton-Meaux’s  supporters introduced and vetted him publicly much of this might have come out or his backers might have realized this as a liability and gone for someone else.

            Overall,  many factors contributed to Omar’s win.  But perhaps one could argue that  if Melton-Meaux’s supporters could not defeat Omar their hope  was to scare her.  Initial post-election comments do not reveal that and Omar comes out of the primary perhaps stronger than  before.  What lessons she and her detractors take from this primary are  yet to be seen.  Conversely, for those who publicly endorsed  Melton-Meaux,, they are weaker as a result.

            Going forward, though, it is not too early to think about 2022 if Omar decides to run again.  It will be after redistricting .  Right now, the Fifth Congressional district seems a good    fit for her with 60% of the population within the city of Minneapolis.  Consider some statistics.

            For the 2010 census, the average congressional district was 711,000 individuals.  According to the Census Bureau, as of August 12, 2020 the US population is 330,112, 127.  This would make the average district population 758, 878.  The estimated 2020 Minneapolis population is 435, 885, making it about 57.5% of the district.  Not much of a change compared to 2010.  Yet it is too soon to tell what the Fifth Congressional district will look like.  We do not know for certain if Minnesota, for example, loses a congressional seat.  All this is to say that  while for now Omar probably is safe and strong in a currently configured Fifth District, demographic shifts in a new districting, as well as the result of the 2020 Minnesota state legislative races complicate what Omar’s and all the other districts look like in the state.

When are the private lives of public officials our concern?

Please note: This piece originally appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Note also: I took some time off this summer from blogging; I hope to be more active again this fall.


When are elected officials’ personal lives a matter of legitimate public concern? U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minneapolis refuses to discuss her personal life, including her marriage and possible extramarital romantic relationships. She declares it is not the public’s business. While generally an elected official’s personal life is not the public’s business, there are cases where it is. For Omar, her personal life has become a public concern, and she has an obligation to respond to questions about it, much in the same way Donald Trump does.


Generally what others do in their private lives is none of our business. Traditionally in American culture there is a public/private wall. Matters that do not affect others are private.  If they do impact others perhaps the public has some right to know more or do something, but generally only to prevent harm to others. Our society is premised on the belief of a right to privacy; that no government official has the right to tell us what to do with our private life, including our sexual behavior.

The same rule traditionally applied to public officials. The focus in theory was on their stand on public issues. Running for or serving in public office did not constitute a privacy waiver.

This public-private wall when it came to public officials cut two ways: It respected the privacy of public figures and didn’t deter people from running for office out of fear embarrassing things in their private or family lives. And yet the wall hid many stories, the many extramarital affairs of President Kennedy for example, the affairs that so many other male elected officials had, as well as other issues. Should the public have been informed about them? Should we not hold public officials up to a higher standard of personal conduct?

One theory says that what public officials do in their private lives is not the public’s business so long as private behavior does not impact their job. Another holds that the public has a right to know and judge because personal behavior tells us something about public performance.

Supporting the latter theory, few of us can lead dual lives – be ethically good or bad in private but the opposite in public. Most of us live more integrated lives – who we are and how we behave in our personal lives is suggestive of our public behavior. Character matters. There is a connection between private and public ethics. This is what the “Me Too” movement is about in part. To be ethical as a public official one needs to be personally ethical. I as a voter may not know or grasp complex issues of public policy, but if I can trust a person’s character then I will trust that person to make good choices as an elected official.

Increasingly the belief that one’s personal life is a marker of public ethics accounts for part of the erosion of the right to privacy for public officials. So, too, does the increased celebrity culture of American politics, by which candidates for office make their personal biographies the centerpiece of their campaigns. Traditionally, the private lives of Hollywood or musical stars is the core of gossip and celebrity magazines. This is because these individuals often make their private lives public through interviews, their music, or simply out of desire to get media attention to help their careers. These individuals have generally chosen to put their private lives in play to advance their careers.

Public officials open their private lives to public scrutiny, too, when they put their personal behavior into play. A personal affair of a politician may not be the public’s concern, but if the candidate runs as a “family values” candidate it may be relevant. Additionally, elected officials who do things privately that break the laws they are sworn to uphold may be an example. Is it illegal to pay someone so that they will not disclose an affair you had with them? Generally no. But in the case of Donald Trump, paying Stormy Daniels to silence her so the story of the affair would not affect the 2016 presidential election violated federal campaign finance laws. Or maybe his business dealings implicate his presidential duties, which is why his tax records are relevant. He should be held accountable for his behavior to make sure his personal interests do not compromise his public duties.

Ilhan Omar refuses to comment on her private life. This is despite legitimate questions regarding her marriage status and how it may relate to immigration, tax, and Minnesota election laws. The Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board already adjudicated that Omar misspent campaign funds and perhaps used them for private purposes. Now there is a Federal Election Commission complaint regarding her possible misuse of congressional campaign funds to pay someone who worked for her and with whom, as alleged in recent divorce filings, she may be romantically involved.

Trump, Class, and Identity Politics in the 2020 Presidential Campaign

Donald Trump has made it clear his 2020 presidential campaign is about identity politics. Unlike 2016 where  economic anxiety and nationalism were pretexts for race and identity, in 2020 white nationalism and racism toward immigrants, Muslims, and people are color are out front and central to his message.  Trump is no long Richard Nixon of 1968 using code words for race, he is George Wallace of 1968 overtly running on race.
Yet Trump is not the first and probably the last candidate to run on identity politics.  Appeals to it have a long American history, dating back to and encouraged by the constitutional framers.
America was born a nation of identity politics.  It was a nation defined by being White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant (WASP), but also a nation hostile to Catholics, Jews, Native-Americans, and Blacks, the latter who were kept as slaves.  The US was defined both by who “we” were, and by the “other.”  The US is the only country that has the concept “Un-American”; no other national has a similar phrase to identify and define.  Identity is inborn in the logic of American politics, as scholars such as Richard Hofstadter and Perry Miller point out.
But while cultural values may drive identity politics, American political institutions inflame it.  Historian Charles Beard controversially contended in his 1913 An Economic  Interpretation of the Constitution that one the constitutional framers did was to recognize the potency of class politics and seek to transform it into identity or group politics. 
James Madison’s Federalist Paper number 10 opens recounting the dangers of factions or groups that can divide a society.  But he tells us that “the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property.”  Decrying the impracticality or desirability  of eradicating property differences as a threatening liberty, Beard seeks Madison’s call in Federalist 51 that “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition” and in Federalist 10 for “greater variety of parties and interests” to check one another.  Pit groups against one another, divide up the people, and prevent a majority from suppressing the rights of the minority who, in the eyes of Madison according to Charles Beard, were the property holders.
The Beardian gloss on the Constitution and the  Federalist Papers saw the brilliance of American politics in how the framers recognized the potency of American politics and sought to transform, sublimate, or displace it into interest group politics.  Eventually mainstream American political science would call a variant of this politics pluralism–the competition of groups for power desegregates it, producing the power-sharing supposedly characteristic of American politics. In theory, such politics would be less confrontational and conflictual than class, arguably allowing for more compromise and sharing of power as coalitions of groups change to pursue their interests.
Nice theory, but there is a problem.  Combine the institutional framework of America’s constitution and pluralism with the deep seated culture of identity and one gets a political system that institutionally encourages identity politics.  Of course racism toward African-Americans has always been there, as has that toward Native-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans.  But over time persecution of the Irish, Italians, Catholics, and other groups have also been a mainstay of America and its politics.  Political campaigns have been defined by both by the “us” and who are the real Americans, and the “others,” those Un-Americans whom we need to purge from out soils.  Moreover, appeals to identity have proved to be anything but less conflictual than class politics; instead they have elicited some of the most passionate and hateful fights in American history.
Throughout American history class and identity have dueled as contenders driving American politics.  While class is always there, and has become more so as the gap between the rich and power in the US has exacerbated since the 1970s, the focus of American politics has mostly been dominated by identity politics in the last 50 years.  For progressives supportive of a civil rights agenda, there are good and important reasons to do that.  But as Tom and Mary Edsell pointed out in their 1991 Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics, progressive identity politics produced a counter or chain reaction in reactionary identity politics that is at the core of the  ideology of Donald Trump’s political message to white working class America today.
Donald Trump’s attacks on Representative Ilhan Omar and three other female members of Congress who are persons of color simply elevates and removes any lasting doubt about intentionality of Trump’s narrative of identity politics in 2020.  It lays bare and returns American politics to its roots, one where race and identity are central.  It shows how combining cultural identity  that defines us versus them, with institutional design, and not party polarization produce a potent recipe for that politics that is driving the 2020 presidential campaign.

The Nixon-Trump Southern Strategy Goes North: The Midwest, Race, and the 2020 Presidential Election

Donald Trump’s recent tweet telling Congresswomen  Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Pressley, and Omar  (all female and people of color) to leave the country is the most recent example of his effort to take Richard Nixon’s old southern strategy and apply it to the Midwest.  Trump is betting that it will work as effectively in 2020 as did it work for Nixon in 1968.  Whether it does, tells us a lot about where the US is today in terms of race relations.

Consider some American history.  From the US Civil War until the 1960s political scientists such as V.O. Key refer to the “Solid South.”   Republican Party opposed slavery and Democrats resisted civil rights.  The result was that the US South voted consistently for Democrats at all levels of office, but especially for president.  The south was a mainstay for the Democratic Party.

But beginning in the 1960s the Solid South cracked, and it did so over civil rights.  First it was the 1954 Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision that demanded integrated schools.  Then it was President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the 1964 Civil Rights bill (and where he reputedly declared that with the signing of the bill the Democrats had lost the south for the rest of the century).  These two events launched a chain reaction of events. In 1963  George Wallace inaugurated his Alabama governorship by declaring “"segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," and he mounted his 1968 presidential campaign on opposition to civil rights.

While never as overtly racist as Wallace, Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign centered on race.  Nixon ran as a law and order, war on drugs, get tough on crime president.  Given the unrest in urban cores in the US and the civil rights demonstrations, these phrases of Nixon were code words for race.  The strategy worked–Nixon won, and he did so by winning several southern states no Republican had secured in 100 years.

The Republican Southern strategy of appealing to race and white conservatism was well described by Kevin Phillips, the architect of Nixon’s 1968 campaign and author of the 1969 The Emerging Republican Majority.  It described a majority of white working class American who in reaction to civil rights and cultural progressivism, would break away from the Democrats and vote Republican.
Largely the strategy worked.  Subsequent Republicans appealed to race and also to economic insecurities and anxieties to move working class Democrats over.  At first they were called “Reagan  Democrats, then perhaps Tea Parties, then perhaps now Trump Democrats.  Race was covert in moving them.  But sometimes, such as in the presidential race between George  H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, race was overt.  In that campaign the “Willie Horton” ads depicted a Black felon who had raped and murdered a woman.  Polls and evidence suggested these ads were decisive in helping Bush win by peeling off white voters from the Democrats.  All this was part of the Republican Southern Strategy.

And it worked.  By the mid 1990s Democrats had all but disappeared from the South at all levels of office.  The solid south was now a Republican south.

Enter Donald Trump.  His 2016 presidential campaign was famous for at least two points.  One, it appealed to the economic and racial anxiety of white working class America.  Two, it was a Midwest strategy.  Attacks on Mexicans and immigrants as rapists, drug smugglers, and criminals who take American jobs and collect welfare were a mainstay of his 2016 campaign. No surprise that such rhetoric appealed to many southern whites, but what surprised many was its success in appealing to working class whites in the Midwest.    These were individuals who had seen their coal mine, auto, or steel plants disappear.  Trump offered an answer–it was immigration, immigrants, and off-shoring of jobs that was to blame.  Bringing back coal was less about really bringing back coal than it was code word for race.  And it worked.  Trump split the Midwest–one described as a firewall for Democrats, by winning all the states there except for Illinois and Minnesota.

What Trump did in 2016 was to take Nixon’s Southern Strategy that split the Solid South  in 1968 and use it in the Midwest to break the Democrats’ firewall.  Only now for 2020, the rhetoric  is more explicit–it looks more like George Wallace than Richard Nixon.  Attacking Representatives  Congresswomen  Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Pressley, and Omar was explicitly and outwardly racist.  The House of Representatives will condemn it, the media will attack it, many Republicans will renounce it.  But it may work as an effective 2020 strategy, further motivating Trump’s base to show up and vote.

Longer term the Trump’s Southern Strategy in the Midwest will fail.  Demographic trends  point to working class whites as a decreasing percentage of the electorate each year.  But right now this group is still the largest voting bloc in America.  For Trump to win in 2020 he needs the Midwest, but he needs his base to come out to vote in even greater percentages than in 2016.  Were he to win in 2020 it suggests that America is not yet “post-racial.” that large chucks of the American electorate still resonates to racial cues, and that Nixon’s 1968 Southern Strategy is not dead but has shifted to the Midwest.

Unconventional Minnesota Political Wisdom and the 2020 Elections

Three conventional wisdoms pervade the 2020 Minnesota political landscape.  They are: 1) Donald Trump cannot win the upcoming Minnesota’s presidential race: 2) Ilhan Oman is safe to win re-election in the Fifth Congressional District; and 3) the DFL will hold the State House of Representatives and pick up control of the State Senate.  While all three of these scenarios are entirely possible and maybe likely, there are reasonable scenarios where all three could be wrong and that the Republicans have a good 2020 year in Minnesota.

            Consider first the case for convention wisdom.

            Minnesota is the most reliable Democratic Party presidential state in the country, with the last time a Republican winning its electoral votes was in 1972 with Richard Nixon.  Yes, Donald Trump got to within 50,000 votes of beating Hillary Clinton in 2016, but that was a fluke.  Clinton was a horrible candidate, was beaten badly by Sanders in the caucuses, and did not come back to campaign during the general election while Trump did, especially during the closing days of the election.

            No Republican has won state-wide office in Minnesota since Tim Pawlenty did it in 2006.  In 2018, Senator Klobuchar won 60% of the statewide vote, with Governor Walz nearly winning  54%, Senator Smith 53%, and Keith Ellison (for Attorney General), the weakest performing statewide DFLer at 49%.

            The DFL flipped 18 seats to retake the Minnesota House.  Had the State Senate been up for re-election, convention wisdom is that they would have flipped it too given that there are several vulnerable Republican senators located in suburbs that the DFL won in 2018 House  elections.

            In the Fifth Congressional District, Ilhan Oman won election with 78% of the vote. The last time the Republicans won Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District was 1960.  Since taking office Omar has acquired a national base and has already raised at least $800,000 if not now nearly $1,000,000 for her reelection.

            As of June 019, Trump’s approval rating in Minnesota was barely 40%.

            Conventional wisdom looks terrific for the DFL going in to 2020 given these statistics.  Trump’s low approval should help the DFL easily hold the state house, pick up the state senate, assistant Tina Smith win reelection, and perhaps allow the Democrats to pick up the First and Eighth congressional seats lost in 2018.  Given all this, this should be little hope for optimism among Republicans and that Minnesota is a lost cause for them. 

Yet Minnesota Republican party chair Jennifer Carnahan  and Donald Trump are optimistic the Republicans can win  the state in 2020.  Perhaps it is not so bleak for the GOP next year and that the conventional wisdom that DFL holds unto may not be correct.

Here is the counterventional wisdom.

Trump’s core base remains highly motivated and if anything, even more united perhaps that before.  Trump has consolidated support in Minnesota outside the Twin Cities metro region, especially in the Iron Range, which used to be a strong DFL center.  The Iron Range has been moving Republican for years.  Trump has indicated he wants to move Minnesota in 2020—the only Midwest state he did not win in 2016—and he plans to campaign  here a lot.

Evidence suggests that Minnesota was moving Republican even before Trump and that the DFL base may be contracting.  In 2008 Obama won  42 of the 87 counties in the state, in 2012 he won 28, and in 2014 Dayton won 34.  In 2016 Clinton wins only 9 counties.  In 2018, Walz wins only 22 counties, Smith 20, Ellison 14.  From 2008 to 2016, the GOP presidential vote increased 47,500, the DFL vote decreased 205,000.  According to CNN exit polls, the partisan voter identification for  the DFL was 37%, for Republicans 35%.  This was the narrowest gap between the two parties in decades for a presidential election, and the lowest partisan identification for the DFL in decades according to presidential exit polls.

In the Fifth District, Omar has made several moves that potentially could alienate voters.  He comments about Jews and Israel, even if not accurately reported, have created a storm of controversy among many voters for her.  With a congressional district with a high percentage of Jewish voters, this is a cause of concern.  Omar is also dogged by campaign finance violations, new allegations about her immigration and marriage status, and perhaps concerns about false tax  returns.  She has become a major foil of Donald Trump who constantly tweets comments about her when he comes to Minnesota, and it is clear that part of his 2020 Minnesota presidential run will be to make it a referendum on Omar.

A critical realignment may place many of the large Twin Cities suburbs in the hands of the DFL for a long time.  This does potentially suggest DFL state senate pick ups there.  But as several 2019 special elections demonstrated, the DFL is vulnerable in rural and greater Minnesota.  The Senate currently is 35-32 GOP.  There may be about four vulnerable suburban GOP senators, but  there is an equal number of DFL ones in greater or rural Minnesota.  For the Democrats to capture the state senate  they may need to flip six or more seats in order to offset losses.

A counterventional GOP strategy begins with Trump campaigning heavily in the state, strengthening his support in rural and greater Minnesota areas.  Democrats did well in 2018 because Trump himself was not on the ballot and with him now actively campaigning in Minnesota it will energize the GOP even more.    Nationally, if Minnesota has become a swing state, it competes for Democrat dollars that could also go into Ohio or Florida, much richer and perhaps even more critical electoral vote states (Yet if Democrats nationally lose Minnesota or have to really defend it, they are in trouble in the 2020 presidential race).

As part of Trump’s 2020 Minnesota campaign, he and other Republicans ratchet up the attacks on Omar.  If her political and personal problems continue to mount, Omar because a potential problem for state Democrats who need to distance themselves from her.  Within her district, while very popular, it would not be impossible to beat her.  Scenario one:  Within a DFL primary someone challenges her.  In the last week reports have been that Minneapolis Councilwoman Andrea Jenkins’ name is being polled as a possible candidate.  In a district where identity is important, Jenkins could split DFL support, giving voters who dislike Omar’s political views and personal problems an alternative.  Scenario two:  Someone like Jenkins opts not to challenge in the DFL primary but go to a general election instead.  Possibly splitting the DFL vote and picking up the GOP in the district elects her.  Scenario three:  In a three way race featuring  Omar, Jenkins, and a centrist pro-Israel Republican, the latter sneaks in to win the Fifth.

Whether the counterventional wisdom or even the strategy is viable is a matter of much debate.  However, it does suggest that the DFL  may not have it easy in 2020 and that there are avenues for the GOP to do well in 2020.

Trump v. Omar: The Psychology of Fear, Prejudice, and Ignorance in American Politics

The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I was taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side

–With God on Our Side
Bob Dylan

Fear, prejudice, and ignorance make people do stupid things.  They are the trinity combustant for hate and intolerance, used as a match to fame the flames of discrimination to label some as disloyal Americans who cannot be trusted and deserve to be denied respect and rights.  One lesson of US history is that  appeals to Un-Americanism have been leveraged both by those on the left and right who claim God is on their side or that their cause is correct, thereby invoking an “end that justify the means” logic to dissenters that is dangerous.
America is a beautiful nation, often filled with hope and promise of a better life for us and our children. Yet this country has an ugly side to it that we often forget and ignore.  We often cloak fear, prejudice, and ignorance in the flag and persecute minorities or those with whom we disagree as the cause of our insecurities.  If only others thought like me, dressed like me, shared my values, some promise, then we could root out witches, communists, disloyal Americans, homosexuals,  immigrants, and terrorists and make the country safe for the rest of us real loyal Americans.
It was fear, prejudice, and ignorance in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, that led to the death of 24 accused of being witches.  Or over 125,000 Japanese-Americans forcefully interned during WW II.  Or to the McCarthyism and the blacklists of the 1950s. Or the beatings of civil rights protestors at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 or Stonewall Inn in 1969.  Or to all Muslims, Middle Easterners, and even Somalians seen as terrorists post 9/11.  Or to transgender individuals seeking to use the bathrooms of their choice as perverts.
There is something hardwired in American culture that celebrates fear, prejudice, and ignorance into virtues.  Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness, dissecting the Puritan mind, captures the fear of the earliest white settlers to North America.  It was persecution that drove them from Europe, a desire to for a new “city on the hill” as John Winthrop would call for;  founded on Christian values, that led them to the new world.  But they confronted one with strange new people and customs, a world seen lurking with danger, and a fear that the devil and evil was waiting to corrupt their enterprise. 
It was a Manichean bipolar world of good and evil, God or the devil, grace or sin, and either you are part of the saved or part of the damned, with no middle ground.  Difference, the inexplicable, the other as existential philosopher John Paul Sartre once said, were to be feared.  For the Puritans, as told brilliantly by Arthur Miller in The Crucible, the other were witches.  Richard Hofstadter, both in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, uncovered the distrust for facts, learning, and intellectualism and intellectuals.  From these Puritan origins, the us or them, loyal or disloyal, true American or Un-American ethos emerged.
But America’s story is one where each generation saw a different other as a threat, where  the new was scary, where relying on nativism, populism, and the fear of the masses justified intolerance.  The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 aimed to silence critics of President Adams and the Federalist party, Anti-Irishism and Anti-Germanism fueled discrimination in the nineteenth century along with fear of the Chinese.  The No-Nothing Party of the 1840s, later renamed the American Party, feared Roman Catholics and immigrants.  Anti-syndicalism acts targeted labor unions and dissenters to WW I.  Sauerkraut during WW I and french fries after 9/11 became liberty cabbage and freedom fries in response to anti-German and French attitudes.  John Kennedy was feared disloyal as a Catholic, Barack Obama seen as Un-American because of his name and lies that he was Kenyan and, even worse, a Muslim.
The Scope Trial of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee put  science on trial as some feared Darwin would defeat God.  The Smith Act of 1940 along with the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joseph McCarthy found communists to be threats, along with the interned Japanese-Americans during WW II.  The list unfortunately marches on–fear, prejudice, and ignorance have  left no group, cause, or idea unscathed.
Common sense wisdom is truth, what me and my friends know at the local bar or in my garage is the logic of truth.  We all live in the smug bubbles of our beliefs, convinced we, as Bob Dylan once mocked, “have God on our side” and therefore we must be correct.  Anything we do, even attacking others, is permitted as revealing the truth and virtue of our cause.
The point is that at critical points in American history fear, prejudice, and ignorance have  justified hate and intolerance.  And the same is happening now.  Donald Trump draws upon fear, prejudice, and ignorance on a daily basis to justify his policy agenda, with Fox News and Twitter serving as his microphone and his supporters cheering him on. White prejudice, privilege, intolerance, should not define orthodoxy. In fact, as Justice Robert Jackson powerfully declared in West Virginia v. Barnette,  319 U.S. 624 (1943) (a case about declaring Jehovah Witnesses as Un-American because they would not cite the Pledge of Allegiance): “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein”.   The Jehovah Witnesses of 1943, the civil  rights protestor of 1950s, or the gay and lesbian at Stonewall in 1969 are the Colin Kaepernicks of today.
But as wrong as Trump is, so is Ilhan Omar.  Some will contend there is a false equivalency here, but it is hard to find how either Trump, Omar, or their supporters can claim the high moral ground here.  There are lots of good reasons to question US- Israel foreign policy and treatment of Palestinians, but labeling Jews  as Un-American is not the way to start and win a debate as some are now arguing.  “The end justifies the means, the words have gotten us to raise the right questions, so some say.”  But opening the door to fear, prejudice, and ignorance does no one any good.
Can one ever think of a time when appealing to them made us a better world, society, or individuals? Post 9/11, questioning the loyalty of Muslim or Somalian-Americans as Un-American was wrong.  Omar should know better that the weapons of hate directed at her and her family were wrong and do not justify her use of similar tactics.   Words matter, as  many say, and sticks and stones along with names may not just break our bones but hurt in other ways.  If one is going to take offense at words, then trying to understand how they effect others is  a first step in political debates. Turning the oppressed into the oppressor by stealing the weapons from former to be used by the later does not make it right.
The weapons and language of the oppressor are no more justified in the hand of the oppressed or the weak, and the rhetoric of hate from the right does not make it virtuous and correct when coming from the left.  It is just as wrong to label Omar as Un-American and scorn her with hate  as it is for her to do the same to others.  Fear, prejudice, and ignorance should have no place in American politics.  But the sad reality is that it has, and even worse, that it has been effective and defended but those from a variety of political perspectives who see in themselves justified in using the three to suit their goals.