Keith Ellison, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, is a front-runner to become the next head of the Democratic National Committee. Nevertheless, Ellison has been dogged by his ties to both the nation of islam and the Muslim Brotherhood, the latter widely considered to be a terrorist group. Now he has a new headache stemming from the most unlikely of endorsements. David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan and former member of the American Nazi Party according to the Washington Times. Duke has been a perennial candidate for a variety of offices in Louisiana and is, to put the matter mildly, a controversial figure.
How is it that an African American politician with ties to terrorism and racist organizations like the Nation of Islam get an endorsement from a white racist and anti-Semite? A couple of explanations suggest themselves.
One theory is that Duke views Ellison as the enemy of his enemy, hence his friend, the enemy, in this case, being Jewish people. Duke has been a conspiracy theorist, suggesting that Jews have an inordinate influence in both Washington and Hollywood. Perhaps he finds in Ellison a kindred spirit.
The other theory is that Duke who is, albeit despicable in every way, media savvy is engaged in a little trolling. The very idea of a white racist endorsing a black man for anything is unusual enough for eyebrows to raise across the country and for Duke’s name to be mention in the media, which is happening now.
In any case, the Democratic Party has been searching for its identity in the wake of the disastrous Obama years where it was decimated down ballot and lost a presidential election that it thought was in the bag. So far the Democrats are eschewing the obvious lessons of election 2016 in that they should try to reconnect with the white working class and are instead doubling down on hard left ideology.
That Ellison is being seriously considered for leading the party of Jefferson, Kennedy, and Clinton is a symptom of a problem that is likely to keep the Democrats in the political wilderness for a very long time.
