Almost nobody of any standing in the Democratic Party will come out and say that dangerous radicals have seized the initiative from the merely corrupt and tired elders that have run the party since the departure from office of President Obama. Those radicals demand impossible, ruinous policies, yet they are the only source of energy for Dems.  Now that President Trump has shown the world that the “new normal” of American decline is not inevitable, but rather the goal of the party establishment anxious to keep a large enough class of dependents voting for them, it is all but impossible to whip up enthusiasm. “More decline!” pales in appeal compared to radical slogans like “Abolish ICE!”

So, it is left to Democrats with a degree of immunity to leftist shaming to try to persuade the leftists to behave themselves. One such person is Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, whose African-American racial privilege helps deflect savage retaliation.

Jeh Johnson (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)

In the Washington Post, he writes a rather dispirited column informing the rads that “Abolishing ICE is not a serious proposal.”

Of course, that’s true, and he warns right at the start that it will only help President Trump if they persist:

“Abolish ICE” makes for a good rallying cry on the left. Demanding the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency also provides President Trump with a useful weapon for bludgeoning Democrats politically. He has said as much, and a good portion of the American public will listen to him.

Good luck with that, Jeh! You have to realize that pragmatism is not exactly a winning strategy in the Democratic Party, and wasn’t during your tenure in office, either. Virtue-signaling was the hallmark of the Obama administration, starting with the Apology Tour to Muslim nations and the backing of the “Arab Spring” that put the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt.