

Who could have possibly foreseen this?

Over the past week, we’ve had an all out political food fight involving Ilhan Omar (among others) and Donald Trump. That fight expanded outside of just Trump’s comments when Omar, just days after accusing the President of racism, introduced a House resolution in support of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction movement, which seeks the destruction of Israel. She also managed to compare Israel to Nazi Germany because that’s just the kind of person she is.

To this point, not a single intrepid reporter has asked Omar about her sponsoring of such a resolution. Nancy Pelosi, who just a month ago called BDS anti-Semitic from the stage of AIPAC, has always escaped any questioning over how that squares with Omar’s actions. It must be nice to be a Democrat.

Despite the media’s best efforts though, America is learning who Ilhan Omar is and they aren’t fans.

I recently wrote on an internal Democrat party poll showing that Omar had just a 9% (not a typo) approval rating among non-college educated whites in swing states. That’s important because it’s that group that decides which direction states like Wisconsin and Michigan will go in 2020. In the grand scheme of things though, it was easy for partisans to dismiss. Of course those working class white people don’t like Omar. They are just racists after all, right?

Well, we’ve finally got some more in depth numbers and they are equally as brutal for Ilhan Omar, and by extension the Democratic party.

The first thing to note is that over 50% of people have an opinion on her. That may not seem like a lot, but for a single Congressional member, that shows she has pretty massive exposure. It’s illogical to assume that her numbers would improve any with greater name recognition. You’d expect the same trend to continue if the original sample is properly done.

Being 17 points underwater in favorability is simply awful. That’s levels that would make Hillary Clinton laugh. She’s seen as more unfavorable than favorable by every single demographic group except black Americans. But perhaps the most relevant number is her favorability with independents. Those encompass the suburban voters the Republican party lost in 2018 and need to win back. She’s at a full 30 points underwater with them.

What this shows is that Trump’s strategy of making Omar and company the face of the party is actually very smart politically. If Pelosi were still in control, she’d put a damper on it, but the lunatics are running the asylum at this point.

By the way, I’d love to meet the 5% of Republicans who have a favorable view of Ilhan Omar. That’d be a pretty fascinating conversation.


