The Democrats’ Real Red Line

By Abe Greenwald

The most telling reaction to yesterday’s rape allegation against Graham Platner came from
the Democratic frontrunner in Michigan’s U.S. Senate race, Abdul El-Sayed, who wrote on X: “Credible allegations of sexual assault cannot be ignored. Voters in Maine deserve a choice for US Senate that doesn’t force them to make a moral compromise between sexual violence or corporate servitude.”

It’s interesting that El-Sayed claims that violence against women is a red line. It was only in February that he told his campaign not to comment on the death of Ali Khamenei in deference to Dearborn residents who were mourning the late supreme leader. Khamenei presided over a regime that makes legal concessions for men who murder women in “honor killings.” What’s more, the regime’s morality police regularly assault women for violating religious law. You’d think a champion of women would be full-throated in celebrating his demise. 

El-Sayed isn’t the only hypocrite on this score. He’s just the most glaring example. To the extent that Democrats have welcomed and endorsed Iran- and Hamas-friendly candidates, almost the entire party’s leadership has given a kind of pass to anti-female violence and rape. 

New York congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier joined fellow Hamas supporters in Times Square on October 8, 2023, to celebrate the terrorists’ attack on Israel one day earlier. Hamas’s massacre involved widespread rape and the horrific sexual torture of women. One might claim that the full investigation of Hamas’s sexual abuse on that day was still pending. But that still leaves the problem of Hamas’s well-documented decades of brutality against women in Gaza.

We’ve focused a lot on how Democrats have normalized the pro-Hamas left’s anti-Semitism. But it’s hardly beside the point that the anti-Jewish left’s affection for the Iranian regime and its terror proxies is also a concession to savage abusers of women. Every protester wearing Hamas gear or waving a Hamas flag is implicitly going to bat for the jihadist subjugation of females. Compared to the left’s terrorist heroes, Platner is a piker in the abuse department. Which means the Democrats who defend DSA radicals should be doubly ashamed. 

Of course, they’re not. Ro Khanna, who has backed the Hamas fan club to the hilt, withdrew his endorsement of Platner yesterday and posted on X: “I’ve been very clear that sexual assault or violence against women is a red line.” Same goes for Elizabeth Warren, who said: “There can be no tolerance for sexual assault.” The pattern has been nearly universal among Democratic leaders. 

Over the past 24 hours, conservatives have adopted a line on Democrats that goes like this: Platner’s Nazi tattoo was okay, his interest in Communism was just fine, and his vicious disparagement of American soldiers was no big deal—but an allegation of rape was one step too far. 

That’s still too generous a reading of the Democrats’ moral stance. Violence against women isn’t their red line. The prospect of losing an election is. 

Platner had already faced credible accusations of violence against women a month ago, and Democrats went into overdrive to defend him. But since then, the accumulation of negative stories on Platner began to take a toll, and his campaign started struggling to raise funds. Yesterday, Democrats decided to stop covering for the creep because they lost confidence in their ability to get him over the finish line. Meanwhile, their support for all the other candidates who cheer on terrorist misogyny endures. 

Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.