New York Attorney General Letitia James marches in front of a rainbow banner at New York City’s 2019 Pride Parade. (photo by D.V.S. Ross / via Wikimedia Commons)
On June 3, John Kline posted at the online magazine American Greatness a commentary on the institutional terror that “woke” America and its officials are visiting on hapless Americans. An example of this savage bullying is the treatment that New York Attorney General Letitia James is meting out to political journalist Peter Brimelow and his VDARE foundation. Although Brimelow’s institution operates in West Virginia, it is registered in New York State. Evidence that Brimelow’s foundation is violating the law, according to Kline, is still being hunted up or invented. But since Brimelow’s enterprise is associated with the political right and since James was elected as an avenging angel against the left’s opponents, she is terrorizing (a less graphic word would be inappropriate here) what she has decided is a politically unacceptable foundation.
This political style is not at all unusual in our time and place. A politician like James is popular, indeed a rock star among her voters, precisely because she runs as the nemesis of the right. In a commentary for City Journal, Craig Trainor, a former civil rights attorney in New York City, described James as a “left-wing activist, prone to rhetorical bomb-throwing.” In 2018, she was elected to her position as attorney general in a landslide, promising to go after Trump and his family for manipulating their financial holdings in New York State. Despite her ranting, James has not prosecuted Trump. Though she gave her findings to the Biden Justice Department, even that politically slanted agency found little of value in what she provided.
Trainor views James as the perfect illustration of “the weaponization of government — to harass, punish, ruin, and, if possible, imprison one’s political enemies.” Yet her faithful electorate seem delighted with her behavior. Not incidentally, James polls exceedingly well among blacks, LGBT activists, and feminist voters. It would be fair to say that this is not the case primarily because of her Democratic label. Rather she does well as a Democrat because her party accommodates her politics of grievance. What Trainor calls her “personalized and prejudicial public sentiments” are not a hindrance to her work as a public official — in fact, they explain her appeal to her voters.
I would also defend James and the Democratic Party against a charge the conservative establishment makes against it quite ritualistically by now. Racial minorities and other Democratic constituencies are not the “victims” of their national party; nor have they allowed themselves to be corrupted by this supposedly demonic organization. To a large extent, it is actually the Democratic Party that is the deserving victim of those grievance groups with which it has made an unholy alliance. [More]