Cracks in Democrats’ Venezuela response are emerging

In the days following President Donald Trump’s successful toppling of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, critics from the Democratic Party generally fell into two camps.

Many elected Democratic leaders and potential Presidential candidate offered full-throated condemnations, accusing Trump of brazenly breaking international law by seizing the leader of another country.

A second group, led by California Governor Gavin Newsom, was more cautious, taking pains to denounce Maduro, while warning that a long-term engagement in the country could be disastrous for the United States.

This crack is symptomatic of a deeper uncertainty that has vexed the Democratic Party for the decade since President Donald Trump came onto the political scene, as the party struggles to counter an “America First” movement that has scrambled the country’s traditional foreign policy divisions.

“We really have to reassert ourselves in terms of what our foreign policy credentials are as a party,” said Arizona Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego, a 2028 Presidential contender.

Since President Trump has largely made the American political right skeptical of intervention around the world, and has pointed out that US allies have not been pulling their fair share, Democrats have increasingly aligned with the George W Bush era hawks that they had previously opposed.

As their base has become increasingly left wing and anti semitic, the Democratic Party has also been divided on support for Israel. But the general Trump Derangement Syndrome that has been a feature of the political left for a decade has made it difficult for the Democratic Party to have coherent, principled policy positions.

By the very nature of Trump doing something, Democratic politicians often find themselves in trouble with their base if they do anything but condemn it. For that reason, despite Maduro being an oppressive dictator, and nearly all Venezuelans celebrating Maduro’s ouster, Democrats have largely focused on Trump’s supposed lawlessness in taking Maduro out, rather than the positive effect it has had on Venezuelans.

But many Democrats are recognizing that criticizing the President for taking Maduro out doesn’t have much of an audience outside of their left wing base, and are trying to pivot to a more neutral or positive tone about what happened.

When a base of a party is so out of step with the median American, the party naturally sees rifts, between those who want to be on the right side of the national perspective, and those who want/need to pander to their base.

If Democrats don’t figure out how to deal with this issue and these rifts, they could end up on the wrong side of opinions of most Americans on yet another issue.