The Democrats Are the Only True Defenders of the Constitution

Apart from clinging to an outdated mindset, there is a
deeper, less tractable impediment to liberals’ donning the mantle of the
Constitution—ideological hostility. In many quarters of the left, the
Constitution and Framers—in particular, the original, “Founding Fathers” cohort
of Framers—are held in anything but reverential regard. As Nikole Hannah-Jones
put it five years ago in her introduction to The New York Times’ 1619
Project, “This nation’s white founders set up a decidedly undemocratic
Constitution that excluded women, Native Americans and black people, and did
not provide the vote or equality for most Americans.” 

Such skepticism has buttressed and been reinforced by the
spread of identitarian ideology that rejects the
Constitution’s liberal, Enlightenment-based individual-centered precepts
of liberty, equal opportunity, fairness, and procedural due process safeguards. As described
by the leading comprehensive account—Yascha Mounk’s 2023 The Identity Trap,
this credo, driven by “a deep pessimism about overcoming racism or other
forms of bigotry, [prefers] public policies that explicitly distinguish between
citizens on the basis of the group to which they belong” and dictates
that “both private actors and public institutions must make the way they treat
people depend on the groups to which they belong.” (Emphasis mine.)

Moreover, historian James Davison Hunter sees
this tribalist perspective as both a prime cause and manifestation of the fierce
“polarization” currently engulfing American politics. Hunter attributes this threat primarily to a
newly radicalized right, but—significantly—by leftist identity politics-peddlers
as well. However, liberal advocates and political leaders, virtually without
exception, have not acknowledged, let alone criticized, such polarization-incubating
threats to the Constitution coming from the left. Rather, most liberal advocates
and politicians have acquiesced to or otherwise suppressed any misgivings about
the implications of these left illiberal currents—in particular, their
potential to undermine constitutional democracy in the long run, or quite
plausibly, the not-so-long run.