On Ilhan Omar

I would argue that two things are simultaneously true:

1) Trump and the Republican attacks on her are Islamophobic and racist, designed to fire up their evangelical voters and pit one American against another.  It serves to buttress their long running argument that only Republicans are true Americans, because they are white people who live in the countryside.  These comments are going to get someone killed.

2) Representative Omar is not very good at message discipline beyond her base.  When you compare her to another high profile House freshwoman - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - Omar simply hasn't found the right way to leverage her high profile to make a consistent and valuable attack on the GOP.  AOC has mastered the Twitter age message war; Omar has not.

Democratic leadership was called out by Leftist Twitter for not forcible defending Omar by name.  Most of that was bullshit.  But there is no doubt that if you are trying to keep your House majority, create a Senate majority and win the Presidency, you don't want to be dragged off message.  The Democrats' message seems to be about corruption, democracy and inequality, with a little climate and guns thrown in.  They don't want to be arguing about Ilhan Omar in 2020, because she steps on their message in ways AOC does not.