If Democrats truly have a leadership crisis, as this weekend's CNN poll suggests, they seem blissfully unaware of the reasons why. The reaction by practically everyone on the Left to the terror attack in Boulder offers a clear demonstration. 

Our friends at Twitchy have curated some of the weak and ambiguous statements following the arson attack on peaceful demonstrators, mainly Jewish, in support of the hostages. Despite numerous eyewitness reports and some clear video of the perp -- an Egyptian immigrant in the US illegally -- shouting "Free Palestine" and other such slogans, leadership on the Left has barely acknowledged the terrorism. Beege has an outstanding post from yesterday that includes the police chief claiming to be unclear on the motive hours later, but Mayor Aaron Brockett didn't do much better when he referred to the terror attack as a "tragic incident":

I am saddened and outraged at the appalling attack on members of Boulder's Jewish community that happened today during a peaceful gathering on Pearl Street. My heart goes out to the victims and their families and all who were impacted by this tragic incident.

— Aaron Brockett (@AaronBrockett12) June 2, 2025

Ahem. This was not a "tragic incident." The car accident in Gatlingurg, Tennessee that occurred yesterday and caused multiple serious injuries was a tragic incident. A driver apparently suffered a seizure and hit the gas unintentionally, crashing into several other cars and sending six people to the hospital. That is an "incident."

The terror attack in Boulder was not an "incident." It was a deliberate, vicious, and evil attack on people exercising their right to speak in public -- and to be Jews in public as well.  

That tweet got ratioed into oblivion, forcing Brockett to acknowledge the obvious a few minutes later:

As the mayor of the city of Boulder, I want to be clear that violence and hatred have no place here. Attacks like these seek to strike terror in people's hearts and divide us from one another, but Boulder will stand strong together.

— Aaron Brockett (@AaronBrockett12) June 2, 2025

Brockett joins the rest of his feckless progressives in denial, and worse. Democrats and the Left have spent the last twenty months making it very clear that violence and hatred do have places in progressive spaces and institutions, from the very moment that Hamas launched a grotesque wave of atrocities in Israel and restarted a war they have fought for the last twenty years. They have accommodated violent protests and intimidation campaigns against Jews on college campuses across the country and turned a blind eye in progressive-run cities as those threats expanded and escalated. 

Now they have escalated into a pattern of murder attempts and actual assassinations, thanks to the Left's weak or non-existent response to the escalating violence in the "Free Palestine" movement. Pennsylvania's governor and family had to evacuate the mansion after a pro-Hamas agitator fire-bombed it with the clear intent to murder Josh Shapiro. Another "Free Palestine" activist assassinated two Israeli embassy workers and shot others while declaring it a political act as he got arrested. 

When these same activists declare their intent to "globalize the intifada," this is exactly what they mean. It is a call to terrorism and violence, and the impunity of their acts now are a direct consequence of suffering no adverse consequences for their earlier escalations. 

Now that Jews are dying, suddenly progressives like Elizabeth Warren and Dan Goldman are claiming that "this is what happens when too many remain silent in response to anti-Semitic hate," and "we all have a responsibility to stop these anti-Semitic acts." Well, welcome to the party, pals, but the last I saw, Warren and her allies were too busy defending the schools that allowed the "globalize the intifada" movement to metastasize. In fact, Warren was defending the Hamas propagandist who spread the hatred at Columbia University as late as this March:

The Constitution is clear: the President can't arrest people he disagrees with.

By detaining Mahmoud Khalil — a legal permanent resident whose American wife is 8-months pregnant — Donald Trump seeks to undermine basic freedoms.

We must oppose this move toward…

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 17, 2025

Goldman was smart enough not to jump on the Mahmoud Khalil bandwagon, but he's been strangely silent about Columbia University's massive anti-Semitic intimidation campaign and movement for almost 14 months now. He's never even mentioned 'intifada' on X/Twitter. Nor has Goldman said a word about the rampant anti-Semitism at Harvard on X/Twitter. Despite saying in his one and only tweet about the assassination of two young Israeli embassy workers that "antsemitic hate leads to antisemitic violence" two weeks ago, he's only mentioned it once since then until yesterday's attack, and has said nothing at all in support of Donald Trump's efforts to bring real consequences to those agitators who engage in it.

These murders and attempted murders are a direct consequence of the progressive establishment coddling the agitators and attempting to pander to them ever since the October 7 terror attacks in Israel. This kind of appeasement only ever results in escalating violence, especially when agitators start openly calling for violence with slogans like "globalize the intifada" and succeed in conducting intimidation campaigns in progressive spaces. The progressive establishment granted these agitators-cum-terrorists the sense of impunity, and these are its results. 

We need a robust, immediate, and substantial set of consequences for these terrorists and those who seek to follow in their path. The only way to stamp this out is to start setting some examples in ways that will get the message across in uncertain terms that "globalizing the intifada" will cost them at least a substantial part of their lives, if not forfeiting them altogether. 

And now the question is: why would anyone trust that kind of policy to Democrats after the last 20 months? And why would anyone trust Warren and her ilk with any other policies that will force terrorists and agitators to pay heavy prices for their intifadas?