Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, speaks during the second of two Democratic presidential primary debates hosted by CNN Wednesday, July 31, 2019, in the Fox Theatre in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

As my RedState colleague Brad Slager wrote earlier, the DNC abruptly changed the qualifying standards for the next debate to make it so that the only two participants were Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Joe Biden, effectively kicking Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) out of a debate she had up until the end of the week qualified for.

Gabbard lashed out at the Democratic establishment in a statement, slyly noting without actually coming outright and saying it that the DNC has been conveniently switching the rules in ways that benefit the rich, old white men but not the women:

.@JoeBiden @BernieSanders I’m sure you would agree that our Democratic nominee should be a person who will stand up for what is right. So I ask that you have the courage to do that now in the face of the DNC's effort to keep me from participating in the debates. #LetTulsiDebate — Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) March 7, 2020

To keep me off the stage, the DNC again arbitrarily changed the debate qualifications. Previously they changed the qualifications in the OPPOSITE direction so Bloomberg could debate. I ask that you stand w/ me against the DNC’s transparent effort to exclude me from the debates. — Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) March 7, 2020

To be sure, Gabbard is sticking around more as a statement/anti-establishment candidate than a viable contender. But nevertheless, she is still a candidate and one who qualified under the original rules after she won two delegates on Super Tuesday.

But imagine for five seconds if this was the Republican party deliberately excluding a woman (especially a woman of color) from the debate. We’d have endless discussions about it on the talking head shows, and every Republican who appeared on these programs would be put on the hot seat about where they stood on the decision to silence her voice by kicking her off the debate stage.

And make no mistake about it: “Silencing a woman” is exactly how it would be portrayed by the press and Democrats.

But because the media and Democrats are practically one in the same – including when it comes to wanting to get the nominee issue resolved as quickly as possible so they can move on to focusing their time, energy, and money on Trump, Gabbard’s exclusion will not be portrayed as an example of the so-called “war on women.”

In other words, what Democrats and the media have done all along, to the surprise of absolutely no one who has paid attention to how they operate, is to make identity politics central to their campaigns only when they think it hurts Republicans. But when it comes to Democrats having to play by their own rules, those rules get thrown out the window and other factors become more central to their overall strategy.

In addition to Gabbard accidentally exposing the sham nature of the Democrats’ obsession with identity politics, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) also inadvertently revealed their double standards with her endorsement of old, rich, privileged white guy Sen. Bernie Sanders. AOC has indisputably been one of the most prominent players of the identity politics/woman/sexism card since she was elected, so much so that even a CBS journalist went off script and asked her last October “As a woman of color, why back an old white guy? And is this the future of the party?”

Her answer? Because it was time for the country to “come together across race, across gender, across generation.” Apparently endorsing an old, privileged white guy and rape fantasist over minority female candidates had magically become acceptable because he also happens to be a socialist. Suddenly in AOC’s world it was acceptable for identity politics to take a back seat to other factors, like where a candidate stands on the issues (which is how it really should be all the time, and not just when she declares it).

I categorically reject identity politics in part because they are a deliberate attempt at emotionally manipulating so-called minority voters by pitting them one against the other, and by portraying them as “victims” of the system who “need rescuing” by big government Democrats. But such rules are set by Democrats and the MSM, and they shouldn’t be allowed to get by with breaking/ignoring them simply because they’ve become inconvenient to the electoral strategy of the Democratic party.