Of course. Voting the other way would have been “Islamophobic."

As old Joe Biden would say, Look, Fat, look, here’s the deal: I’ve been warning for years that it would sooner or later become “Islamophobic” to offer even the mildest opposition to jihad violence, and that the “Islamophobia” mongers would become increasingly open about their support for jihad terrorists, and here we are. On Thursday, 174 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against an amendment to the Rights for Transportation Security Officers Act that would prevent the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) from hiring convicted terrorists.

Yes, you read that right: if these House Democrats had gotten their way, on your next flight, you could have gotten a pat-down from a TSA agent who previously conspired to down the airplane you were planning to fly on. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) explained that the amendment “was pulled back by leadership because the socialist wing of the party did not want to have that amendment go forward on this bill. When it was offered, overwhelmingly the majority of the House would like to see the TSA not hire terrorists or those who have been convicted of sexual misconduct with minors and others. But the socialist wing of the party, that controls now the Democratic Party, said that that could not be offered.”

Allahu akbar, as these prospective TSA employees might have said, the whole thing exploded in their faces: enough Republicans and renegade Democrats votes for the amendment to pass it. But among the luminaries who thought it so important to avoid even the appearance of “Islamophobia” that they opposed an amendment barring terrorists from pawing through your belongings as you made your way through security were the infamous “Squad,” Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D, Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.), along with the supposedly sane and responsible House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.).

The TSA has always been more security theatre than actual security, but that’s beside the point here: AOC, Omar, and Tlaib and the 171 other House Democrats who opposed this measure didn’t vote against it because it would be ineffective, but clearly because it would offend a key portion of their constituency, which for most, if not all, Democrats today consists of people who believe that terrorists are victims and American imperialism is the real problem, and that Donald Trump is “racist” for wanting to protect Americans from jihad terror attacks by foreign nationals coming from the countries included in his Travel Ban and violent crimes by illegal aliens coming into the country from Mexico.

The Democrats’ vote was not just about about pandering to their increasingly unhinged base. You have to give these feted and cosseted anti-Americans credit for one thing: they’re consistent. Ever since shortly after 9/11, and in the cases of some even before that, Democrat Party leaders have denounced even the weakest, most token anti-terror measures as “Islamophobic.” The American people have been relentlessly conditioned to believe that it is “racist” to offer even the smallest murmur against jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women and others.

The establishment media, of course, has gone along with this, never asking the likes of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) or the sinister and discredited Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) what analysis of the motivating ideology behind jihad violence would not be “Islamophobic,” and treating these groups as if they were dispassionate, objective, carefully judicious authorities when they smeared, demonized, and marginalized all those who spoke with any reasonable degree of accuracy about the jihad threat.

The outcome of years of this propaganda pounded into the American people without any respite or pause, while establishment Republicans jumped on the bandwagon and echoed the same rhetoric, was inevitable: now even an agency that was established in order to protect Americans from jihad terrorists must, in the view of a majority of House Democrats, hire the very people it was created to stop in order to avoid falling into the “racism” that the miseducated hordes who vote Democrat see behind almost everything. It has been clear where all this has been tending for years. Now it is even clearer.

Will these outrageously anti-American Democrats be voted out of office in November? No, that would require a thoughtful Democratic voter base and a responsible establishment media. Unfortunately, those ships have long since sailed.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 19 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.