ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The left has certainly been crying their share of tears over the border kids who’ve been pulled from their illegally crossing parents’ sides — in fact, almost as many tears as the little kids themselves.

Who knows. Maybe they really are that sad.

Maybe when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddowgulped and weeped her way through a breaking report of “tender-age shelters” in Texas, she truly did become overwhelmed with grief at the imagined sad plight of little babies being ripped from parents’ arms and plopped into chicken cages to fend for themselves.

Maybe she truly did cut video feed to her colleague and make a beeline to the bathroom for some eye-dabbing Kleenex — and not, as cynicism would suggest, simply take advantage of the off-air moment to rifle through her desk papers for another story about a distressed border family.

And maybe those on the left who eschew the tears and go the angry bird route instead are really — well, truly angry about poor little kids on the border and not just faking it. For dramatic effect, you know.

Here’s a case in point: Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas, engaging in a verbal Fox News battle with former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski over the border issue, mentioned the reported plight of a child with Down syndrome who was separated from adults at the border. Lewandowski cut in with the universally known expression of a sad trombone-playing sack: “womp womp.”

Thoughtless? Probably. Politically incorrect? Oh, no doubt. And Petkanas seized the day, so to speak, repeating over and over and over again, repetitiously, redundantly, repetitively and most condescendingly, “how dare you” along with its sister phrase “how dare you sir.”

Wow, that’s some kind of outrage. Almost to the point of — disingenuous. Do Dems really care that much about these kids on the border?

There’s so much out there that seems sadder, and more outrageous, that they let slide on by, tear-free, “how dare you sir” silent.

Maddow, for instance, didn’t have an on-air crying meltdown when Kate Steinle, an American citizen, was shot and killed by an illegal with previous deportations and a felony record who was back in-country, taking advantage of San Francisco’s glorious sanctuary city sunshine.

She didn’t publicly cry, either, when Omar Mateen, serving an Islamic terror master, shot up a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and injuring 53.

Did Petkanas go off on a “how dare you sir” rant about Barack Obama-era open-door border policies and lead-from-behind nationally risky foreign affairs diplomacy? The same open borders and foreign affairs strategies that put U.S. citizens in harm’s way? Guess not.

Or, if you really want to speak to the plight of innocent lives — neither Maddow nor Petkanas nor anyone on the left cry rivers of tears for the 44.5 million babies the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate were aborted in this country between 1970 and 2014.

Ouch. At least these kids on the border being ripped from their parents’ sides, as the left would put it, had a chance at life. Not so the aborted millions.

But it’s interesting to note the times Democrats cry and wail, versus the times they don’t.

It’s so interesting, in fact, one might even start to get the idea that Dems don’t care so much about the people and things they cry or rant about, as they do about the chance to cry and rant for political expediency sake. Tears to the highest political bidder, it would seem.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter, @ckchumley.

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