I think Eli Lake and Matt Zeitlin, without a trace of malice, are misunderstanding a passage from David Frum’s new book. Here is the passage in question:

Democrats, by contrast, have historically tended to attract those who felt themselves in some way marginal to the American experience: slaveholders, indebted farmers, immigrants, intellectuals, Catholics, Jews, blacks, feminists, gays — people who identify with the “pluribus” in the nation’s motto, “e pluribus unum.” As the nation weakens, Democrats grow stronger.

Lake takes that to be a “withering” take on the Democrats. But the first sentence is more naturally read as a descriptive than an evaluative statement: Why would anyone think that Frum considers it bad for a party to be attractive to Jews? And the next two sentences undermine the “withering” interpretation further.

Each party has performed important services in its historical role. Democrats have historically shown greater skepticism about the nation’s image of itself as always right, always innocent, always pure. This skepticism is often justified and useful even when mistaken.

Frum goes on in this vein. There are a few tough things said about the Democratic party in the book. (See p. 22!) Democrats might well dispute Frum’s characterization of their historical role, but that characterization seems to me to be basically correct and not at all invidious.