The Democratic Party often has obvious cognitive dissonance. This has reached an absolute extreme, however, in light of several developments both in America and abroad. By trying — and failing — to ignore the unintended consequences of their favored policies, leftists have begun to tear away at the seams that once tied them together against their common political enemies.

The leftist paradigm consists of several major ideological tenets: feminism, intellectualism to — many times — a hyper-elitist degree, minority politics, and big-government socialism. At the surface, these principles are always in line, complementing each other as the leftist cause metastasizes. But at the granular level, these basic tenets are now working actively against each other, complicating matters for usually unified leftists.

How? There are two ticking time bombs for the American and international leftist movement.

The first has implications for the “smart” portion of the leftist movement. Often dubbing conservatives condescending, ridiculous labels that connote ignorance and stupidity, this leftist bloc prides itself on its sanctimonious, elitist views. Hillary Clinton, and especially Bernie Sanders, regularly pursue these lines of attack against conservatives both on the debate stage and the campaign trail.

One would thus imagine that once leftist policies come under scrutiny, Democrats would receive answers from their ideological leaders based in sound logic, reason and fact. Rambling, nonsensical answers are only for those Bible-thumping conservatives, after all. Something like Bernie Sanders’ single-payer healthcare “Medicare for all,” which is supported by 81 percent of Democrats according to Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, is just common sense. 

So when Andrea Mitchell, during the recent Democratic primary debate in South Carolina, asked Sanders about the financial solvency of his single-payer healthcare plan — something that has been an issue for months — it was anticipated that Sanders would cerebrally defend his agenda.

“But let me ask you about Vermont,” Mitchell said. “...Vermont walked away from …  Medicare for all, single-payer, because they concluded it would require major tax increase.” 

Fair point. What was Sanders’ response? 

He responded that the reason why Vermont’s plan couldn’t be funded was that “we have a campaign finance system that is corrupt, we have super PACs, we have the pharmaceutical industry pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaign contributions and lobbying, and the private insurance companies as well.”

This is where leftists encounter their first problem: Their intellectualism is in direct contradiction to a central piece of their economic ideology.

Sanders’ answer on this issue is absurd. How can anyone rationalize blaming insurance companies and super PACs for socialized health care being too expensive? 

Clearly a desperate man who can’t defend his ideology, Sanders has such problems with basic math and economics (Vermont cannot mathematically fund single-payer without going bankrupt or severely increasing taxes) that he blames them all on organizations with literally no involvement whatsoever. Unfortunately, there is only silence from liberals who would salivate had a Republican said something similar. 

This isn’t the first time Sanders — who should be held to his high liberal intellectual standards — has jumped to scapegoating or other absurdities when the questions get tough. Although it is obvious that politicians of all stripes do this, the lack of any sound arguments by the ideological leader of the present-day Democratic Party in defense of such a key part of leftism should trouble leftist leaders who want to keep the movement together. Sacrificing intellectualism for laughable theories about corporations, rich people and other bogeymen threatens to start a dangerous precedent that could lead to honest liberals going the way of former Connecticut Senator and 2000 Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman and disassociating themselves from the movement and the party that houses it.

However, this predicament for Democrats is supplanted by an even more pressing and serious internal threat that could actually rip the party apart much sooner than the clash between intellectualism and socialism.

The real dividing issue within the Democratic Party today boils down to minority politics and feminism, which now stand at two opposite ends of the leftist spectrum. Democrats want to argue that they’re pro-women while the GOP is misogynistic and sexist, but they also want to be perpetually politically correct. Turns out, you can’t always have your cake and eat it too — prioritizing one end means neglecting the other.

In particular, the Middle Eastern refugee crisis is now the critical issue that has begun to splinter the leftist coalition.

Middle Eastern refugees present a potential yet imminent national security threat because of the current impossibilities of vetting them, as explained by the Director of the F.B.I., James Comey, according to an Oct. 21, 2015 Daily Caller article. However, national security has never been a top priority for leftism, or Democrats would not have blocked measures like the SAFE Act that attempt to address the underlying problems with refugee acceptance. Feminism and minority politics, however, are.

This brings us to Cologne, Germany, where hundreds of men — the majority of whom victims identified as Middle Eastern — engaged in mass sexual assault against defenseless women during New Year’s Eve celebrations. Indeed, Der Spiegel reported that “groups of male migrants were repeatedly named as perpetrators” by female victims.

According to a Jan. 8 Wall Street Journal article, “at least 22 migrants seeking asylum were among the suspects in alleged New Year’s Eve assaults in Cologne,” while many more will never be brought to justice because of gross incompetence by German law enforcement as well as the sheer number of perpetrators. Horrifically, in Cologne alone, there have now been 821 complaints and police have only 30 suspects, according to a Jan. 24 Daily Express article. Even more sickening, the same article reported that similar incidents occurred in the German cities of Stuttgart and Hamburg as well as in Helsinki.

It goes without saying that under normal circumstances, when there is a large, conspicuous and pervasive problem, it is labeled as such. However, because it is heresy to talk about who actually committed these atrocious acts and how to actually begin solving the problem, the conversation instead moves to tarnishing the few, but growing number of liberals who dare have a different opinion. This is where minority politics and feminism finally clash.

That’s why in the present-day battle for the face of liberalism, it’s the Bill Mahers, Richard Dawkinses and Sam Harrises of the world against the politically correct Barack Obamas and Hillary Clintons. While Maher, Dawkins and others desire a debate about Islam and the ways in which its extremists have become a sizable part of the problem within the religion, Obama, Clinton and others constantly give the same, tired spiel — not all Muslims are to blame. While that is certainly true, the repetition of that same straw man argument silences the important and necessary discussion on a complicated issue before it even has the chance to begin.

This has frustrated many liberals — especially those like Maher, Dawkins and Harris — who disagree with the politically correct leftists who dominate the conversation on the subject. As a result, it has led to a noticeable fissure within the leftist movement — a movement that often attempts to tarnish the reputations of the Mahers of the world by labeling them as racist or bigoted.  

For all the media hype about a GOP civil war, news outlets and political commentators have ignored the ideological battle for the soul of the Democratic Party — a battle that grows more prominent due to the glaring inconsistencies and hypocrisies that emerge each time a new controversy emerges. Frankly, it’s not a matter of if the leftist movement will eventually separate but a matter of when. And when that happens, old coalitions will break, new alliances will form and our political system may change forever.