Michelle Obama took American women to task at the recent United States of Women Summit in Los Angeles. Was it for failing to think for themselves? Was it for not standing up for their rights? No, it was for declining to mindlessly and unanimously line up as a gender to support and elect Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“In light of this last election, I’m concerned about us as women and how we think,” the former first lady told the friendly, lefty crowd. “What is going on in our heads where we let that happen, you know?”

Obama expressed amazement that a plurality of all American women (and 52% of white women) voted for Donald Trump, even though Clinton was supposedly the Most Qualified Candidate™ in the history of the republic — and a woman to boot. According to the twisted, identity-based Democrat worldview, that alone should have been enough for every woman in the country to pull the lever for Hillary.

The reasons for Clinton’s loss have been explained in rich detail, so there is no reason to go over all that again here. What is curious, though, is that a year and a half removed from her well-deserved defeat at the polls, people are still pushing the narrative that women voters are to blame for her loss.

Voters align themselves with political parties based on the belief that those parties will address their concerns and govern according to their wishes. If that party delivers, then its candidates are reelected. If those politicians don’t deliver, then they don’t deserve reelection. They must recalculate their connection to voters, change their ways, and try again.

Those are truisms — unless that political party is the Democrat Party, in which case certain voters (women, blacks, minorities, homosexuals, etc.) are expected to support their elected representatives whether they deliver or not, simply because the voters themselves have certain anatomical features or skin color.

Democrats have a mindset not unlike the Mafia. Once you’re in, you’re in for life. They don’t take kindly to individual thought. They don’t appreciate criticism from within their ranks. And they certainly don’t like it when their base turns against them.

Michelle Obama’s words echo Clinton’s own 18-month-long tantrum that has laid blame for her loss with just about everyone but herself and the Easter Bunny.

For years, the press and much of the public have viewed both Obama and Clinton as strong women. They were leaders and examples of what women can achieve. They spoke of the sisterhood and how women can and should support other women. The unspoken part was that women should only support Democrat women. And while female independence was espoused to be the end goal, that independence was only supposed to go as far as the Democrat Party itself. Anything beyond that meant being a traitor, not an independent woman.

The truth is Obama and Clinton are doing a disservice to the very cause they claim to support. You can’t be for female empowerment and then chastise women when they empower themselves to make a choice that you don’t like.

Obama hopes her rhetoric will shame women back into towing the party line. Short of that, she is probably counting on like-minded women to ostracize those who dare support Donald Trump, admittedly a man whose sexual transgressions are manifold.

The attacks from within against Kanye West are another perfect example of Democrats’ plantation mindset. After the rapper tweeted support for Trump, he came under intense fire from all leftist quarters. When Chance the Rapper came to Kanye’s defense, saying, “Black people don’t have to be democrats,” he was quickly shamed into recanting.

West is all about bravado and stirring controversy. It’s who he is (and maybe why he admires Trump), and it’s how he sells albums. But that doesn’t invalidate his legitimate questioning of the Democrat Party, which has kept black Americans in its grip for decades while doing nothing to improve their lot in society.

West has been rewarded for his independent thought with insults from other prominent blacks, accusations of drug abuse and questions about his mental health. For the record, West does not exhibit any behavior that is different from that of the last several years. The only difference now is the words coming out of his mouth. And for that, the Left has decided he must be punished.

It would be nice to think that the decades-long stranglehold Democrats have over their identity-based constituents may be starting to loosen. But that might be wishful thinking. After all, when television series like “The Handmaid’s Tale” receive industry awards and critical accolades, it’s easy to see that the Left’s indoctrination of the public continues apace.

“The Handmaid’s Tale,” which was just renewed for a third season, has become a rallying cry in the Left’s culture war. The show, based on Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, depicts an America that has become a Christian theocracy in which women hold no rights and are kept around for the sole purpose of having and raising children. Kind of like in Islamic fundamentalist countries in the real world.

Atwood spilled her anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, anti-American views into a book in 1985, and she has had praise heaped upon her ever since. She claimed to be railing against the Reagan Revolution at the time, and the Left now sees the story as relevant again with Donald Trump. Or so the leftist narrative goes.

The bitter irony is that Atwood’s dreary, despotic world is more likely to become reality if the power of the Left remains unchecked. When people like Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton demand total allegiance from their gender, their acts of character assassination and their refusal to tolerate differing opinions are exactly what constitute tyranny.