Texas Anti-BDS Law Struck Down

This is an extremely methodical and well-reasoned opinion that I suspect will become the touchstone for future courts examining this issue. And not to pat myself on the back too hard, but it pretty much represents a line-by-line validation of my essay laying out the faults in anti-BDS laws and how they might be avoided.

1) The court makes much of the fact that the law applies to sole proprietorships who have no independent existence from their "owner", meaning that the anti-boycott provisions seemingly apply to their personal, individual choices. I suggested that anti-BDS laws should probably exempt sole proprietorships for this reason (Texas is already gearing up to amend the law along these lines, which is likely to moot the proceedings since I don't think any of the plaintiffs are large enough or do enough business with the state to qualify under the new law); 

2) The court notes that the law does not clearly limit itself to forbidding boycott activity that occurs in the course of fulfilling the contractor's work with the state; I suggested that implementing such a limitation would more clearly link the law to the state's interest in managing its contractors' work performance. 

3) While Texas tried to defend its law as a protection against national origin discrimination, the court observed that the law as written is both massively under- and over-inclusive along that score. I suggested that, if a state wants to write a national origin discrimination ban, just do that instead of trying to gerrymander an Israel-only one-off.

So yes, the moral of the story continues to be that these laws are massive own-goals by the pro-Israel movement and they're reaping what they've sown by allowing sloppy, politically-motivated legislation to become the face of the anti-BDS cause and then blow up in their faces. The other moral of the story is to listen my legal analysis.

What To Make Of Sanders' Appeals to Conservative White Men?

It was an interesting fact of the 2016 primary that Bernie Sanders performed best among two sorts of voters: those who thought Barack Obama was too conservative, and those who thought he was too liberal. The first makes intuitive sense -- Sanders was running to the left, and so it stands to reason that he would be appealing to voters who wished Obama was more left than he was. The second seems strange and contradictory to the first (but it explains Sanders' big wins in states like West Virginia). What gives?

One way of telling the story is that Sanders' narrative of unapologetic economic populism and uncompromising attacks on establishment power brokers -- including those in the Democratic Party itself -- speak a language that can turn (White) working class voters into progressives. This is an appealing narrative particularly for Sanders' more Marxist-oriented backers, for whom it remains a nettlesome embarrassment that the White working class doesn't seem that interested in backing progressive candidates. The idea that the problem was just that "we haven't tried it yet" obviously has its allure.

Another way of telling the story, however, is that Sanders' approach attracts conservative White men not because it compels them to abandon their conservatism, but rather qua their conservatism. The anti-establishment tenor simply meshes well with their conservative priors, which includes a deep belief that "the system" is out to get them and is stacked against them. It is of a kind with, not disassociated from, racial resentment and misogynist backlash -- they are very willing to believe that women and minorities are part of the big bad power structure that's intruding on their turf and responsible for their ongoing misery.

Part of this boils down to what I think is an intuitive-but-mistaken understanding of how political coalitions form. If we think of voters on a continuum from most liberal to most conservative, then political campaigns have two plausible routes to increasing their vote share: they can seek to pick off the marginal voter (i.e., Democrats should target the most liberal voters who voted Republican in the last cycle -- which is to say, centrist swing voters) or they can boost turnout among their partisans (i.e., the "mobilize women of color" approach). It would be weird to think of building a coalition of "liberals and a chunk of reactionary right-wingers", skipping over moderates entirely. But in reality, most citizens' political identities are fragmented, and so there is plenty of room for "reactionary right-wingers" to back unconventional progressives (or vice versa) if they organize their campaigns along the right axis -- anti-establishment populism being a very good candidate for that axis. "Horseshoe theory" is a version of this, though I think it oversimplifies -- but it is no accident the continued affiliations we see between, e.g., Melenchon and Le Pen backers, most recently in the "Yellow Vest" protests. Melenchon and Le Pen backers see something in common with each other and each other's politics (see also: Corbyn's obvious preference for Brexit). That means that either one probably could do better at attracting the voters of the other than their more "moderate" peers -- but when they do so, it isn't because Le Pen voters are really closet socialists if only given the chance to express it.

The thing is, I think Sanders backers are right to both think it is plausible that Sanders can uniquely appeal to a class of voters that Democrats have long written off as unwinnable, and that his ability to do that can rightly be viewed as a major asset in a game where the goal is to win as many votes as possible (the question is whether his gains amongst that cadre will be offset by losses among "centrists", but I think it is plausible that he'll come out ahead). But I also think they are too optimistic in thinking that the reason he'd win those votes is because these voters are attracted to a "progressive" vision as they probably understand it. In reality, a Sanders-led progressive coalition would almost certainly include a significant reactionary strain -- a contingent of voters for whom Sanders is attractive because the "establishment" they take him to be tackling is one that includes uppity women and overbearing people of color and snotty intellectuals and, yes, liberal academics.

Democracy,  one might say, is about uncomfortable coalitions sometimes, and certainly the "standard" Democratic coalition also entails its share of unsavory compromises. So I don't think this should be viewed as some unforgivable flaw in his electoral organizing. But I do think it's important to be clear-eyed about it.

The Importance of Being Earnest (About Impeachment)

Maybe I'm naive, but I think Democrats have gotten baited into the wrong set of questions regarding impeachment. The debate terms seem to be "Trump is awful, and it's imperative to remove him" on the one side, versus "Republicans control the Senate, and they'll never go for it" on the other.

It should go without saying that, in a functioning democratic system, these would not be the questions. On the one hand, impeachment is not a remedy for generically awful people, it's a remedy for high crimes and misdemeanors. It shouldn't be a tool for exacting political vengeance. On the other hand, precisely because impeachment should ideally be about rule of law, not political vengeance, it should be equally appalling the prejudged confidence by Republicans that of course they'd never impeach their own President. That's simply them closing ranks around a political compatriot -- it represents an obvious abdication of democratic duty.

So the right move, for Democrats, is not to promise impeachment. It's to be very earnest about impeachment. Impeachment is not about politics. It's about rule of law, wherever that takes us. The Mueller Report (among other sources) plausibly raises some very worrisome acts of misconduct by the President, which Congress should investigate. If that investigation leads to the discovery of an impeachable offense, then Congress should impeach. If it doesn't, then it shouldn't.

Any time a media figure tries to pivot the conversation back to "but Republicans in the Senate won't ever convict", be aghast -- not because they won't convict, but because they've prejudged the investigation. How could they say, in advance, that they won't convict the President unless they were admitting that partisan motives would take precedence over the outcome of the investigation?

The thing is -- this isn't just me being a starry-eyed idealist. This is a strategic thing, albeit strategic as a poor substitute for the ideal thing (where there was a chance in hell that Republicans cared about actual oversight).

If we learned anything from Benghazi and email-gate and all the rest, it's really that the outcome of the investigation doesn't matter. The constant, steady, drip-drip-drip of scandal is what matters. It helps if you've got something real to go on -- and in Trump's case, we clearly do -- and it really helps if it isn't seen as a mere political stunt (though, as Benghazi and email-gate also teach us, neither of those are really necessary either). Be earnest about impeachment -- not as a prejudged gambit in a political chess match, but as a procedural step in an investigative process. Then bleed the man dry.

From a strategic standpoint, it doesn't really matter whether the investigation ends in impeachment (let along conviction) or not. What matters is the cloud. And the longer it can be dragged out, the more consecutive days "Trump" and "corruption/obstruction/Russia" are in headlines next to each other, the better.

Drip-drip-drip.

The Passover Primary

Greetings all!

I just returned from the Schraub family Passover in Florida. This is an annual gathering of my dad's side of the family, but one that I've missed for the past few years because getting to Florida from California is a bear of a trip. This year, it entailed a red eye flight Thursday night (which landed at noon Friday), a lot of random napping, and then a more reasonable flight back this morning. I can't even fathom what my body thinks its sleep schedule is right now.

While I would hate to make Passover political, politics did come up (as it is wont to do in 2019 when the holiday is centered primarily around the command "not to oppress the stranger, for you were a stranger in the land of Egypt"). The extended Schraub family is pretty much all Democrats (with one #NeverTrump Republican thrown in for spice), ranging from "lifelong Democrat who became radicalized after Trump's election" (my mom) to "I have no philosophical objection to the GOP; it's genuinely unfortunate that the party is currently entirely controlled by lunatics" (my brother). Jill and I probably sit towards the leftward edge of the family.

I do not claim they are representative of Democrats or even Jews more broadly, but I thought their patterns might be of interest, since there was actually a fair amount of consistency in their likes and dislikes regarding the Democratic primary candidates. I'm also excluding myself and Jill from the pack.

Tier 1 (universal praise): Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg. Man, my family is pro-Joe. My dad was even one of the apparently 33 people who voted for him in '88. But it's not just generational: he was my younger brother's favorite as well. They weren't bothered by the handsiness for the most part -- viewing him as "of a time". In terms of the present time, people really had come away impressed by Buttigieg -- viewing him as a uniquely unifying figure. I was surprised how many people weren't worried about him being too green.

Tier 1.5: Kamala Harris. Also universally well-liked; the only difference between her and the tip-top set was that her name was less likely to come up unprompted. That is, the answer to the question "who do you like best" was usually "Biden or Buttigieg", it took asking "what do you think about Harris" to yield "oh, I like her too." Stacey Abrams also would fall into this category if she were running -- the one concern on her is that it was seen as dangerous to nominate anyone who lost their last election (even if it was in a red state).

Tier 2 (mixed-to-positive): Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar. Booker was mostly liked, though clearly being a bit overlooked. The "baby bond" idea got a split reception between those who thought it was a creative way to address inequality and those who thought handing 18 year olds a check for $50,000 on their birthday was a recipe for disaster. Klobuchar was also viewed generally positively -- the "monster boss" thing didn't seem to be a problem -- but didn't generate much enthusiasm.

Tier 3 (mixed-to-negative): Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren. Some thought Gillibrand was  phony, others were against her for her supposed role taking out Al Franken. Warren was generally viewed as Sanders-esque, and that apparently was not to her credit (see below).

Tier 4 (negative): Beto O'Rourke. They just think he's weird.

Tier 5 (loathed): Bernie Sanders. I was a bit surprised at just how intensely he was disliked across the board. I'm "fine" with Sanders, and that made me by far his biggest fan around the table. Most of the rest of the family viewed him as basically akin to pond scum.

Oh, and if Bibi Netanyahu was an American politician, he'd be down here too (obviously, Donald Trump is in whatever hell lies beneath this cellar).

Overall, it's pretty clear my family is pretty classic "establishment" Democrats. But even though they were broadly at least "okay" with the great majority of candidates, they were also convinced that the Democratic primary would be a bloodbath and that we were going to rip ourselves apart and blow our shot at 2020. It wasn't the most optimistic group.

So that's one holiday snapshot. What does it mean? Almost certainly nothing!

Jewish Republican Calls Jewish Constituent Judenrat

We need to have a conversation about conservative Jews using Nazi terminology to attack liberal Jews.

I'm of the general view that doing this is always antisemitic. Yes, always. That includes calling Stephen Miller a "Kapo". That includes the de rigueur Israel-Nazi comparisons. Always.

It's not just that it almost always is a form of Holocaust minimization -- the crimes the target is accused of committing, however heinous, are not that of mass industrial extermination. It's also that comparing Jews to Nazis, or using Nazi terminology to refer to Jews, is a form of leveraging antisemitic oppression -- in its most vicious form -- against us. That, to me, is what makes it unacceptable (and it is what distinguishes using Nazis analogies generally -- which I often find distasteful, but is not necessarily wrong -- and using them against Jews, which absent truly extraordinary circumstances I consider to be per se antisemitic).

But it also is becoming increasingly acceptable on the Jewish right. David Friedman, of course, represents a high profile case --  comparing J Street students to "kapos" before being appointed Ambassador to Israel. The organizational Jewish community was unforgivably silent on that, refusing to stand up for young Jewish students in a moment of great vulnerability. The ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt expressly declined to challenge Friedman on this, limply calling the comments "hardly diplomatic" before saying that he wouldn't engage in "partisan politics" by condemning them.

The other day, Florida State Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) went even further than that -- he called a Jewish constituent "Judenrat" (a member of the Nazi-organized council of Jews who kept order in the Ghettos, though in English the false cognate where it sounds like "Jew rat" is probably not unwelcome).

Once again, one expects to see little consequence for Fine or those of his ilk in making comments like this. We've come to accept that this form of antisemitism emanating from within our community is permissible and acceptable. We don't take the hard line on it that we would if it came out of the left. That double-standard remains as operative as ever.

The bonus irony is that Fine was the lead sponsor of a bill, recently passed in the Florida House, expanding the protections against antisemitism in Florida schools. One of the actions deemed antisemitic in the legislation text? Israel-Nazi comparisons. Apparently, though, those comparisons are totally fine when applied to Jewish constituents you dislike.

American Shonda Tournament: Final Four (and a Tie!)

High drama in the American Shonda tournament! One of the matches ended in ... a tie! A complete dead-heat! What will we do? Will the tournament go on (yes)? Read on to find out!

(1) Jared Kushner over (9) Lee Zeldin (80-20). I thought this might be a close match. It wasn't. While I continue to think Zeldin didn't get the love he deserved, now I have to wonder if Kushner has more staying power than I thought in this tournament as he starts to go up against some real heavy-hitters.

(2) Stephen Miller over (10) Dov Hikind (99-1). Yep, you read that right. Not that I was expecting this to be close, but this was by far the most lop-sided result we've ever had. Stephen Miller may well be unstoppable in this tournament.

(3) Sheldon Adelson over (11) Max Blumenthal (60-40). There will be no anti-Zionist representation in the Final Four. I suppose it is poetic, in its way, that Adelson ended up being the guy who took Blumenthal out -- though I guess I doubt if Max Blumenthal views Sheldon Adelson as materially worse than any other American Jew.

(12) Ben Shapiro TIES (13) Bernie Madoff (50-50). This was a tie. A precise, complete, absolute tie. Each got exactly 45 votes.

I confess I didn't know exactly what to do here. The rulebook didn't account for such a scenario. I was a bit at a loss.

But then I remember: since I make the Twitter polls, I don't get to vote in them. I've been relegated to a passive observer in my own tournament--able to report, but not to influence.

Now, finally, it's my turn. Now I get to cast the deciding vote. The man who will be moving on to the semifinals will be ...

BEN SHAPIRO!

It was close, but I think Shapiro is more of a current shonda. Madoff is, blessedly, being forgotten about in prison.

That sets up the Final Four matchups as follows:

(1) Jared Kushner vs. (12) Ben Shapiro
(2) Stephen Miller vs. (3) Sheldon Adelson

Vote in this thread.

American Shonda: Day One Results

The American Shonda Tounrament has begun, and we've completed the play-ins and round one. The initial results are below, and click here to begin voting on Round Two!

(1) Jared Kushner over (16) Jill Stein (75-25): Art imitates life as Jill Stein helps the Kushner extended family advance.

(2) Stephen Miller over (15) Philip Weiss (90-10): A lot of people think Miller is the man to beat in this tournament, and his dominating round one performance certainly won't hurt. I'm honestly not sure who can take him down.

(3) Sheldon Adelson over (14) Shmuley Boteach (80-20): Boteach struggled in the play-in against David Horowitz, and was no match against uber-right billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

(13) Bernie Madoff over (4) Glenn Greenwald (59-41): Our first upset! Convicted criminal Bernie Madoff takes down a journalist. But he's got a brutal second round match-up coming up against...

(12) Ben Shapiro over (5) Mort Klein (52-48): This was our marquee match-up, and it spent much of the day exactly tied up. But in the end, youth beat experience as wunderkind Ben Shapiro advances to take on Madoff.

(11) Max Blumenthal over (6) Roseanne Barr (51-49): Did you know before she was a right-wing lunatic racist, Roseanne was a Gilad Atzon-spewing left-wing racist? Perhaps it was Max Blumenthal's consistency that gave him the edge, as he stands as the left's last best hope in this tournament.

(10) Dov Hikind over (7) Rebeccca Vilkomerson (52-48): A hard-fought upset victory for Hikind, but he faces the Stephen Miller buzzsaw in round two.

(9) Lee Zeldin over (8) Ivanka Trump (51-49): He took down one half of Javanka. Can he best the other? Don't sleep on Zeldin -- his profile is only rising after his role in the current Islamophobic Ilhan Omar pile-on, and many observers think Kushner is a soft one seed.

Round Two matches
(1) Jared Kushner vs. (9) Lee Zeldin
(2) Stephen Miller vs. (10) Dov Hikind
(3) Sheldon Adelson vs. (11) Max Blumenthal
(13) Bernie Madoff vs. (12) Ben Shapiro

American Shonda: The Tournament

March Madness is over, but my thirst for bracketology remains unquenched. So -- after the rousing success of the democratically-elected dictator tournament -- I propose a new tournament: American Shonda. Which American Jewish public figure is the greatest disgrace to the tribe?

The match-ups will be posted as Twitter polls on this thread. Here are the seeds (14 11 to 16 are getting play-in games):

1. Jared Kushner
2. Stephen Miller
3. Sheldon Adelson
4. Glenn Greenwald
5. Mort Klein
6. Roseanne Barr
7. Rebecca Vilkomerson
8. Ivanka Trump
9. Lee Zeldin
10. Dov Hikind
11. Ariel Gold/Max Blumenthal
12. Matt Brooks/Ben Shapiro
13. Bernie Madoff/Dennis Prager
14. David Horowitz/Shmuley Boteach
15. Philip Weiss/Liel Leibovitz
16. Jill Stein/Adam Milstein

Note that the judging criteria is who brings the greatest shame to the Jewish people as a whole -- not to your particular sub-branch (so tamp down on "as a leftist, I'm more embarrassed by fellow leftists" logic).

The opening round will be posted onto Twitter shortly. In the meantime, let's do a quick rundown of the play-in matches:

14. "Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out." Few people have ever so fully lived out a life motto as former communist-turned-fascist David Horowitz. He goes up against "America's Roseanne's Rabbi" Shmuley Boteach, who periodically tries to arrest his fade into irrelevancy with full-page New York Times ads demonstrating why nobody cares what he thinks anymore.

15. Philip Weiss is the progenitor of Mondoweiss, an anti-Zionist Jewish website so on the nose it is literally funded by a White supremacist. He faces fellow "writer" Liel Leibovitz, who regularly vomits out gibberish disguised as erudition in a "toxic" contribution to the Jewish press.

16. Why vote for the lesser of two evils when you can vote for the middle of three? That was Jill Stein's 2016 campaign slogan (paraphrased), and it paid off -- for her and her grift, if not the country. Adam Milstein has historically been a much quieter billionaire than 3 seed Sheldon Adelson, but he's been making moves of late by insisting that Ilhan Omar is an actual terrorist. It takes a lot to have to withdraw from AIPAC 2019 for being too embarrassing, but it's enough for this bubble team to squeak his way onto the final bracket slot.

Update: Yes, there are always going to be some bubble teams that don't make the cut. But I've been alerted to some truly inexcusable omissions. We can't have a Shonda bracket where Ben Shapiro isn't in the field. And so I feel like I have no choice but to expand the play-in brackets.

11. When she isn't shilling for Iran, Code Pink big wig Ariel Gold is gleefully photographing Neturei Karta activists in Rashida Tlaib's office. Gold's never met a dictatorship she doesn't like (save Saudi Arabia -- Iranian patronage comes with strings). But Max Blumenthal hasn't met a conspiracy theory he doesn't like. The man you call when James O'Keefe is in prison presents a formidable challenge and a marquee play-in game match-up.

12. Can a spineless weasel be your spirit animal? Matt Brooks and the RJC want to find out! Though I suppose it takes guts, in a sense, to spend an entire conference raking Ilhan Omar over alleged "dual loyalty" insinuations and then shrug and smile when President Trump tells a roomful of American Jews that Netanyahu is "your Prime Minister." He'll face leading, ahem, conservative "intellectual" Ben Shapiro. Shapiro is a very different animal from the alt-right, in that (a) the alt-right hates Shapiro, whereas Shapiro loves himself, and (b) there are no other material differences between Ben Shapiro and the alt-right.

13. Speaking of "intellectuals", Dennis Prager's "PragerU" is where you go if you want such academic gems like "the southern strategy doesn't exist" and "maybe Hitler would've been okay if he'd stayed in Germany." His opponent is Bernie Madoff, who also almost didn't make the cut because arguably a "public figure" can't be in prison. Madoff -- the living embodiment of a deadly antisemitic stereotype -- certainly qualifies as an embarrassment, but has he spent too long out of the public eye to compete?

What's The Story on Trump's Antisemitic RJC Speech

Here are some highlights from the recent Republican Jewish Coalition conference, featuring a major speech by President Donald Trump.

• He asked the attendees "How did you support President Obama, how did you support the Democrats?"
• He also told them to explain his allegedly successful tariff policy "your people" who "don’t like tariffs."
• An RJC twitter account spoke of one speaker's "Jew heritage" -- apparently favorably.

But the big eyebrow raiser was when he told attendees -- all American Jews -- that Netanyahu was "your Prime Minister". He then said that a Democratic victory in 2020 would leave Israel "all by yourselves."

This is not even the first time that Trump has told American Jews that Israel -- not America -- is "your" country. And given that we just spent however many weeks obsessing over "allegiance" and "Benjamins" -- indeed, given that groups like the RJC have insisted that we obsess over "allegiance" and "Benjamins" -- this seems like a big deal.

And to be fair, Jewish groups have not been silent. The AJC, ADL, and Israel Policy Forum all issued statements criticizing the President. The AJC was one of the first off the blocks, saying "the Prime Minister of Israel is the leader of his (or her) country, not ours. Statements to the contrary, from staunch friends or harsh critics, feed bigotry."). ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt criticized Trump for language "that leads people to believe Jews aren’t loyal Americans." The Orthodox group Torah Trumps Hate blasted "this antisemitic trope spewed by the president."

Individual Jewish figures also took note. Yair Rosenberg accused Trump of going "full dual loyalty". Batya Ungar-Sargon said the President's comments were "straight up anti-Semitic." Abe Foxman called out Trump's "dual loyalty tropes". Rep. Eliot Engel wryly observed that "I somehow doubt the president would say 'your Taoiseach' to a roomful of Irish-Americans."

But there still remains the question -- is this going to become a story?

What I said yesterday, I stand behind today: it is absolutely clear that Jews care about antisemitism of this sort when it comes from Trump or other elected Republicans. We don't give it a pass, we don't shrug it off. My tweet attacking Trump for saying Israel, not America, is my country is at 3,000 likes and counting (possibly my most-liked tweet ever). 

Yesterday I said that the problem isn't that Jews don't care when Trump does antisemitic things. It's that nobody else does. We do express our concerns, but they're not amplified. The 1,000 microphones thrust in our face when Omar says "allegiance" disappear when Trump says "your Prime Minister".

Is that going to happen again? Some media sources have picked up on the antisemitism angle as something worth emphasizing. While JTA buried the lede (its current headline is "Trump gets hero’s welcome at Republican Jewish Coalition conference"; the "your country" bit is 9 paragraphs in and described as an "awkward moment"), others shone the spotlight where it belonged. 

Haaretz ran the same body text as JTA but reheadlined the story "'Your Prime Minister Netanyahu': Watch Trump's Very Awkward Speech to American Jews" (subtitle: "At Republican Jewish conference, U.S. president mocked refugees, asked crowd to push for tariffs with 'your people' and seemed to suggest all Jews voted Obama"). Allison Kaplan Sommer filed her own piece "Calling Out Omar and Democrats' 'anti-Semitism,' Trump Pulls Jewish Dual Loyalty Trope."

The Times of Israel's story was "Trump tells US Jews that Netanyahu is 'your prime minister' (subtitle: "President also says Democrats would leave Israel 'out there by yourselves' in comments to Republican Jewish group; asks how they could back Obama, apparently referring to all Jews").

Outside the Jewish press, Business Insider wrote "Trump spoke to an audience of American Jews and referred to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu as 'your prime minister'", and Slate ran with the similar "In Speech to Republican Jews, Trump Refers to Netanyahu as 'Your Prime Minister'".

So that suggests these remarks are getting coverage, and are getting coverage as an antisemitism case. Which is good. Because it should.

But what we haven't seen yet is the sort of secondary reporting that truly defines something becoming a story. Nobody, for example, has pressed the RJC's Matt Brooks or other prominent GOP figures to comment on Trump's remarks, or ask them if they think that Bibi is "their" Prime Minister. There haven't been headlines or stories which take for granted that this is a controversy or a crisis for the GOP and RJC -- nothing has yet run of the form "Trump, RJC on defensive after comments suggesting Jewish 'dual loyalty' to Israel". Nobody is pressing groups like the ADL as to whether they're in contact with the RJC or Trump and if there has been satisfactory progress to walk back the antisemitic valences of what Trump said. Indeed, there isn't yet even the call for an apology, let alone the feverish meta-commentary about what it means that no apology is forthcoming.

That's the big difference between how left and right antisemitism is covered. It isn't that the latter is ignored. It's that Jewish criticisms of the latter aren't amplified; they don't yield the multi-day meta-coverage and the demands for apologies and the calls for comment that requires everyone to take a stand and get placed in awkward and uncomfortable positions.

Some of that is due to Trump's unique property -- he's got so many scandals swirling about him at any given time that no individual one ever seems to stick for more than a half-second.

But this is clearly more than just a Trump phenomenon. And I'm not sure how to fix it. The claim is often said that we, the Jewish people, can't "let" this sort of unequal coverage and treatment persist. And yes, it's probably true that the Jewish media could do more to keep these stories afloat -- to treat them as stories, not just one-off "awkward moments" that get a day's comment and are forgotten.

Yet the fact is that it strikes me as unlikely that such efforts, even if expended, would gain traction unless they were matched by interest from the non-Jewish press -- and that I very much doubt is forthcoming. 

For my part, a huge swath of the non-Jewish interest I've seen in this story centers almost exclusively around the "hypocrisy" charge -- Omar got raked over the coals for "allegiance" while Trump was supposedly met with "crickets." The problem is that (a) hypocrisy is a two-way street -- how many people in the former case were insisting that dual loyalty insinuations weren't a big deal or were just a big ol' smear? -- , (b) depending on the critic, hypocrisy can be an unfair charge insofar as it implies that Jews haven't been trying to call out Trump over this (see above to falsify that), and (c) the time spent on the meta-point of hypocrisy is energy taken away from the primary point of "Trump said something antisemitic,"  so it ends up diluting the narrative and ironically further entrenches the sense that Trump is taking less fire for a similar sin.

In any event, I may not have a solution, but I know what I want to see. I want to see journalists calling up Brooks and GOP congressmen and White House spokespersons (and the ADL and AJC, and Democratic officials and other liberal anti-racism and anti-antisemitism groups) and getting comment and keeping the story alive. I want headlines that are about the scandal and its continued fallout. I want pained discussions of the difficult position this is placing conservative figures, how they're struggling to grapple with how to forcefully denounce antisemitism while not cutting ties with a President still popular in his party, and what this signals for 2020. I want pieces about the huge blow the RJC conference struck against ongoing GOP efforts to attract Jewish voters -- what should have been a coming-out-party for Trump-supporting Republicans turned into a fiasco.

In short, I want journalists to treat Trump's antisemitism like a story.

We'll see if they do.

New Poll on Jewish and Arab Israeli Attitudes

A new poll has recently been published providing a fascinating comparative account of Jewish and Arab attitudes in Israel.

One of the findings of the poll was that far more people self-identified as "Arab-Israeli" (46%) than "Palestinian-Israeli" (19%). Consequently most of the people circulating the poll are doing so to dunk on this IfNotNow tweet, published almost at the same time, apologizing for using the term "Israeli Arab" instead of "Palestinian Israeli".

(Another 22% of respondents simply identify as "Arab", and 14% as "Palestinian").

Certainly, I understand why folks want to take a victory lap on IfNotNow. But in doing so, they're ignoring the broader thrust of what the poll tells us -- one that is maybe less amenable to crowing about IfNotNow's naivete.

For as a whole, the poll tells a pretty sobering tale about the comparative state of Israeli Jewish and Arab attitudes. It reveals that Israel's Arab population is -- by sometimes shocking margins -- far more supportive of the basic public commitments Israel must commit to in order to retain any claim on being a liberal, democratic, and egalitarian states. Jewish respondents were, let's say, far more "conflicted" on these questions.

Let's give some highlights:

• 76% of Arabs say Jewish/Arab interactions in Israel are usually positive, compared to 53% of Jews (right-wing Jews were more likely to characterize relationships as "bad").
• Arab respondents were consistently more likely to believe cross-group cooperation could help create progress on various social issues (like the environment or workers' rights) -- generally around 70-75% of Arabs agreed such cross-group cooperation would be helpful, while for Jewish respondents the answers were in the low-to-mid 50s.
• 94% of Arabs recognize Jews as a "people", while only 52% of Jews recognize Palestinians as a "people".
• 47% (a plurality) of Arabs would vote for a Jewish party if it "represented your views", compared to just 4% of Jews who would do so for an Arab party that "represented your views".
• Just 35% of Jews conceded it would be "acceptable" for an Arab party to serve in the Israeli government (the majority coalition), compared 87% of Arabs (lest that seem like an obvious conclusion, it has often been asserted by Israeli Jews that the reason there hasn't been an Arab party in the government is because the Arabs aren't interested or wouldn't agree to it).

The fact of the matter is, it's Israel's Arab community that still believes in Israel's liberal promise. They're the constituency that still is willing to commit to the sort of cross-group cooperation and compromise that might make an egalitarian Israel function.

The Israeli Jewish community? It's in a far more precarious place now. Polls like this are just more evidence for what's become increasingly clear: there is no route to a liberal majority in Israel that runs through predominantly Jewish parties alone. The path to preserving Israeli liberalism, if such a path still exists, runs through the Arab community. If, as Benny Gantz and Blue & White have publicly asserted, this election will decide the future of Israel as a democratic state, then their public refusal to even consider a coalitions with the Arab parties will end up being the decisive factor determining what that future will be.

Racist and Antisemitic Graffiti Case in Oklahoma

Police have a suspect in a spate of racist graffiti incidents in Oklahoma. A woman was caught on surveillance footage spraypainting racist, antisemitic, and White supremacist messages on the Oklahoma Democratic Party headquarters.

Government offices of the Chickasaw Nation were also targeted with similar slurs, and most recently more graffiti was found at culture centers and local Democratic Party offices in Norman.

The epithets include “Gas the Jews,” the word “Jewess” painted in red on a statue that had swastikas painted over its eyes, and “hang n***er kids,” all decorated with swastikas.  The graffiti also made violent threats against prominent Jewish Americans such as academic Barbara Spectre and political commentator Bill Kristol.

Last week graffiti was scrawled in Oklahoma City on a building that is also home to state agencies, non-profit groups and businesses. The phrases included “Welcome to Germany,” “Trump hates Israel,” ”Gas the Jews,” and “The Goyim know,” as well as the number sequence 1488, which is a reference to Adolf Hitler.

Hopefully she is caught soon and brought to justice. In the meantime, keep the targeted communities in Oklahoma -- Jews, African-Americans, and American Indians -- in your thoughts.

What Last Night's Election Results Tell Us About 2020

There is a real chance Donald Trump will be re-elected.

I think a lot of Democrats haven't really processed this, in the same way we didn't process the possibility that he could be elected in 2016.

Between viewing the initial election as a fluke, and being buoyed by 2018's "blue wave", it's easy to think that Trump is destined to be a single-term president.

But I'm not sure. And I think some of last night's election results -- specifically, the Wisconsin Supreme Court race (in recount territory, but with the Republican candidate up by about 6,000 votes) and a Pittsburgh-area Pennsylvania state senate special election (a Democratic red-to-blue flip) -- can give us some hints about the 2020 electoral landscape.

Let's start with the basics: it is very likely that Democrats will do worse in 2020 than they did in 2018. Midterm elections often represent high water marks for the opposition party, and a monster performance in 2018 doesn't make 2020 a gimme for Democrats anymore than huge GOP victories in 2010 signaled a defeat for Obama in 2012. One could argue that Democratic constituencies tend to drop off in the midterms, but I think that effect is more than canceled out by the advantages midterms give to the opposition party.

And while Trump remains relatively unpopular, there hasn't been the widespread, broad-based repudiation of him that one might have hoped for were we an actually functioning liberal state -- indeed, his net approval rating has been remarkably stable for the past year at roughly -10 (currently it's 42/53). That's obviously pretty bad, but it's not disastrously so -- it hasn't reached that tipping point where "unpopular" turns into a rout.

So my baseline assumption is that Republicans are likely to overperform compared to 2018, and the question is how much Democrats can arrest that trend.

Begin by looking at Wisconsin. If 2018 gave us a narrow Democratic victory in the marquee statewide match up (the Governor's race), that doesn't give us a lot of breathing room in 2020. And lo and behold, the statewide race in 2019 -- a pivotal one, since it effectively determines the partisan composition of the court ahead of 2020 redistricting -- ends up yielding what looks like a squeaker GOP victory. And this was an election where the Democratic nominee had a lot of institutional support (including a massive spending edge), whilst the Republican had been hammered for anti-LGBT views.

This, to me, bodes poorly for 2020. In my "trendlines" post assessing the political movement of each (well, most) states, I put a big ol' question mark next to Wisconsin, and this is part of the reason why. Yes, beating Scott Walker felt great. But barely doing it in a year like 2018 actually wasn't that great a sign. Given Minnesota's increasingly-reddish tilt (albeit from a bluer base), it was hard to imagine that its more conservative neighbor would be more favorable, on net, to the Democratic Party in the immediate future.

A similar problem afflicts Florida. It was perhaps the only "swing" state where Republicans didn't see any drop off in support from 2016 to 2018. So it's hard to imagine that it will be friendlier turf for Democrats in 2020, where they're almost certainly going to have less momentum than they did in the midterms.

That's the bad news. Onto the better news: the Pennsylvania result. This was the first red-to-blue special election flip in 2019, and it was a good one to get -- and not just because it puts the Pennsylvania State Senate in play in 2020.  Of all the "blue wall" states that weren't in 2016, Pennsylvania to me seems the most likely to return to the Democratic column in 2020 -- and obviously that's a must-win state for the Democratic Party. And results like this show that Democrats are solidifying their appeal in districts like this one (suburban, recently light-red, well-educated, etc.). That bodes well for Democratic performance even outside of Pennsylvania where there is a considerable cache of voters in districts that share this profile.

So that's the good news. But where does that leave us? Suppose Wisconsin and Florida go red, and Pennsylvania and (we'll say) Michigan return to team blue. If everything else holds (including Trump sniping an electoral vote off Maine), that's still a 270-268 GOP victory. If Maine goes blue down the line, then it's a tie.

Where could Democrats pick up another state? The place where they've seen the best recent trendline is Arizona, followed by maybe North Carolina. But as heartening as Arizona's recent blue-ish shift has been, do you really want to hinge our presidential prospects on a Democratic winning Arizona for just the second time since 1952?

I actually think the popular vote -- for what that's worth, which is basically nothing -- is in good shape for Democrats, if only because of the huge Democratic margins we're likely to see in California. But the electoral college is a different story. The fact is, the tea leaves aren't looking good for Democrats winning either Florida or Wisconsin in 2020, and without those two states the map suddenly looks really, really difficult.

The Performance Art Piece Formerly Known as "Jexodus" Continues

The Exodus née Jexodus Movement (they dropped the "J" after it was gently pointed out to them that "Exodus" already is a pretty Jewish term) -- a self-described movement for young American Jews disenchanted by liberalism and looking to leave the Democratic Party -- is struggling mightily to overcome the ridiculous assumption that it's an obvious right-wing astroturf project. The fact that it is the brainchild of two men in their mid-50s, for example, seems to be a bit strange for a grassroots millennial initiative.

And their kick-off projects ... aren't exactly helping matters:

The Exodus Movement’s [Facebook and Twitter] cover image appears to be a stock photo - specifically, the first result when you search “Jewish woman” on the website iStock.

What’s more, according to iStock, the photo - titled “Dramatic portrait of a young black-haired woman wearing a beret by the water” - was taken in Toronto, Canada, which would bely the organization’s claim of representing American Jewish Millennials upset with the Democratic Party’s alleged anti-Israel and anti-Semitic tilt.

[...] 

In the coming month, The Exodus Movement’s founder and president, model and former Trump campaign staffer Elizabeth Pipko, will be speaking at Yeshiva University and in Boca Raton for the Republican Federated Women of South Florida.

So just to recap: this organization for young American Jewish Democrats contemplating leaving the Democratic Party is run by a Trump campaign staffer speaking before Republican Jews in a city famous for its Jewish retiree population to promote a movement symbolized by a stock photo of a Canadian.

Best of luck to them.

The Consequences of Threatening Lifetime Sex Offender Registration To Juveniles

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against a school which allegedly terrified a teenage student into suicide after threatening him with a lifetime of sex offender registration while investigating whether he had a video recording of a sexual encounter with a female classmate.

While finding that the district hadn't broken the law, Judge Andrea Wood did criticize the district's interrogation of the student:

The judge, however, made it clear she was not condoning the way the interview was conducted. While it may have been legal for authorities to make Walgren think he could end up on a sex offender registry, it was not necessarily right to do so.

“The court’s determination that the individual defendant’s actions, as pleaded, are not objectively unreasonable for purposes of a Fourth Amendment analysis should not be understood as an endorsement of those actions by this Court,” Wood wrote. “Registration as a sex offender entails severe restrictions on a sex offender’s liberty. … And in Illinois, a juvenile convicted on charges related to child pornography could potentially be forced to remain a registered sex offender for the rest of his or her life.”

I have no quarrel with Judge Wood taking the time to make this aside. I've actually suggested judges should do this more often.

But here, I think we should reflect on how this incident and our reaction to it should shake our confidence not just in how the district behaved but also in the underlying legal rules the district was communicating. My understanding is that the district was not incorrect in telling the student that the conduct he was being investigated for (having a video recording of a sexual encounter with another student, taken while they were both minors) could result in him being placed on the sex offender registry for life. That, as best I can tell, was indeed a potential consequence under Illinois law.

If we think that consequence is too draconian, then the solution can't just be to tell school districts not to (accurately) communicate the legal consequences. The solution is to amend the law.

Obviously, the issue of minors making, possessing, and sharing recordings of their own sexual exploits with other minors is a serious one (the article doesn't indicate whether the female partner here consented to the recording, but if she didn't then it's more serious still). It needs a real response.

But there's little question that our criminal policies on sexual offenses -- especially relating to "ancillary" consequences like the sex offender registry -- have blown way past anything that could justified as either valid retribution or proportional deterrence. There are consequences that can be imposed on juvenile offenders that are adequately severe given the alleged wrong that do not entail lifetime registration on the sex offender registry (with all the attendant restrictions on personal liberty that carries). Here, as in many other cases in the criminal justice system (especially when dealing with minors), we need to think creatively and break our reliance on extreme punitive measures, and we should reject the false dichotomy that says hyper-criminalization is the only way to get "serious" about these wrongs.

In short: tragedies like this happen because of the reality of the law, not because that reality was relayed. If this feels like a tragic case, then it's the law, not the communication of the law, that needs changing.

Has Elvis Left the Building?

I'm wondering if we're reaching the end of the days where Elvis is a relevant cultural landmark?

Las Vegas, for example, still has Elvis impersonators and Elvis wedding chapels. But is he a meaningful figure for the next generation? Even kids of my era knew Elvis -- through our parents, yes, but many of us grew up listening to the "oldies" station and so knew all the songs of that era pretty well by heart. Today? I'm dubious. I'm sure kids these days know who Elvis is, and probably can do a good "thankyouverymuch" impression. But he's probably fading as a phenomenon. Even to me, he already feels pretty quaint.

Some of this, of course, is the inexorable march of time. But it is interesting to see which songs from that era have staying power and which don't. The obvious place to look is which songs show up in advertisements. "Happy Together" by The Turtles is a great example -- a solid but not transcendent hit which nonetheless seems destined to stay a part of our cultural life for years to come. Which of Elvis' songs fall in the same boat? I don't have one jumping to the forefront of my mind.

And looking ahead: how long before we're wondering the same thing about The Beatles? And then Michael Jackson?

Quebec Set To Ban Public Employees from Wearing Religious Garb

The ban would apply to, among other apparel, hijabs and kippot.

The frenzy of concern regarding various head-coverings -- going way beyond objecting to making them mandatory (as they are in some Muslim-majority states), and instead casting them as inherently antithetical to the values of the liberal state -- leads precisely to this. And it should surprise nobody with a sense of history that this sort of illiberalism-disguised-as-liberalism is taking Jews and Muslims down together.

Jackie Walker Expelled from Labour

In one of the highest-profile disciplinary actions pending before the party, former Momentum leader Jackie Walker has been expelled from Labour after a multitude of antisemitism allegations.

Walker's defense was a standard-Livingstone -- "I'm just criticizing Israel" -- so let's review what the core offenses were:

• Saying Jews were "chief financiers" of the slave trade;
• Complaining that Holocaust Memorial Day is biased towards Jews because it doesn't commemorate other genocides (it does, actually);
• Questioning the need for heightened security at Jewish schools and institutions because Jewish concerns about potential targeting were exaggerated or embellished.

You might note that none of these actually have anything to do with "criticizing Israel". Indeed, that's a characteristic she shares with the original Livingstone case, where the antisemitism charge also had nothing to do with Israel at all.

Walker had been a major standard-bearer for "Labour Against the Witchhunt", which insists that the bulk of the controversy over antisemitism in the party is falsified or made up, the plot of Zionists or even the Israeli government to damage the prospects of Jeremy Corbyn.

Well That's One Way To Put It

Mississippi is currently engaged in litigation over whether its State Senate district boundaries diluted the voting power of Black residents. Shocking, I know. A district court found that Mississippi had acted illegally, and the Fifth Circuit refused to stay the decision pending appeal.

Judge Edith Clement dissented from that decision. And she chose an interesting descriptor for the panel majority, whose opinion she believed was out-of-step with what the majority of active Fifth Circuit judges would have decided:

This case presents several extraordinary issues. Unfortunately, this court’s usual procedures do not appear to permit en banc review of this denial of a stay even if a majority of the active judges would otherwise grant it. I am afraid defendants have simply had the poor luck of drawing a majority-minority panel.

Now, to be clear, all three judges on the panel were White. Judge Clement is literally referring to the fact that the majority on the panel on the issue of a stay would have likely been a minority on this issue were it to go to the full court (while she doesn't say so directly, the logic is almost certainly that the case would break down on partisan lines and the Fifth Circuit currently has a GOP-appointed majority).

Nonetheless: this is certainly a striking phrase to use in a race discrimination/voting rights case. "Majority-minority" is not an esoteric term in this context; Judge Clement is well aware that it is almost exclusively used to refer to districts whose population is predominantly made up of racial minorities (literally: it is majority-minority). That is the evocation that any reader -- certainly any reader familiar with voting rights cases -- will hear.

And so its use here -- as part of a dissent where Judge Clement thinks the panel majority is being too solicitous towards minority voters in Mississippi -- does not feel accidental. It feels much more dog-whistle-y, and those whistles have been getting much more audible as of late.

Honeymoon Highlights

Greetings from Berkeley!

We're back from our honeymoon, feeling relaxed, refreshed, and (thanks to the miracle of time zones) actually waking up at a reasonable hour of the morning. Here are some of the highlights:

Hot dogs eaten: 5 (each). One of the selling points for this particular resort (the Sheraton Maui) was that there was a poolside hot dog stand. Even as we booked it, I remember thinking to myself "sure, a poolside hot dog stand sounds awesome in concept, but how much of a role will it really play in a honeymoon?" Answer: a massive one. Eating hot dogs and fries in a poolside cabana while watching March Madness on the iPad was the best way I can think of to spend an afternoon.

Fish eaten: 2. Jill and I don't really like fish, but we were on an island and figured why not try something a bit new? The Mahi Mahi tacos weren't really to our taste, but the Ahi Poke bowl was absolutely delicious -- I'd totally eat that again.

Fish seen: countless. We went snorkling! This is actually a big deal, as Jill has for as long as I've known her been deathly afraid of fish (this is independent of her not liking the taste of fish). But she was a very brave girl, and we actually both had a really nice time! The beach by the hotel was amazing for this, incidentally -- ten feet from the shore, and suddenly there are fish everywhere in all the colors of the rainbow.

Sunglasses purchased: 1. I should be wearing sunglasses all the time -- I have an eye condition that makes me very sensitive to sunlight -- but I've never really gotten into the habit. But our poolside cabana came with a free trial pair of Maui Jims and whoa. It was like I was seeing colors for the first time. It was actually almost unnerving how much more vibrant the world was. So I bought a pair, furthering the inevitable convergence of my own sartorial style into my father's.

Waters submersed in: 4. Ocean, pool/lazy river, hot tub, and spa bath ritual. The last one might have sold me on baths, where those baths are in jacuzzis with perfect temperature regulation and some sort of magic passionfruit powder that made my skin super soft and not at all wrinkly.

Private dinners: 1. The most classically "romantic" thing we did -- other than perhaps the spa bath ritual -- was a private dinner on the lawn for just the two of us, looking out over the beach and cliff rocks. It was a really nice experience. They had four menus to choose from, and we kind of had to hack all four of them together to come up with a four-course meal that didn't include pork or shellfish, but it all worked out -- and that's what got us to try the Poke bowl.

New breakfast sensations: 1. Loco Moco! I'd heard of it before -- it's a ground beef patty over eggs and fried rice, with onion gravy -- but I hadn't tried it or even seen it served anywhere until we got to the hotel. But it is so good. And it doesn't seem like it requires any particular ingredients local to Hawaii, so how has this not made the jump to the mainland yet?

Bird alarm clocks: 1. There are many birds fluttering around Maui, singing their sweet little songs. There was also one particular bird who, from roughly 6:00 AM to 6:30 AM each morning, would just start shrieking at the top of its lungs like it just stumbled across the murder room in a horror movie. Thankfully, 6:00 AM Hawaii is 9:00 AM Pacific, so this was about the time we were getting up anyway. But still -- somebody get that bird to therapy. It's clearly seen some stuff.

Lizards in room: 1. Girls like swarms of lizards, right?

Hours spent off the resort: 0. We kept thinking about it. "Maybe we'll do an ATV tour of a neighboring island" (they never got back to us). "Maybe we'll go shopping in town" (we're spending enough here, thank you). "Maybe we'll go whalewatching" (the booking hut seems awfully far away when we're nice and comfy in our cabana). Ultimately, I'm content with our choice here.

Gap Day Predictions

I'm in the aforementioned gap day between my friends' wedding (it was great!) and my honeymoon (leave tomorrow!).

But I've been wanting to lay down my current take/prediction on the 2020 Democratic primary. Because it's never too early, and if I get it right now I will be seen as a God.

In short: I think the field will winnow down to Harris versus Sanders and I think Harris wins that head-to-head.

More specifically, and including potentials as well as the already-announced:

Joe Biden: I didn't think he'd run, frankly. There are two stories to his lofty status in the polls. One is that it's pure name recognition and that, much like all his other presidential campaigns, he'll crater once the race actually gets under way. The other is that Biden is widely liked, is viewed (rightly or not) as very electable, and will lock down the hefty portion of the Democratic primary electorate which misses the Obama years. I think story one will end up beating story two.

Bernie Sanders: I actually also didn't think he'd run (I'm off to a great start). Sanders is helped by a fractured field, because I think he has the largest core of support (though like Biden some of his backing right now is a name recognition thing), but I don't know how much growth he has once other candidates drop out. Twitter I think exaggerates both how much Sanders is loved and how much he is loathed among Democrats, but other than Warren, I'm not sure which other major candidates' voters would go to Sanders once they drop out.

Elizabeth Warren: Her oxygen seems to have been sucked up by Sanders, which I think is unfortunate. I'm also surprised by how much the Cherokee DNA test thing seems to be sticking to her -- not saying it's unimportant, but we have like nine million political scandals each week and this one doesn't immediately jump out as the one that matters. If Sanders wasn't in the race I'd have her as one of the front-runners because she straddles the establishment/insurgent divide very well. But I don't see a lot of Bernie backers jumping ship to her, and that will do her in.

Kamala Harris: I think she's the strongest of the more "establishment" flavored Democratic candidates. The left is hitting her on criminal justice issues, which isn't surprising, but I think she can and will cover that flank pretty well. And other than that, she has a lot of strengths and very few weaknesses. Like Biden, she scratches the "I miss Obama" itch very well without, you know, being Joe Biden.

Amy Klobuchar: The "mean boss" thing doesn't matter as much as the fact that she seems to be trying to position herself as the "moderate" in the race. That's going to be a mistake this time around.

Cory Booker: I always liked Booker, but Harris seems to be occupying his lane of "smart, wonkish mainstream POC liberal who kind of reminds us of Obama". In a large field, I'm not sure he'll have enough space to distinguish himself fast enough to make a real go of it.

Kirsten Gillibrand: I'm honestly not sure why she's not getting any traction. And to the extent it's "because of what she did to Al Franken", I'm outright angry that anyone is holding that against her. She might fare better if/when Klobuchar drops.

Beto O'Rourke: I don't think he should be running for President. If you'd asked me yesterday I'd have said his campaign is DOA, but the $6.1 million initial haul at least raised my eyebrow.

Stacey Abrams: The real wild card. Of all the unannounced candidates this side of Joe Biden, she has the largest potential upside in terms of generating real enthusiasm--in part because she seems well-liked by both establishment and insurgent sorts. But I can also see her ultimately petering out. It's hard to see Democrats, desperate to win in 2020, nominating anyone who lost her last race--no matter how inspiring the campaign was (that goes for O'Rourke as well).

John Hickenlooper: Even more annoyed he's running than I am at Beto. He should be taking a Senate seat from Cory Gardner.

Pete Buttigieg: I'm sure he's very smart, but mayor of South Bend, Indiana (smaller than Miramar, Florida, but you don't see me covering Wayne Messam) is a pretty big leap to President. Maybe try boosting Democratic fortunes in the Hoosier State first?

Julian Castro: Another rising star who probably should've found a different office to pursue before "President". Though, like Indiana, Texas is tough territory for Democrats to win high-profile office, so maybe this is his best option. Still don't see much of a route forward for him. It's a bad sign he's getting even less attention than Buttigieg.

Jay Inslee: In a sense he doesn't count since he obviously isn't running to win, but just to draw attention to climate change. A noble goal. And since there's no Senate race he should be focusing on instead, I'm okay with it--so long as he doesn't pull any sore loser routine or distract from the ultimate nominee.

Tulsi Gabbard: "There are many great candidates running for the Democratic nomination, and also Tulsi Gabbard."

John Delaney: Will never, ever break out of "who?" status with most Americans.

Andrew Yang: I refuse to find out who this person is.