2016 Election Day Live Blog

It's a Debate Link tradition (though each year I swear to end it). We'll be following returns all evening from throughout the country -- not just Presidential but Senate, House, and Gubernatorial races as well (all times are Pacific -- I'm a California kid now, remember?).

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10:00 PM: Took a long shower. Preparing what I'm going to say to my Intro to American Politics students on Thursday. Frankly, it's amazing how not bad the Senate turned out to be (51-49 GOP) -- but given that we're facing down President Trump with a unified GOP legislature, that's not exactly a consolation. Anyway, I'm probably done for the night. Best of luck to the President-elect, and to the country. As President Obama said, the sun will come up tomorrow.

9:04 PM: 89% of Pennsylvania is in, and Clinton's lead is less than 6,000. McGinty is down by 4,000.

8:55 PM: I wonder if folks realize that Hillary Clinton may about to become a literal martyr for democracy. I mean, I don't expect her to flee the country. And I do expect Trump to do his best to "lock her up." And I hardly expect him to be content with normal legal processes if they don't go his way.

8:37 PM: I'll probably write more about this in another post, but as far as I'm concerned the story of this election is the realization by White voters that they didn't have to care about minorities or their rights. Nobody was forcing them to. And in turned out, when given a choice, they happily elected to endorse White supremacy.

8:24 PM: You might have noticed that I'm basically looking for bright spots while praying that Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire turn around (and Pennsylvania holds up). This moment's bright spot comes to you courtesy of New Jersey where Rep. Scott Garrett (R) is down two points with 88% in. He was wildly conservative for any district, let alone his swingy eastern seaboard one.

8:12 PM: Sheriff Joe Arpaio has lost his bid for reelection in Arizona. And to be too racist to win election tonight is deeply humiliating.

8:10 PM: Yes, Iowa was almost certainly a mirage. Trump's now up by a half point with about half the state in, but the trendlines are clearly moving his way.

7:44 PM: I assume that Clinton being up 10 in Iowa with 30% in is solely a function of which counties are reporting. It's hardly the sort of night where Clinton would pull out a surprise-win in an overwhelmingly White Midwestern state.

7:37 PM: Half in in Pennsylvania, and Clinton is still up four. McGinty is beating that pace, up five against Toomey.

7:29 PM: Colorado is 2/3 in, and Clinton's up 5 there. That's a good thing.

7:24 PM: Ohio called for Trump: He's up by 11 with 75% in.

7:22 PM: On the one hand, Wayne County (Detroit) is only 15% in. On the other hand, Clinton is only up 51/44. Those are cataclysmically bad numbers for her if they hold. Trump is up 50/45 in Michigan as a whole now, with 30% in.

7:20 PM: The only thing really in question in North Carolina right now is the governor's race, where Roy Cooper holds a tiny lead over incumbent Republican Pat McCrory. Ross is down 5.5 points, Clinton 3.5, with 86% in.

7:15 PM: Virginia looking decent for Clinton now, but North Carolina (as well as Florida) almost certainly will go Trump. Michigan and Wisconsin are where it's out now -- and if you thought White working class voters were angry in the southeast....

7:02 PM: Broward County just came in (98%). Trump is still up by 1.5% statewide. Looks like Florida is Trump territory after all. Damn it. Egg on my face (least of my concerns right now, but I'll own it).

6:54 PM: Clinton just took a (tiny) lead in Virginia, with 82% in.

6:52 PM: In Michigan, Clinton is winning Oakland County by 52/44. Earlier in the evening I'd note that's above her county benchmark (49/49). But with rural areas really coming in hard for Trump, the logic is that Clinton needs to badly overperform in counties like Oakland (affluent inner suburbs) to counterbalance Trump's big night out in the exurbs.

6:44 PM: Now it's a 10,000 point gap in Virginia with 80% in. Anyone who follows Virginia politics knows that Democrats tend to keep creeping up in late returns, but it'd be nice if they'd hurry it along and relieve some of my heart palpitations.

6:36 PM: Clinton is creeping up in Virginia. Down just 25,000 votes with 78% in.

6:27 PM: Still waiting on Broward County. A little less than 2/3 in, which is still a lot. But goodness, it really will be down to the wire.

6:12 PM: Since I was harping on county benchmarks, here's the counterstory. The key big counties, Clinton is overperforming. But there are lots of little counties, and Trump is overperforming there. That's the story in Florida, for example -- we'll see if it's the same nationwide.

6:10 PM: 50% of Broward now in, and its not a big dent in Trump's lead. Now I'm officially nervous.

6:03 PM: FL-07 gets called for Stephanie Murphy -- a Democratic pickup.

6:00 PM: Not that it was remotely in doubt, but Chris Van Hollen will be the next Senator from Maryland. First campaign I ever volunteered on. Still a huge fan. Congratulations Senator!

5:53 PM: I'm still feeling pretty good about Florida, with Broward outstanding, but I understand why people are nervous -- particularly with more rural/exurban locales going hard for Trump.

5:51 PM: Given how catastrophic West Virginia is for Democrats these days, its very impressive that a Democrat is winning the governor's race right now. Jim Justice is up 48/42 with 30% in the Mountain State. Clinton, for her part, is down 65/30.

5:42 PM: North Carolina seems to be slipping away from Deborah Ross at the moment. It's not just that Burr just took a lead. Up 55/41 in Wake County (Raleigh) with 88% in, she wanted to be at 57/42.

5:34 PM: Ohio has quietly reported a third of its votes and Clinton is up 50/46. Again glancing at the benchmarks: Cuyahoga County is Clinton 68/29, she wants 68/31 (it's a third in right now as well).

5:30 PM: Two Florida House seats have already flipped, but they cancel each other out and in any event are the product of redistricting turning a blue seat red and vice versa. The two other high-profile House races there were the FL-13, where ex-Gov. (and ex-GOP) Charlie Crist looks like he'll turn the seat blue (albeit by a closer than expected margin -- he's up 52/48 with 91% in), and the FL-26, where Carlos Curbelo held off a truly awful Democratic candidate in Joe Garcia. But remember when I said to keep an eye on the FL-07? 86% in and Democrat Stephanie Murphy is up 52-48 over incumbent Rep. John Mica. There's more vote left in Mica-friendly turf, but this one looks down to the wire.

5:24 PM: I am seeing a lot of panic about Florida, as Trump is currently leading by about 20,000 votes with 89% counted. Broward County is the second largest county in Florida. It has not put in any of its non-early votes. Its early votes went Clinton 70/29 -- well ahead of her benchmark.

5:19 PM: Taking a gander at New Hampshire, we see that Hassan (Senate) and Van Ostern (Governor) are both running ahead of Hillary Clinton. My first instinct was to be pleased, but it seems that Democrats are actually falling a little short of their targets here. Concord, where everyone is stacked at around a 60/35 lead, was supposed to be closer to a 63/36 Democratic advantage. 80% of the vote is counted in Concord, but just 6% statewide.

5:15 PM: Exit polls looking very robust for Jason Kander (D) in Missouri (and the same polls have Trump meaning by about the margin you'd expect, so that helps validate them). Man, do I want that one -- this ad deserves to be rewarded.

5:13 PM: Looks like Rubio is going to hold onto his Senate seat in Florida. There's still a good chunk of south Florida yet to report, but Murphy just isn't wracking up the numbers he needs down there. Miami-Dade is now 80% in and Murphy's only up 54/43 (he wanted 62/38; Clinton's at 63/34).

5:11 PM: It might not seem like big news that Kentucky Republicans cleaned house -- literally -- in taking the Kentucky State House tonight. But Democrats have held it continuously since the 1920s. Really, this is just the final spasm of the realignment of Appalachia, but it's still worth noting.

5:08 PM: Tammy Duckworth knocks off Mark Kirk to secure the first Democratic Senate pickup of the night. Probably the most "in the bag" Senate race for us, but it still feels really good -- especially after Kirk's grotesque racism at the tail end of the campaign.

5:00 PM: I'm feeling really good about a Clinton victory tonight. The Senate is a dicier proposition. With Indiana out (as I suspected it would be), Democrats still need that last piece of the puzzle assuming that their core trio of Wisconsin/Illinois/Pennsylvania holds together. In Florida, Murphy is inching closer to Rubio but remains four points behind (compared to Clinton, who's up by two). In North Carolina, Deborah Ross (D) is ahead of incumbent Richard Burr by four points whilst Clinton is currently leading in the state by seven. The good news is that Ross is -- just -- hitting the number she needs in Wake County (the largest in the state): with 25% in she's up 58/38 there, she needs to be 57/42.

4:56 PM: We must be close to calling Florida, right? Clinton's up by 2% with 73% in. Trump and Clinton are tied in Duval County (Jacksonville), a place Trump absolutely needed to win. Meanwhile, the south Florida trio of Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties haven't reported anything except their early vote -- and Clinton's beating her benchmarks in all three.

4:54 PM: Ohio Senate race goes to Rob Portman without trouble. A state Democrats should have been competitive in, but where ex-Gov. Ted Strickland could not get off the ground. Meanwhile, Richard Burr is maintaining a slight lead in North Carolina -- but will it hold as Democratic areas start to come in?

4:51 PM: With Clinton's early numbers looking excellent in both Florida and Virginia (don't worry about the aggregate totals right now -- she's hitting or beating her benchmarks in the huge counties that will decide things), my eye falls on Pennsylvania. Florida and Virginia are blue-trending states where higher percentages of educated, professional, and/or Latino voters are giving Trump fits. Pennsylvania, at least in theory, cuts a different profile -- a state where their remains a solid core of working class white rust belters. If they break red this year in a mirror image of how Latinos and upscale professionals are turning blue, we still have a race. If not, we're done here.

4:42 PM: All the early numbers look dreadful for Evan Bayh, who seemed to piss away a sizable lead late in this race. I'm 10% satisfied, because Bayh is the quintessential entitled arrogant political hack and this is justified comeuppance, and 90% annoyed, because this was a Senate seat Democrats should have taken and he blew it hard. 24% in and he's down 55/39

4:40 PM: The VA-10 is one of those races that Democrats need to win if they have a chance of making the House interesting. It's a blue-trending district whose demographics (wealthy educated professionals) are primed to despise Trump, but currently held by a really strong Republican incumbent in Barbara Comstock. And with 22% in, Comstock is leading her Democratic challenger by a measly 400 votes.

4:35 PM: Man, it really will be interesting to see if the Latino tide that is drilling Trump in Florida right now carries over to sweep Rubio out of office. As much as I'd like to see it, it looks like there are enough ticket-splitters for Rubio to survive. There are some House races, too, where Democrats might see some stretchier pickups -- keep your eye on the FL-07.

4:27 PM: That said, it doesn't seem like Trump's misfortunes are carrying over to Marco Rubio. Right now, he's running 7 points ahead of Trump's pace -- enough to give him a five point lead over Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy.

4:23 PM: Early numbers looking very good for Clinton in Florida. She's ahead in Duval County, where Romney narrowly won in 2012 (and recall that Trump needs to do better than Romney to win the state). In Palm Beach County, she's starting out up 61/37 -- the benchmark she needs to hit is 58/41. Ditto Broward County, where Clinton wants to keep Trump at 32% or below ... and he's not even cracking 30% right now.

4:17 PM: There's a lot of crowing about South Carolina being "too close to call" following exit polls. I personally am less enthused, for two reasons. (1) SC is extremely polarized by race, so Democrats have both a high floor and a low ceiling; and (2) it does Clinton no good to lose SC by less than the typical Democrat. In fact, it's the possibility that Clinton will overperform in non-competitive states while getting nipped at the finish line in swing states that's been my main frustration with relying on national popular vote polls (and my main keep-me-up-at-night terror).

4:09 PM: CNN has called the Kentucky Senate race for Rand Paul. Not a surprise, even with Gray overperforming Clinton (and Grimes in 2014). I will observe -- not to give false hope -- that CNN's tally is behind other numbers I've seen (e.g., those nice numbers for Gray out of Fayette County).

4:05 PM: The GOP's stranglehold over the south may well be cracking. Virginia and North Carolina are already purple. Meanwhile younger voters -- and "younger" here means younger than 45 -- are now decisively in the Democratic corner in Georgia.

3:55 PM: One sleeper race that nobody had on the radar was the Kentucky Senate race, where Democrat Jim Gray challenged incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R). And to be sure, most sleeping races stay asleep. But in Fayette County, near Lexington, Gray is beating 61/39 with 80% in (by comparison, in 2014 Democratic candidate Allison Lundergan-Grimes won this county 52/45  in the course of losing statewide to Senator Mitch McConnell 56/40). But particularly in a state like Kentucky, it's entirely plausible that the more liberal portions of the state might swing noticeably to the D column even as the more conservative areas tilt even harder to the right -- and there are more of the latter than the former.

3:51 PM: Exit polls are tricky business. But if this one is at all accurate, it does not augur well for the GOP -- it has Latinos voting for Clinton over Trump by a crushing 79/18 split (it was 71/27 in 2012, 67/31 in 2008).

3:49 PM: Since we've got some time, let's use an early example of the importance of looking at comparative county level data rather than early aggregate numbers. There is currently one county in Indiana where a non-negligible percentage of the votes are in: Montgomery County, northwest of Indianapolis (59% in). At the presidential level, it's going 73/23 Trump (about a 5,000 vote advantage). Now, I have no idea if that's historically good or bad for the GOP nominee. What I do know is that at the Senate level, it's 63 Young (R)/30 Bayh (D), and for the Governor's race it's 61 Holcomb (R)/35 Gregg (D). So the downballot Democrats are running about 15 points ahead of Clinton in that county -- potentially a good sign that there's a non-trivial number of ticket-splitters, though again it's hard to know without info on how strongly Republican this county is (not to mention it's super-early, this is a relatively small county, etc. etc.).

3:39 PM: The first few polls have closed! They're in Kentucky, where nothing really is competitive, and Indiana, which is going to go for Trump at the Presidential level but has interesting races downballot. Of course, we still have some time before any sizable results come in.

11:58 AM: States are not a monolith. Different counties vote different ways -- in Florida, for example, Miami-Dade votes very differently than the Panhandle. Consequently, it's easy to be mislead by early returns which often come from a few counties which are likely to be unrepresentative of the state as a whole. What you want to do is see whether Democrats are over- or underperforming relative to their historic vote totals on a county-by-county level. If, for example, you saw that Clinton was getting 75% of the vote in St. Louis City, you might elated -- except that Obama got 83% there in 2012 and Clinton would want to approach 90% to counteract more conservative rural counties and win the entire state.

On this note, DK Elections' county benchmarks are an absolutely invaluable resource. They'll give a sense of where Democrats should be shooting for if they want to pick up swing states (and even in non swing states, overperforming 2012 numbers may be a good sign down ballot).

10:50 AM: I suppose I should get my final predictions in, while the getting's good:

President: Hillary Clinton 323 EV (49.2), Donald Trump 215 (45.1). Clinton takes Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and both Maine districts. Trump gets Ohio and Iowa.

Senate: 50/50. Democrats hold Nevada and flip Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and one of New Hampshire or North Carolina (force me to choose and I'll say New Hampshire). Republicans hold Florida, Indiana and (sadly) Missouri.

House: Democrats break 200 seats but fail to win a majority.

Gubernatorial: Democrats hold Missouri, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Montana; flip Indiana and North Carolina. If this comes true, it represents Democrats running the table on the contested governors' races -- but it seems like their candidates are overperforming compared to the Senate.

8:17 AM: There won't be a lot worth reporting on for awhile, and I have a morning meeting anyway, so for now I'll just leave you with my personal GOTV theme lyrics, courtesy of Hoobastank's "Without a Fight":

The clock is counting down...
The seconds tick away...

This is our time! Without a doubt!
Time to ignite! We're not going down,
Without a fight!

This is our time! Get up off the ground!
Take what is mine! We're not going down,
Without a fight!

A Republic, If We Can Keep It

Ben Franklin was always my favorite founding father, at least since I played him in Burning Tree Elementary's Fifth Grade Play (the play was called Let George Do It, but my scene was actually a cut-in from 1776). It may even predate that -- I have to imagine I read Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin by his Good Mouse Amos at an even earlier age (an excellent children's book, by the way -- all good children's books contain mice).

Among Dr. Franklin's most famous lines was his reported statement, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, that we had created "a Republic, if you can keep it."

The constitutional character of America is not something one can take for granted, and it is not something we claim by birthright. We must keep it, each and every day. It is an ongoing responsibility.

But some days are more salient than others. Election days are always among them, and this election day is more meaningful than most. This is the moment where we get to decide what sort of country we want to be. This is the moment where we get to prove that our homilies about law and liberty, equal justice and due process, free speech and free press, are more than just words.

Some of you (like myself) have already voted. If so, thank you. If you are waiting until election day, please make sure to go to the polls. And if you are still unsure of whether it's worth voting, or whether there's time, or whether it matters -- it is, there is, and it does.

America is not perfect, but it is a great Republic -- a haven for millions who have come to these shores seeking a better life, and a model for millions more inspired by our constitutional ideals. I never want America to stop being the sort of place people around the world look up to. I never want America to stop being the sort of place where people believe that they can achieve their dreams. I never want America to stop being the sort of place where people want to immigrate to.

America, is and has been all of these things. They define and demarcate our Republic.

Tomorrow, we will see if a majority of Americans find that Republic to be worth keeping.

Marco Rubio Losing Would Be the Best Thing That Could Happen to the GOP

I'm assuming -- perhaps too brightly, although even the most pessimistic projectors have Hillary Clinton the sizable favorite -- that Hillary Clinton will win Tuesday night, and Donald Trump will lose. Other Republicans will lose next week as well. Mark Kirk will lose. Ron Johnson will almost certainly lose (though the "almost" is a recent addition, and not the right trendline). Joe Heck might lose, if the massive Democratic wave in the early voting is any indicator.

Marco Rubio, by contrast, probably will not lose. And that's a shame.

It's not, truth be told, that I have any personal objections to Marco Rubio -- at least, no more so than come standard to pretty much any Republican these days. If anything, Rubio is probably an above-average Republican (not that that's saying much). In any event, my argument isn't based around Rubio needing to lose because he's particularly bad or malicious or anything of that nature. Rather, what I care about is whether there is any hope of the non-lunatic wing of the GOP to win its coming civil war. For it to do so, the bulk of the party will have to come to terms with the fact that the path it's currently on -- the path that led them to Trump -- is not sustainable. And to come to the realization, important Republicans -- those who stand a chance of leading the party in the future -- will have to personally experience pain. And loss.

Mark Kirk losing his seat will not cause anyone to undergo any soul-searching. Nor will losses by Ron Johnson, or Joe Heck, or Pat Toomey, or many of the other vulnerable-ish Republicans this year. The difference between Rubio and many other Republicans who might lose on Tuesday is that Rubio represents the future of the Republican Party -- at least, if it is to have any future. In office, Rubio hasn't really shown the moxie to stand up to the radicals of his party -- sure, he tried to do work on immigration, but he folded like a cheap suit in the face of right-wing pressure. If he's reelected, I expect him to continue in that largely go-along get-along fashion. But unlike most of his colleagues, Marco Rubio still matters to the GOP even if he loses reelection. And a Marco Rubio who goes from rising star to unemployed because of Donald Trump is a Marco Rubio who will be highly motivated to grab his Party by the jaw and wrench their eyes toward some uncomfortable truths.

Is It Still a "Smear" If It's, You Know, True?

"Republicans are racist. That’s been the predictable smear the left has hurled at the GOP for decades. It was always ever groundless and cynical," opens Noah Rothman, right before effectively admitting it turned out to be exactly right.

The title of the piece is "The GOP's White Supremacy Problem", and hey, if that by-now-reflexive presage is what you need to actually reckon with the problem then go for it I guess, but I can't say that it inspires a ton of confidence.

Lee Smith on the SPLC is the Bizarro Version of Berkeley Protest

The other day, a colleague of mine described the typical Berkeley student activist's argument as "taking a reasonable point, and then pushing it so hard and so far that it stops being reasonable and starts being terrible."

Lee Smith of Tablet Magazine must have attended Berkeley.

Smith has primarily graced my virtual pages for his commentary on the Iran Nuclear Deal. The problem was not that he opposed it -- I had mixed feelings myself, though ultimately came out in favor -- or even linking the issue to questions of anti-Semitism. The problem was that Lee's contributions were consistently histrionic, bordering on conspiratorial, and frequently failed to display basic reading comprehension skills.

Today's target is the Southern Poverty Law Center's newly released field guide to anti-Muslim extremists. The document lists off fifteen names, much of the public disdain for this document centers around its inclusion of Maajid Nawaz, founder of the Quilliam Foundation and self-described liberal Muslim activist. I had heard of Nawaz, though I didn't know much about him, but even solely going off what the SPLC says about him in this document the case for labeling him an "anti-Muslim extremist" seems exceptionally thin. Placing him on a list that includes Pam Geller seems recklessly irresponsible at best, discrediting at worst.

So, we start with a reasonable point! What will Smith do with it?

It is sad but telling that the SPLC’s so-called field guide to Muslim-haters is not a list of violent extremists—who certainly do exist—but is instead a blacklist of prominent writers whose opinions on a range of cultural and political issues are offensive to the SPLC. The SPLC blacklist list contains practicing Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, foreign-policy think-tankers like Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes, and right-wing firebrands like David Horowitz—none of whom could be reasonably described as anti-Muslim bigots.

Who indeed could call Frank Gaffney -- who thought President Obama must "still" be a Muslim following his Cairo address -- or David "Islamo-fascism awareness week" Horowitz "anti-Muslim bigots"? It's unreasonable, I say! I will cop that both are non-violent, but hatred and malign ideologies are hardly limited to the explicitly violent variety (indeed, that observation -- noting that there are "Islamists" who are non-violent but still hold deeply reactionary views -- is one of the things that got Nawaz on the list!). Hell, even take Smith's next-most-sympathetic example, after Nawaz -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali has an extraordinarily powerful and moving life story. But she really did advocate closing down Muslim schools in the West, and that really is pretty flagrantly biased. It's perfectly valid and appropriate to call that out.

Oh, and speaking of President Obama, you know he's going to make an appearance:

Interestingly, the document fails to list the man who, according to [the SPLC's] description, is the world’s most influential anti-Muslim extremist—President Barack Obama, who told the Atlantic that young people in the Middle East are only thinking about how to kill Americans.

No, he didn't (Smith is kind enough to include the link. Go ahead and read it -- Obama said nothing of the sort.). I tweeted at Tablet that they "could save a ton of money by firing its editors, since they're clearly not doing anything anyway", and this was the section I had in mind. This is the sort of passage that a self-respecting editor has to put on the chopping block. I've written for Tablet, I know they're capable of doing it. I can't imagine they're not embarrassed by this. If you don't care about Smith looking bad, at least care about what you're doing to yourself.

Finally, Smith is shocked that the SPLC urges that people not rely upon these listees as sources on Islam.

Nor does the SPLC hide the fact that the purpose of its publication is to blacklist and silence its enemies. The field guide recommends to its consumers in the media that they, “research the background of extremist spokespeople and consider other sources, and if they do use anti-Muslim spokespeople, point out their extremism.”

I mean, really? Is that our definition of "blacklist" now (we'll just skate past Smith uncritically adopting the whole "people not listening to my terrible opinions is 'silencing'!" frame) -- trying to rely on reputable sources when talking about a given group, rather than fringe lunatics? It's a "blacklist" to "consider other sources" on Islam other than Pamela Gellar? Really? I mean, soon, we might ask that the newspaper not rely on Kevin MacDonald or Miko Peled regarding the Jews (both are, to be scrupulously fair, non-violent, and according to Smith that's the only hurdle one needs to cross)!

There is a reasonable point in here that the SPLC, in including someone like Nawaz as an "anti-Muslim extremist", badly damaged its credibility in a quite noble endeavor to get mainstream media sources to stop treating Frank Gaffney (who thought the Obama administration was gearing up to invade Israel), or Pam Geller (who rose to prominence by objecting to building mosques in lower Manhattan because they must be celebrating the 9/11 attacks) as credible. That is a very much a point worth making; my instinct is to share in it. But Smith insists on taking that good point and absolutely obliterating it in his usual explosion of breathless hysterics.

He'd fit right in among a certain crowd here at Berkeley.

Has the GOP Already Lost Its Civil War?

Last week, I talked about how good Republicans -- the sorts who are genuinely appalled by Donald Trump and have been from the beginning -- need to come to terms with the underlying causes that brought him to the fore of their party. Donald Trump was not an act of God, he was not a bolt of lightning. He is the Republican nominee because of choices the Republican Party made in dealing with its coalition -- fanning flames of bigotry, paranoia, anti-intellectualism, and outright hatred. Many have suggested that after this election (assuming Trump loses), the GOP will face a "civil war" between the pro-Trump elements of the Party and the "establishment" wing.

Jonathan Chait offers another hypothesis: The GOP already had its civil war, and the Trump wing has won. The only thing now is for sane conservatives to admit defeat and leave.

Chait has some powerful evidence, not the least of which is the fact that Republicans who dare stand up to Trump for even a moment tend to see their approval ratings crater among Republican voters. The fact of the matter is that the median Republican right now is not "appalled" by Donald Trump. They are not outraged by what he's done to the party. Donald Trump represents what they want out of Republicans. They're never happier than when a Republican Congressman whips up yet another frenzied foam of investigatory nonsense against this or that Democratic leader -- Hillary Clinton makes for a good target, but she's hardly necessary for the feeding frenzy. It's no accident that the way Republicans rally votes now is by swearing to never confirm a Supreme Court Justice nominated by a Democrat while pining longingly at the possibility of putting a "bullseye" on Hillary Clinton -- while standing in a gun store. This is the Republican Party for the foreseeable future. The civil war was this year's primary. Non-lunatics lost. Decisively.

It is far from clear that there is anything good Republicans can do to save their party at this point. That's a bitter pill to swallow, no doubt, but a necessary one. The choice is either a fundamentally sane party that is more to the left than you'd like, or an increasingly nightmarish disaster-show where sitting governors consider Trump's potential to be "authoritarian" to be a form of praise.

Your call.

Meet Avi Buskila, The New (Mizrahi) Head of Peace Now

I highly, highly recommend you read this fascinating interview with Avi Buskila, the new head of Peace Now in Israel. Buskila is a gay Mizrahi Jew (his parents immigrated from Morocco), he grew up on Israel's periphery, and he has combat experience as an IDF soldier -- including stopping a terrorist attack by a fellow IDF servicemember on innocent Palestinians. Some highlights:

On the left and Mizrahim

Buskila talks about the kind of posts he encounters in left-wing groups on social media. For example one person wrote: "We've gathered the savages and brought them to Israel, and now they are destroying us," meaning Jews of Mizrahi descent. "After all, right-wingers equal Mizrahim, equal religious," he says. 

But Buskila says has no intention of being the "left’s pet Mizrahi."

"I won’t apologize for serving in the IDF longer than Naftali Bennett or for living in the periphery longer than Miri Regev," he says defiantly. 

"The portrayal of the left as old and Ashkenazi is accurate. There are a lot of people in the (peace) camp who would rather see us fail than give up their control. They refuse to recognize that it’s time they retire and leave. But I have news for them—they are going to lose control and if they don't, we'll take it from them, both in the political parties and in organizations. The left, in many ways, failed to speak to the people. For years, it just told everyone why they are wrong."

"The left doesn’t respect the painful narrative of fear. I don’t doubt my mother's fears. She spent most of her life in shelters under the threat of rocket fire. Speaking their language means I'm not preaching, and I'm not constantly explaining to someone why he's wrong. It's not about coming from Tel Aviv to tell a Netivot resident that his fears and the discrimination he feels are nonexistent bullshit. I accept what they're telling me."

On coordinating with international actors

"Everyone can do what they think is right. I respect and support these organizations. At the end of the day, Breaking the Silence and B'Tselem are my partners, and we all have the same vision. What distinguishes between us is our style of work. I don’t feel their international work harms Peace Now. However, I do strongly oppose BDS. It hurts us and undermines a possible agreement. We need to speak up in the international arena but to choose carefully whom we speak with. I have not lost hope for the State of Israel."

On the Israeli right's standard-bearers

"There's a small settler group that delegitimizes the entire country. Naftali Bennett speaks of annexation and other such nonsense, but he is terrified. He doesn’t have the courage to go through with it. Why isn’t this right-wing government annexing the territories? Bennett is dangerous because his party produces the most extreme statements that threaten Israeli democracy.

"For example, Uri Ariel, a man who symbolizes all that is bad in my eyes—the scared Diaspora Jew who walks around with a grenade in his pocket fearing for his life. He doesn’t care about anything but Greater Israel and is willing to pay for it with rivers of blood. The man uses the Torah to produce racism, homophobia, and a lot of money. He is not alone; he sits with (Bezalel) Smotrich, who is insane, and Ayelet Shaked, who manages to say the most terrible things with such a sweet tone. She seems not to understand that a more Jewish state means that I do not have the right to live here because I am gay, that the entire country will be closed down for Shabbat, and our children will learn to read from Torah scrolls in the first grade.  

"Ask Bennett for me: how many Mizrahim are in his Bayit Yehudi party? There aren’t a lot because it’s a party that represents a settler elite, which is Ashkenazi and Anglo-Saxon. They think that he people should worship them. And within this elite there is another elite: the Hebron settlers who are Ashkenazi and receive even more money than other settlers. They don’t think of other Israeli citizens, not even my mother or their friends in Kiryat Shmona. They think only of themselves. NIS 300 million went to settlements in recent months. How much money went to the residents of Kiryat Shmona? Did Bibi visit Kiryat Shmona or even look down at it from a plane? The city is on the verge of collapse. When it was under attack during the Second Lebanon War, it was relatively protected. Today it interests no one."

But seriously -- read the whole thing.

After Ammon Bundy, Can We PLEASE Stop Obsessing Over O.J. Simpson?

Ammon Bundy and his cohort have been acquitted of all charges following their seizure of a federal Oregon Wildlife Refuge despite, you know, clearly having done it. A lot of people are upset about this, but I'm not. You want to know why?

Honestly, the O.J. Simpson trial had been getting a bit dated as a reference for "criminal trial where obviously guilty persons don't get convicted."* And with the Bundy acquittal, we can finally let the Simpson case go and focus our contempt for the criminal justice system and effective jury nullification on a more recent and topical case.

That's precisely how this will work, right? We are all equally outraged when high-profile White people escape punishment for the crimes they clearly committed?

* In many ways, this is worse than the Simpson case -- for while Simpson was almost assuredly guilty, at least he actually denied committing the crime. The Bundys more or less admitted to doing everything the government charged them with, with a defense justified by "but it's the government, so come on" -- a much more classic case of nullification.

The Berkeley Republican Challenge

Speaking of Republicans here at Berkeley, UC-Berkeley's own news site has an interesting piece on the particular challenges facing Berkeley Republican students this year. Of course, it's always a bit awkward being a conservative on the Berkeley campus. But Trump complicates things greatly, and the article interviews a range of perspectives -- from the Latino President of the Berkeley College Republicans (who had done border patrol work with the Coast Guard and was disturbed by Trump's rhetoric regarding immigrants), to a woman who is running a quixotic GOP bid for our local state assembly seat and agrees with the "locker room talk" explanation for Trump's rhetoric on women, to the child of Iranian refugees who was more of a "pox on both houses" sort. It's a good read.

One other thing I'll note on this is that my undergraduates this year are hardly the stereotypical collection of raging leftists one might expect. Certainly, they clearly lean left-of-center as a whole, and on issues like gay marriage they can barely even comprehend the argument that it should not be a national civil right. But on other issues, they're quite open to "conservative" arguments: many are deeply dubious of a strong federal government at the expense of states rights, and many at least had questions regarding the constitutionality of Obamacare. And -- in perhaps the starkest contrast to the contemporary zeitgeist of Kids These Days -- I've found them perfectly willing to contemplate and consider ideas which challenge their pre-existing belief systems (the African-American student who started by turning her nose up at the mention of Clarence Thomas, but eagerly gobbled up some of the resources I offered her about his judicial and political philosophy and its intersections with African-American political thought, was a striking and heartening example). By and large, I've found my undergraduate students to be a thoughtful, considerate, intellectually curious lot.

In entirely unrelated news, tomorrow some Berkeley students (and a few faculty members) will protest to demand that the University stop talking to Jews. You might think that's a little hyperbolic, but given that their final demand is that the University stop "coordinating" with, among other organizations, the ADL, the AJC, and the Jewish Community Relations Council, I feel okay with the descriptor.

Trump is not an Act of God

I have, believe it or not, Republican friends (yes -- even here in Berkeley!). None of them "like" Donald Trump, so to speak. For some, that manifests in much the same way that grouchy Sanders voters feel about Clinton -- certainly not their ideal candidate, and they're happy to give off a laundry list of shortcomings, but not manifestly distinct from any other politician on their side of the spectrum who they view as unideal.

But others are very much on the #NeverTrump train, and have reacted to his nomination with a sort of staggered shellshock. They feel genuinely betrayed, completely adrift. Trump is not just an "unideal" candidate, he is the antithesis of everything that they identify with as conservatives.

I do feel bad for these people. Seriously -- I do. And it's worth noting that many of them have endured appalling levels of abuse -- grotesque, threatening, vicious abuse -- for their stance. I don't want to downplay that. But I'm watching and waiting to see if they will really come to terms with the fact that Trump is their baby. Not them, personally, but he is the outcropping of specific choices that Republicans have made over the past eight years (at least). He is not a bolt of lightning. He is not an act of God. He is not (to take the most pathetic rationalization of all) a "Democrat" (there are all manner of ways I could respond to "Trump is a Democrat", but my first instinct is simply to retort "yet note how we managed not to nominate him!").

Donald Trump -- racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, bolstered by the alt-right and trumpeted by the anti-Semites -- is what you get when you spend years playing wink-and-nod with racist conspiracy theories while loudly dismissing any objections as just  "playing the race card." Donald Trump -- paranoid, conspiratorial, unwilling to straight-forwardly commit to accepting the validity of an election he loses -- is what you get when you whip up an unsubstantiated frenzy about epidemics of "voter fraud." Donald Trump -- abjectly unconcerned with facts and openly derisive towards truth -- is what you get when you convince your followers that the media, academia, empirical research, and scholarly inquiry are all thinly-disguised liberal Trojan horses. Donald Trump -- out of control, completely unconstrained by Republican leaders (to say nothing of basic norms of decency), standing at the head of a movement that seems ready to burn it all down -- is what you get when you gleefully celebrate your base taking on the characteristics of an establishment-smashing mob.

It was very clear that many Republican elites thought they could tap into these sentiments and keep them under control. They convinced themselves that "everyone" knew it was rhetoric, it was hyperbole, it was red meat, it wasn't serious, it wasn't representative, it was only a few rubes or hot-heads who actually believed it. Until it wasn't. Until it turned out that most of the base did believe it. Donald Trump is the fruit of a decade of Republican labor. It is easier and more comforting to view him as a divine calamity, particularly for those for whom the Trump movement -- like the Frankenstein's monster it most resembles -- has turned on them with a vengeance. But his emergence is not cloaked in any mystery. And until my shellshocked Republican friends forthrightly grapple with how Donald Trump came to be the representative of contemporary American conservatism, they will never be able to either launch an effective counterattack or -- and this might be what is necessary -- accept that the contemporary conservative movement can no longer be their home.

More Grading Roundup

In the middle of a paper-grading binge. That means it's roundup time!

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The conservative Arizona Republic endorsed Hillary Clinton. It got death threats in response. Its reply is a stirring defense of First Amendment values that deserves to be circulated widely.

The Washington Post has a fascinating profile on Derek Black, a young man who was raised in the White Supremacist movement and was considered a rising star in that community, who has since come to repudiate his old beliefs. The turning point was when -- after his racist affiliations became known to his college classmates -- an Orthodox Jewish classmate took it upon himself to invite Black to Shabbat dinners. It's a beautiful and touching story about how courageous acts of kindness really can make a difference even in very dark places.

The recent UK parliamentary report on anti-Semitism is a masterclass on how its done. It begins by adopting the MacPherson principle (that the starting point for when something ought to be deemed racist is when a member of the targeted group perceives it as such) for when it is appropriate to consider an anti-Semitism claim, which is correct; it then observes that more than just subjective sentiment of the aggrieved party is necessary to sustain a complaint of anti-Semitism, which is also correct. As Anshel Pfeffer put it: "British Anti-Semitism Report Declares War on ‘Goysplaining.’" I highly encourage everyone to read it in full.

Someone just sent me a link to Unite for Palestine, which is basically the internecine (and inverted) version of the Canary Mission -- an attempt by one wing of pro-Palestinian activists to name-and-shame anyone in their movement who is too concerned about anti-Semitism. JVP is a favored target, which is deliciously predictable.

"First they came for Assange." Then, maybe, they'll come for some other accused sexual predators. We can only hope.

UNESCO formally adopts resolution denying Jewish connection to its own holy sites. In conclusion, it's inexplicable why the Israeli government doesn't heed UN resolutions which are only interested in attaining peace and justice throughout the region.

Mother Jones' Very Familiar Haim Saban Article

Today, I came across a very long investigative piece in Mother Jones by Andy Kroll of The Nation Institution on the connections between Israeli-American media mogul Haim Saban and Hillary Clinton. As I was reading it, I couldn't help but think it sounded very familiar. Was it an older article, moved to the top of MoJo's front page because it became topical? No, it's slated for the magazine's November/December 2016 issue. Did I somehow come across an early release copy? I don't think so -- where would I have gotten my hands on that? Yet the feeling persisted and persisted, until I got to this segment:

Saban says he still believes in a two-state solution, but his all-consuming concern is defending Israel and fortifying its relationship with the United States. "For me," he said several years ago, "bringing the American president closer to the people of Israel is a life goal."

One year at the Saban Forum, an annual conference featuring top officials and public figures from the United States and Israel (with the odd Arab leader), the mogul outlined his three-pronged approach for influencing American politics: fund political campaigns, bankroll think tanks, and control the media. In addition to the Saban Forum, he funded a Brookings Institution research center focused on US-Israeli relations. He has tried for years to buy media outlets in the United States and Israel; it wasn't a profit he was after, per se, but "a return with influence," as he once told a journalist.

That did it: I knew I had seen something like that line before (right down to "control the media"). And so I looked into it, and realized I had indeed read such an article -- in 2010 in the New Yorker, where Connie Bruck had published her own long profile piece on Saban. Compare the passage above to one from that article:

[Saban] remains keenly interested in the world of business, but he is most proud of his role as political power broker. His greatest concern, he says, is to protect Israel, by strengthening the United States-Israel relationship. At a conference last fall in Israel, Saban described his formula. His “three ways to be influential in American politics,” he said, were: make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets. In 2002, he contributed seven million dollars toward the cost of a new building for the Democratic National Committee—one of the largest known donations ever made to an American political party. That year, he also founded the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, in Washington, D.C. He considered buying The New Republic, but decided it wasn’t for him. He also tried to buy Time and Newsweek, but neither was available. He and his private-equity partners acquired Univision in 2007, and he has made repeated bids for the Los Angeles Times.

Huh. Yes, I'd say "familiar" is one way to describe the relationship between those two passages. (The New Yorker profile is mentioned -- but not linked to -- once much deeper in Kroll's essay, on an unrelated point). That's probably the most stark overlap, but by and large Kroll's piece reads as basically a slightly rewritten and updated rehash of Bruck's older profile.

While we're on the subject, I remain curious about the "control the media" line. Obviously, "politically active Jewish billionaire says he wants to 'control media outlets'" is rather fraught territory to tread on. It would be one thing if Saban actually said as much -- and hey, brash Hollywood executives have been known to say alarming things -- but you'll note that it isn't actually placed in quotations (the "three ways to be influential in American politics" are apparently a direct quote, but the actual list is Bruck's paraphrase).

Kroll doesn't give a source for his own paragraph -- it certainly seems to track Bruck's closely -- and now we have two sources attributing to a powerful Jewish figure a desire to "control the media" without any indication of what, precisely, Saban said. And again -- maybe he did use the word "control". But the lack of a direct quote here is noteworthy given the decision to describe his position in terms that smack of a classic anti-Semitic trope. If Kroll -- who matter-of-factly describes Saban's "divided loyalties" in his very third paragraph -- has a direct quote from Saban wherein he says he wants to "control the media", he should provided it. If he simply is cribbing from Bruck's prior work, he should say so.

I have no particular desire to laud or indict Haim Saban. I find him an intrinsically interesting figure for a variety of reasons (not the least of which is his Egyptian-Jewish background -- given about a paragraph's worth of relatively similar attention in both essays), but his politics are more hawkish than my own and the beneficence of his influence is no doubt mixed. But I don't think it's too much to ask that an essay holding itself out as a major piece of novel investigative journalism should do more than give a glorified update of another profile published six years ago.

The Midwest's Racial Incarceration Problem

Sometimes, when we talk about racial injustice in America, we instinctively think about the American South. And sometimes, when trying to check that instinct, we say things like "sure, things are worse in the South -- but it's actually a problem nationwide."

But it's not always the case that the South is the worst offender. A very interesting post about comparative racial incarceration rates indicates that it may be the upper Midwest -- embodied by my beloved Minnesota -- that actually has the greatest incarceration problem.

The first graphic perhaps bolsters our intuitive notions about the South -- its overall incarceration rate seems far higher than the rest of the country. But if we zoom in solely on the Black male incarceration rate, that gets blurrier.

Here the evidence is more mixed: Some Southern states (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana) continue to do poorly -- but they're joined by states like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. But even this graphic might be misleading, since it doesn't provide a comparative account of how many Black men are in jail versus their White fellows. Oklahoma, for example, seems to throw everyone in prison -- so it stands to reason that it puts a lot of Black people in prison too.

This graphic showcases the Black incarceration rate as compared to the White incarceration rate in each state. And here we can see how the center of gravity shifts decisively to the north, and particularly the upper-Midwest. Minnesota, for example, doesn't really imprison that many people -- but if you are in jail, you're almost certainly Black (or another racial minority -- Minnesota distinguishes itself for having a massive disparity not just for African-Americans, but for Latinos and Native Americans as well).


Now to be sure, we can debate whether the most important metric is the overall percentage of Black men put in prison, or the comparative Black/White figures. One could object that it is strange to excuse Oklahoma's mass incarceration of Black men by observing that it imprisons a ton of White men too. Much of the South performs "well" in the last graph simply because it has elected to pursue a mass incarceration strategy for everybody, and it's hardly a given that this decision is worth lauding. But certainly, these comparative figures are a relevant data point. And they're one where the South significantly outperforms many of its northern peer states. Those of us interested in racial justice need to own up to that.

Resolved: Trump-Supporting Jews Can Never Call Other Jews "Self-Hating"

Donald Trump's latest speech was notable for basically being a "best-of" compilation of anti-Semitic dogwhistles: A mysterious cabal of "international bankers" who are pushing for "radical globalization" and who have "virtually unlimited" financial, political, and media resources. This was after his second debate performance, where virtually every name he dropped as part of the nefarious Clintonite conspiracy was a Jewish one (Blumenthal, Soros, Gruber....). And that, in turn, follows from his more-or-less explicit promotion of a rabidly anti-Semitic alt-right led by David Duke and an array of other neo-Nazis whom Trump has barely brought himself to disavow.

Yet despite this, Donald Trump still has Jewish supporters. We shouldn't overstate the extent of this -- Jews on the whole are overwhelmingly Democratic to begin with, and even among Republicans Jews have been prominent members of the #NeverTrump movement. I simply observe that Trump continues to have some Jewish supporters. The Republican Jewish Coalition still hasn't pulled their endorsement, for example. Sheldon Adelson remains a high-profile backer. And the New York Jewish Week, in the course of endorsing Hillary Clinton for President (it's first endorsement in its history), especially chided the Orthodox Jewish community for being willing to back a candidate that so openly flouts their purported values of "piety, modesty in terms of sexual contact and respect for leaders with spiritual and intellectual authority."

So these Jews exist, albeit as a small minority of the whole. And to those Jews whom -- after all the contempt that Trump has ladled onto our community and our values -- continue to support Trump, I'll simply say this. I would never call you a "self-hating Jew". I loathe that term; I virtually never use it, and I won't use it here. But if you vote for Trump, you forfeit the right to ever call other Jews "self-hating".

Deal?

Strength, Repentance, and Jewish Diasporism

What is complete repentance? It is so when an opportunity presents itself for repeating an offense and the offender refrains from doing so because he has repented, not out of fear or lack of strength. -- Maimonides

To be contrite in our failures is holier than to be complacent in perfection. -- Abraham Joshua Heschel

Another Yom Kippur has concluded, and as my dad likes to say, the best part is that we're never farther away from another Yom Kippur than we are at this moment. A favored pastime of Jewish intellectuals this time of year is to point out various sins of the Jewish community as a whole -- Israel is a frequent target, though not the only one -- and urge repentance.

I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, framed properly. Over Rosh Hashanah, my home Rabbi gave a compelling sermon about the need to create a positive Jewish spiritual identity that went beyond "survive!", arguing that our communal Jewish institutions had given my generation the short shrift by failing to conceptualize Judaism as anything other than Fackenheim's 614th Commandment (a Commandment which, to be fair, actually does resonate with Millennial-generation-me). Repentance is about becoming better than we were before, and it's never a bad thing for the Jewish community to be better. The idea of being a "light unto nations" imposes a heavy burden on ourselves, but one we should be proud of striving towards even as we know our light could always shine brighter.

I thought about this while reflecting on Mira Sucharov's thoughtful column about the new "non-Zionist" synagogue that recently opened in Chicago. As Sucharov observes, the synagogue is not really "non-Zionist" in the way that she is a "non-NFL fan". It is by no means indifferent to Zionism. It has very strong opinions about Zionism and Israel generally. In a sense, they care a lot about Israel (in the same way that Sucharov does). But in a sense, it seems quite different. Perhaps they "care" about Israel in the same way they "care" about North Korea: "they simply think that Israel is responsible for a significant amount of evil in the world, and are working to try and rectify it -- there is no sentimentality behind it, anymore than efforts to end North Korean brutality are motivated by deep caring about North Korea."

Maybe that pushes too far -- the synagogue does seem to "care" especially about Israel because it is Jewish. But even here, the linkage to Jewishness is of a contingent and regretful kind: they don't want Israel to change so that it becomes a better emblem of Jewishness in the world, they view it as objectionable that it represents Jewishness to begin with -- that it is a Jewish state. They're concerned with Israel because it gives Jews a bad name, but they don't otherwise view Israel as legitimately part of a Jewish future. Instead, the synagogue is based around the concept of "Diasporism" -- that the Jewish home is everywhere and nowhere. Everywhere, because Jews should view their home as wherever they happen to reside. Nowhere, because there is no particular spot -- Israel included -- that we can claim as ours.

The ideal Jewish role in diasporism is a critical one -- we imagine ourselves as the conscience, the gadfly, the light unto that nation. Sometimes, of course, diasporism keeps us busy simply to remain a surviving group, a clinging-by-the-fingernails group, a deeply marginalized and vulnerable group. By definition we are not the dominant group, the powerful group, the in-control group. We certainly are not the oppressor group.

Prior to the establishment of Israel, the Jewish existence was diasporic. It did, largely, take on the qualities identified above. It can be and is romanticized, of course -- more focus on the first sentence (conscientiousness and critique) and less on the second (vulnerability and marginalization). The reason diasporism failed in the 20th century is that, between the roughly 50 years of having a state and 50 years of not having one, Zionism decisively beat diasporism on the all-important "not nearly being annihilated in a cataclysmic genocide" scoreboard. But there is no question that having a state, having a place where Jews were more than just a critical voice but a dominant voice, an in-control voice, a powerful voice was a very novel experience for Jews. And one upshot of having power is abusing that power. Of using that power to deeply, seriously, significantly wrong others. As Israel as done. As happens with power. Power gives one the opportunity to do things: terrible things and great things alike. The same dynamic that allows Jews to govern ourselves rather than exist as supplicants, also allows us to dominate others rather than coexist in equality. The same dynamic that allows Jews to save ourselves rather than pray for salvation, also allows us to hurt others rather than to respect their dignity. The coin of power allows either and both to be purchased -- one cannot have the opportunity for one without the opportunity for the other.

Diasporism sees Jewish wrongs -- genuine wrongs -- and yearns to go back to a time when Jews didn't act that way. And it is true: before there was an Israel, there was also no occupation, no Gaza incursions, no military law over Palestinians, no West Bank barrier, and so on. Jews in the diaspora did not need to worry about occupying anyone; we had no nation that could occupy. We would never be responsible for promulgating unjust laws; the laws were not ours to promulgate. We had no risk of significantly hurting others; the hand on the sovereign sword was not ours. Even our uprisings and resistances were blessed in their hopelessness. In Max Weber's terms, we could live a pure ethics of conviction, with zero concern for the ethics of responsibility. There is no true responsibility in diaspora, nothing really falls on our shoulders.

Diasporism is, at root, the Jewish fear of Jewish power. It knows that powerful Jews have the potential to be bad Jews -- in fact, it sees powerful Jews acting as bad Jews -- and its solution, its teshuvah, is to give up the trappings of power and return to the disempowered diaspora state. But as Maimonides observes, this is not repentance. The man who cuts off his tongue so that he cannot slander his neighbor has not repented, he has made true repentance impossible. Complete repentance must coexist with the opportunity, the strength, the power to commit the sin once again and the free choice not to. To "repent" for the sins derived from Jewish power by abolishing that power is no repentance at all -- it is a tacit belief that Jewish power will always, unavoidably, inherently be sinful power. It is a choice precisely to avoid the hard work of repentance, to avoid uncomfortable holiness of having to be contrite in our failures.

Diasporism is in some ways the mirror image of a completely self-satisfied Zionism, the sort that is convinced that nothing is Israel's fault, that all the problems and tribulations of the region are completely attributable to the malfeasance of Palestinians or other Arabs (or the UN, or the EU, or Iran....). In both cases, there is a complacency in (imagined) perfection. And both, in their own way, exhibit a preference for Jewish weakness, a desire to not have the choice to do right.

So on this Yom Kippur, I say we reject both. I say we recommit to Jewish strength -- including the strength to recognize and correct our sins, not because we have no choice, but because we once again are faced precisely with that choice.

Three Things I'm Scared Of Right Now

A new NBC/WSJ poll taken in the aftermath of the Donald Trump sexual assault comments has Hillary Clinton up a whopping 11 points in a four-way race (it jumps to 14 points in a two way). FiveThirtyEight has her chances of winning the presidency at 82%; Daily Kos Elections has her at 94% (and while I wouldn't normally trust a partisan site like Daily Kos, DK Elections is the successor to the old "Swing State Project" site -- a group I very much trust and whom I'm found to be eminently impartial and reliable in their electoral analysis). The polls look good, and that makes me feel good.

But still worried. Here are three things that will keep me up at night until the moment Hillary Clinton gets a check mark next to her name on election day.

(1) From Brexit to the Columbia peace deal, this year it seems like polls have consistently underestimated the electoral allure of right-wing resentment. Do they underestimate it by enough to overcome an ever-widening Clinton lead -- and Clinton's far superior campaign organization and ground game? I don't think so, but who knows? This one boils down to "can I trust the polls", and while the answer to that isn't always yes, it's never reliably no, so I'm trying to put this one aside.

(2) If Trump wins, how much unrest will we see in America's streets? Trump's "Second Amendment" comment raised the question of whether his supporters would even accept a Clinton election (and it took a long time for him to say if he'd do so when answering that question directly in the first debate). But there is a simmering mix of anger and fear of a Trump presidency in many corners of America too -- anger that America has not been living up to its promises of equal justice under law, and fear that Trump is the manifestation of White Americans preference that we continue not to do so. If there are marches or demonstrations in American urban centers, we could see a genuine, military-style crackdown from a Trump administration. It's not like he has much care or respect for the bounds of law.

(3) Russians hacking the polling machines. This one might be my greatest fear, because even if we catch it, it would still throw our nation into chaos without clear route to recovery. The risk is real, and I'm honestly not sure why Russia wouldn't try it. Imagine how it would play out: We start seeing suspiciously high Trump numbers in precincts he shouldn't be close in. The President and the head of the CIA announce that they are sure that the polling machines have been compromised by a Russian intrusion. Does anyone think any Republican would believe it? They'd immediately go in on how Obama and Hillary are trying to steal the election! Even if the evidence of Russian tampering is clear, it will no doubt be technical and not amenable to "smoking gun" images or videos. Circumstances like this require trust in our governmental institutions, and the rise of Donald Trump is the rise of a large swath of Americans who have been willing to believe anything and everything about Obama, Clinton, and the entire federal government. There's no way they'd accept a hacking story, even if it was entirely true

2016 Presidential Debate #2: Quick Reactions

I have never, in my life, seen a debate where expectations where set so low for one of the candidates. Donald Trump would have done "better than expected" if he managed to go the whole evening without being kicked off the ballot by his own party. And yet, at the start, he managed to possibly sink below a bar that was literally lying on the ground. He looked like hell. He could not stop sniffing. His answer to the question about his sexual assault braggadocio was beyond awful. His constant whining about the terrible biased moderators was simply pathetic. And then there was his horrifying promise to jail Hillary Clinton when the night was over -- a statement that goes well beyond "will Donald Trump be bad for America" and crosses into "will Donald Trump preserve democracy in America?"

He did, to be sure, get better as the night went on. For the most part, "better" just meant that he was merely incoherent -- repeating buzz words and talking points without even the semblance of substance behind them. Still, you could at least spot some potentially plausible themes (Clinton is all talk, no action) that could have resonance. And Clinton, for her part, didn't seem as comfortable with the format as she did in the first debate. Her big strength the first time around was basically acting as if Donald wasn't in the room -- refusing to engage him, refusing to give him oxygen. The more free-wheeling town hall format (and Trump's incessant interruptions) seemed to nudge her towards feeding the troll Trump, and not to her benefit. Finally, it has to be said that Trump's last answer ("say one nice thing about your opponent") was actually, genuinely, not-grading-on-a-curve excellent.

But still, the absolute best you could say for Trump was this was a draw (CNN's instant poll gave Clinton a solid victory, YouGov gave her a narrower win). And a draw isn't going to cut it for a candidate who is falling behind and whose  campaign is floundering.

So right now, I'm less focused on the horse race aspects, and more on where we are as a nation. Ezra Klein got it right a few days ago:

But the question isn’t whether Trump has any decency. We’ve known for some time that he doesn’t. The question is whether we have any decency — whether we will elect this man, or even come close to electing this man, knowing all we know about him.

What's sad about tonight is the way it represents such a retrogression for our nation. The world is changing at a breakneck pace, and with these changes come new and novel concerns. The problems that have emerged -- getting universal health care for everyone, ensuring that equality is true in practice as well as creed, overcoming unprecedented environmental hazards that threaten our entire ecosystem (just to name a few) -- are both difficult but also solvable if we put our heads down and work on them. Yet what the Trump candidacy has shown -- even if he loses -- is that we're still stuck on the basics. "Do we jail our political opponents?" "Do we brag about our ability to assault women?" "Do we impose flat bans on entire religious groups?" This is all 101-level material, and yet this is what we are spending our political efforts on.

America deserves better than this. But we're not going to get it, not because Hillary Clinton isn't qualified to tackle these issues -- she absolutely is -- but because Trump has dragged us back from a mature democracy to a faltering, barely functioning one. And that is truly unforgivable.

(See my reaction to the first debate here)

To the Edge Roundup

Yesterday, I did the unthinkable. I not only left Google Chrome, I left it for a Microsoft browser (Edge). Chrome had basically stopped running Facebook and Twitter, and so far so good on Edge (though it seems to have trouble with Berkeley's proxy server).

Anyway, the high holidays and related travel kept me off the blog for awhile, so I have quite a few things to clear off the ol' browser.

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Yaacov Lozowick remarks on his Israeli Orthodox shul's experience with a newly-hired female Rabbi. It is fascinating reading.

Venezuela creates the "Hugo Chavez Prize for Peace and Sovereignty", awards it to Vladimir Putin. I think I can honestly say that there's no more deserving recipient.

This is a stellar, stellar piece by Brown undergraduate Benjamin Gladstone on the links between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. It really deserves more than "roundup" status on this blog, but I find myself without much more to say on it other than "read it".

An Israeli lawmaker for Kulanu is pregnant through IVF ... and the father is her gay best friend (I could write headlines for US Weekly)! And best news of all -- her colleagues and her country seem to support her regardless of whether they fall on the ideological spectrum.

There's a controversy burbling in some corners of the conservative "academic watchdog" (for lack of a better term) community regarding off-color remarks by Yale Philosopher Jason Stanley, and he's issued a response to that controversy that I found exceptionally thoughtful and perceptive.

One of the most important skills to develop as an academic is the ability to read things you disagree with and nonetheless recognize how they can be insightful, nuanced, and perceptive. Since Zionism and "settler-colonialism" is in the news (see my extensive remarks here), I thought I'd give a recommendation to one such paper I just read: "When Does a Settler Become a Native? (With Apologies to Mamdani)" by Tel Aviv University scholar Raef Zriek. It's a very interesting paper, even though I don't find all the analysis compelling (and I've communicated to the author that his argument would greatly benefit from engaging with the Mizrahi case).

Ratfucking Your Way to a Democratic Congress

"Ratfucking" is political slang for a dirty trick. Sometimes they're outright illegal (think, oh I don't know, hacking into an opponent's emails). But sometimes they're merely underhanded. One popular form of ratfucking, for example, is when a party runs ads in the opposing party's primary denouncing the (more moderate and electable) candidate as "not a true conservative/progressive". The hope is that this enflames the base to nominate a more extreme or polarizing candidate, who would in turn be an easier general election foe.

The latest burst of Donald Trump misogyny has finally caused a non-insubstantial number of prominent Republicans to withdraw their endorsement of their own candidate, or even pledge not to vote for him. Some of these Republicans include New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who just a few days ago called Trump a good role model (and is being hammered for it by her Democratic opponent) and Nevada Senate candidate Joe Heck, locked in a tight race with Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto. These disavowals, in turn, have generated a furious response from the GOP base which remains avidly pro-Trump. Heck was booed by his own supporters when he announced he was abandoning Trump. Paul Ryan received similar treatment from his hometown crowd after he bailed on a planned rally with Trump.

There has always been a gap between the Republican Party leadership -- which was always worried about Trump and thought he'd be a burden on the ticket -- and the base, which continues to adore him. The entire GOP side of the presidential race, after all, has been the sustained story of the party elites being unable to stop Trump (who -- to be perfectly clear -- I consider to be a beast of their creation. The GOP elite thought it could indefinitely whip up ever-more conspiratorial anti-Obama, anti-Clinton, anti-liberal, anti-government hysteria and yet still keep their base firmly under its own thumb. This entire election has been the story of that hubris blowing up in their face). But right now, it's perhaps more stark than ever: Party leaders actually abandoning their own nominee a month out from the election, while the Party cadre continuing to back him in earnest.

So what would happen if "someone" (probably some hitherto unknown group with a name like "People for a Greater America") started putting up some targeted ads urging Republican voters to not support the "traitors" who have turned on Trump? Label them RINOs, label them appeasers, label them tools of the wretched Hillary Clinton. Haven't we had enough of Republicans who knuckle under to the liberal media and PC culture? If they don't back Trump, why should Trump and his people back them? Throw a couple ads like that in select Nevada markets aimed at the folks who booed Heck, and watch the chaos blossom.

Of course, such a move would stand in tension with another Democratic objective: convincing anti-Trump swing voters that a vote for folks like Heck and Ayotte is akin to a vote for Trump. But with a sufficiently deft touch, it could be managed. There is a core of angry Trump supporters who are primed to hear this message, and they don't necessarily live in the same place or watch the same media as the suburban swing voters for whom Democrats very much want to harp on the "Trump = GOP" message. Hell, if one does it right one could probably get The Donald to tweet something out in favor. Every fiber of Trump's being probably wants to savage those turncoat Republicans who are urging him out of the race. Give him the opportunity, and I bet he'd lash out at them almost as a matter of reflex.

The GOP is fracturing wide open, and the Party's new strategy seems to be to throw Trump overboard in the hopes that it might save their downballot nominees. That might work ... if Trump's base continues to stay loyal to Republican politicians who just sold their candidate down the river. It seems to me that there are ample opportunities for a creative political operative to make that task much more difficult.

Could Misogyny, Of All Things, Finally Destroy Donald Trump?

In our latest spin of the "outrageous Trump remarks" wheel, we landed on misogyny. Specifically, comments Trump made during taping for Access Hollywood where he graphically talked about sexually assaulting women:

During the lewd conversation captured by a microphone Trump was wearing on his lapel, Trump recounts how he tried to "fuck" an unidentified married woman before bragging that he is "automatically attracted to beautiful (women)" and just starts "kissing them." The conversation came just months after Trump married his third and current wife, Melania.

He also said: "When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

How lovely. But this has stood out in that it has seemed to generate a particularly ferocious condemnation from Trump's fellow Republicans. Paul Ryan, set to campaign side-by-side with Trump for the first time, withdrew his invitation and declared himself "sickened". Reince Priebus was far more blunt than I've ever seen him: "no woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever." Jon Huntsman went from endorsing Trump to demanding that he drop out. Even Trump gave a non-apology-apology of the "I apologize if anyone was offended" variety (Jeb Bush: "no apology can excuse away Donald Trump's reprehensible comments degrading women.").

And while the comments themselves really cannot honestly surprise anyone, the reaction to them is a bit striking. Liberals have certainly noticed, and been quite wry -- "oh, it was okay to call Mexicans rapists, and to suggest banning all Muslims, and to fan a resurgent conservative anti-Semitism -- but this was the step too far?" Indeed, while there have been other moments where Trump has said outrageous things and political commentators have declared him dead, only for him to emerge stronger than before (think the John McCain "captured" comments), this feels different -- he is the Republican standard-bearer, there is no deluding oneself that by condemning Trump one can simply switch support to another conservative.

Honestly, it is hard to explain. And I'd be very curious to hear what someone like Kate Manne -- who has written very incisively on the role of misogyny in this election and in our society -- thinks of this development. Right now -- improbable as it may be -- it looks like Trump's misogyny might have finally closed the door on his candidacy. There's almost -- almost -- a sense in which it is heartening (though I won't pop any champagne until November 9).