Who's Afraid of Valerie Plame's Antisemitism?

Two years ago, Valerie Plame -- previously best known as the CIA officer whose cover was blown by Bush administration officials in the run-up to the Iraq War -- got into a bit of trouble for sharing an article titled "America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars," published on the far-right White Supremacist website Unz Review.

Plame went through the usual cycle of "it's worth considering!" to "some of my best friends are Jewish!" to "I'm sorry -- but how could I have known an article titled 'America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars' might be antisemitic?" And then she disappeared again.

Now, she's reappeared, announcing a run for Congress in New Mexico's 3rd district. The New York Times did a 12-paragraph piece reporting on this reemergence -- and somehow "forgot" to mention the relatively recent antisemitism scandal she had been embroiled in.

As Yair Rosenberg points out, this is ridiculous and should be unacceptable. I'm actually more forgiving of the Times for not "contextualizing" Alice Walker's antisemitic book recommendation -- it was part of a series with a very particular structure that never included providing comment on the recommendations, so there the editors could plausibly say they were just following procedure. But this was a free-form story written on their own initiative -- it was entirely up to the writer and editors what information should be deemed important enough to include. That Plame's most recent emergence as a public figure came in the form of a high-profile antisemitism scandal should have garnered mention.

Let the Race for Hillel Presidency Begin!

Eric Fingerhut has announced he's leaving his post as head of Hillel International in order to assume the role of CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America. Fingerhut has led Hillel since 2013.

With his departure, Jewish students are gearing up for an exciting race to see who will be elected as the next Hillel President. Like the annual UJS elections, it should be a great opportunity for young Jewish students to make clear their priorities and exercise democratic oversight over the most important Jewish institution on American campuses.

Just kidding: Hillel isn't a democratic association, and so the students whom Hillel nominally serves will play virtually no substantive role in selecting who runs their organization. Fingerhut's successor will be chosen by a non-student body based on his or her appeal to non-student donors.

71% of Jews Must Be Very Confused

It feels like a lifetime ago that a Greek newspaper, writing on Barack Obama's 2008 election, heralded it as "the end of Jewish domination" (in fact, it was over a decade ago). I remarked then that if Obama was the loyal opposition to the Jewish people, then the 78% of us who voted for him must have been very confused.

Today, President Trump's approval ratings by Jews hover somewhere south of abysmal -- he's rocking a 71% disapproval rate (against 26% approvals).

And yet over and over again, I hear people -- usually non-Jews -- describe Trump as "the most pro-Jewish President in American history". Their rationale, I imagine, is that Trump has willingly backed the right-wing tendencies of the Netanyahu government, and that is all they think it takes to be "pro-Jewish".

Of course, it fails to register that many Jews don't actually like the Netanyahu government and thus don't view this joined-at-the-hip quality to be a perk. And beyond that, since American Jews are -- you know -- American, we understandably care far more about how Trump has affected the status of American Jews in America than we do about Trump's self-professed love for us when we're citizens of another country half the world away.

But if I were to describe American philosemitism ("a philosemite is an antisemite who [thinks he] loves Jews") in a nutshell, it's non-Jews completely ignoring what Jews thinks in order to anoint their own hero as the Jews' beloved. In the philosemitic imagination, the opinions of actual Jews are utterly unnecessary (if not actively obtrusive) to the project of declaring what is good for the Jews.

(Cf.: Alabama citing the Holocaust to justify its draconian anti-abortion ban without any regard to actual Jewish teaching and practice on abortion).

Inartfulness is a Human Condition

One thing we're going to have to learn, as Palestinian voices finally start to become a part of mainstream American politics through figures like Rashida Tlaib, is that they are going to be imperfect. And inartful, and awkward, and sometimes wrongheaded. It is a foolish myth to think that when voices-previously-unheard emerge onto the public scene, they do so in a pristine state of innocence and insight -- perfectly clear-eyed, universalist, and humanistic in orientation. Whether this purity is taken as a descriptor (as it is on parts of the naive left) or a criterion (as it is on parts of the reactionary right), it is equally unreasonable and distorted.

The historical fact is that Palestinians did not, in any meaningful systematic capacity, want to assist Jews during the Holocaust or provide them refuge. For the most part, they were actively against it. Haj Amin Al-Husseini is an extreme figure, and his "leadership" over Palestinians can be overstated, but he's not unimportant, and he implicates genuine collaborationist attempts between Palestinians and Nazis. That history needs reckoning with.

Yet the broader historical fact is that virtually no nation or people performed well on the metric of "giving Jews refuge". Not Americans, not Brits, not Australians, and not Palestinians. If it is self-soothing pablum for Palestinians to tell themselves that they tried to give Jews refuge from the Nazis, it is little more so than the British patting themselves on the back for the kindertransport as a means of ignoring their much broader hostility to taking in Jewish refugees -- a hostility which was explicitly antisemitic in character. Everyone prefers to think of themselves as solely the part of the hero (or at least the noble victim), but part of growing up means accepting the warty parts of one's own history.

But again, this is a very human foible. Awkward attempts at historical revision to make oneself feel better, but which have the effect of minimizing or downplaying the wrongs done to others, are an ever-present feature of political life. That doesn't make them unreal, it just makes them ordinary. If you're Jewish and Zionist, think of all the times you've heard and perhaps repeated the mantra "a land without a people for a people without a land." Imagine what someone like Rashida Tlaib thinks when she hears that. It is a mantra which downplays hurt caused to another -- people who very much were also of that land. Eventually, upon encountering the narratives which inform us of how it hurts, the better among us shift to new language -- but that awkward moment of transition will always be there. And so when we hear tales of how Palestinians "gave" Jews refuge, and bristle as to the historical illiteracy of the claim, we are indeed experiencing something. The point, though, is that it is nothing different from what many others -- Palestinians (and Jews, for that matter) included -- have experienced before.

In reality, imperfection and awkwardness and partiality and belief in comforting myths that make one out to be the hero of the story is a human condition, not a specifically Palestinian one. The sooner we attribute it to being typically human rather than atypically monstrous, the better of we'll be.

"And Never Rat on Your Friends!": NYC Sexual Harassment Edition

If you've ever taken a company- or university-mandated sexual harassment seminar, you probably remember those multiple-choice quizlets they always hand out. The option set usually comes with one or two reasonable-sounding answers, one answer which the facilitator drummed into you is the wrong answer, and then one answer that's just flat bonkers. For example:

[New York City] councilmembers were presented with a hypothetical scenario in which they were “asked what they should do if they overheard a chief of staff making sexually inappropriate comments in an elevator” that “visibly upset” a female staffer.... According to multiple city councilmembers present, [Ruben Diaz Sr.] interrupted the presentation to scream, “I’m not gonna rat my people out! This place is full of rats!”

Oooookay. And Diaz is not even close to a first-time offender here.

Sadly, he's also not a complete nobody. Diaz is running in the Democratic primary to replace retiring Rep. Jose Serrano in a deep-blue district. You'd think a guy who campaigned with Ted Cruz and talked about how much he liked Donald Trump would be toxic in New York City, but for whatever reason Diaz seems to have strong local backing in his corner of the Bronx. We'll see if it translates to an entire congressional district though -- Serrano, for his part, is a member of the House Progressive Caucus and sports an A "progressive punch" rating, so it's hard to see the district as a whole voting for a self-described "conservative" like Diaz.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LII: Extra Fizzy Drinks at Ramadan

Ramadan has begun, and with it a month of daytime fasting. Speaking as a Jew, that doesn't sound fun (I only fast for one day -- during Yom Kippur -- but we go for the full 24 hours). But at least at night you can eat and drunk what you want.

Just watch out for fizzy drinks, apparently:

A man speaking in Urdu talks about the importance of not having fizzy drinks to open your fast.

He goes on to say cold and fizzy drinks can have a negative effect on your long-term health and could even cause death.

But then a link is made to the fact that many of the major fizzy drinks companies are owned and run by Jews. The speaker also claims that according to the Quran, Muslims are not permitted to have relations or friendships with Jews in any way.

It further adds that during the month of Ramadan they have ‘purposely planned’ to increase the gas content in fizzy drinks so whoever consumes them will be affected.

I don't know much about the health effects of fizzy drinks -- though to the extent they're unhealthy I suspect it's the sugar more than the carbonation that's doing the work, so increasing the gas content seems like more of an annoyance than a devious plot.

But then again, I rarely consume fizzy drinks -- an admission which in the antisemitic imagination probably ranks right up there with saying that I skipped work in New York on 9/11. So take my advice with a grain of salt.

Anyway, if you're Muslim and fasting this month, I hope it is an easy one. And if you do like to break fast with a soda, I'm pretty sure you're in the clear.

Quote of the Day: Sartre on Just Remembering Jews

See if this one resonates with anyone:

In my Lettres Francaises without thinking about it particularly, and simply for the sake of completeness, I wrote something or other about the sufferings of the prisoners of wars, the deportees, the political prisoners, and the Jews. Several Jews thanked me in a most touching manner. How completely must they have felt themselves abandoned, to think of thanking an author for merely having written the word "Jew" in an article!

Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (New York: Schoken 1995 [1948]), 72.

Why Bringing a Swastika To An Israeli Independence Day Celebration is Antisemitic (Really)

A student brought a swastika sign to an Israeli Independence Day celebration at UW-Milwaukee.

Confronted, he said the reason he brought the sign was actually not to make any commentary about Israel or Jews, but rather "because he knew it would draw attention at such a gathering and allow him to talk to the media about issues such as the rise in single mother homes, the opioid addiction and the high number of abortions."

Some might argue that this therefore was not an antisemitic act: the student was not motivated by a desire to hurt Jews, he was flying a swastika for idiosyncratic reasons. But these people are wrong. Though the student was not motivated by anti-Jewish animus, he still acted in a way that foreseeably and unreasonably would cause distress to Jews. He decided that this distress and hurt was less important than drawing media attention to himself and promoting his (unrelated) hobby horse. That sort of devaluing of Jewish sensibilities is itself antisemitic, albeit of a different kind from the explicitly-motivated sort. A person who acts in this way is a person who has shown themselves to be unreasonably cavalier and unconcerned with Jewish feelings.

It is an antisemitism of negligence, perhaps, but it is still antisemitic.

Israeli Supreme Court Overturns Ban on Palestinians Attending Joint Memorial Event (Again)

Last year, the Israeli government tried to ban Palestinians from attending a joint memorial service with Israelis from Tel Aviv. The Israeli Supreme Court overturned the decision. This year, Bibi Netanyahu tried to do the exact same thing. And the Israeli Supreme Court reversed him again, in a "re-run".

"It is not for the defense minister to intervene in how a family chooses to express their private bereavement, the sadness and grief that is present with the loss of a loved one," [Justice Isaac] Amit said, "The petitioners before us have gathered bereaved families who have chosen to express their pain and commemorate their dear ones in a joint ceremony, it isn't for us to intervene in that decision."

In court, the government claimed that the reason for the refusal was -- naturally -- "security", an argument which the court rejected and which Netanyahu pretty much abandoned following the decision in favor of the explicitly political rationale:

Netanyahu responded to the decision on Twitter, writing, "Today's High Court decision was wrong and disappointing. There is no place for a memorial ceremony that equates our blood with the blood of terrorists. That is why I refused to allow entry to the ceremony participants and I believe that the High Court has no place intervening in that decision."

Note that has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with to do with an ideological objection to Israelis and Palestinians grieving together. Whatever one thinks of that as a personal view, in a liberal society that state has no business imposing its judgment on individuals who view differently, and I'm glad the Supreme Court vindicated that right.

Quote of the Day: Sartre on Argument and the Antisemite

This is a pretty famous quote, but it tends to get cut off. I wanted to include the entire paragraph:

The anti‐Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons.  How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has placed himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse. I mentioned awhile back some remarks by anti‐Semites, all of them absurd: "I hate Jews because they make servants insubordinate, because a Jewish furrier robbed me, etc." Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.  

Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (New York: Schoken 1995 [1948]), 19-20.

A Very Jewish Week Roundup

I'm having a very Jewish week.

It started, mostly, with the column I published in Haaretz calling "bullshit" on the claim that the New York Times presents a greater antisemitism threat than contemporary mainstream conservatism.

That led to a completely out-of-the-blue call from none other than ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt. Like, literally, I was sitting on my couch and the phone rang and it was him. We've never conversed or connected in any other way (I've bent the ear of the San Francisco ADL office more than a few times), and there didn't seem to be any other motive behind the call other than to say he liked the Haaretz piece.

Then today, I had another phone call with a different prominent Jewish public figure -- I won't say who, since the project she was asking my take on isn't yet public, but let's just say that if Greenblatt is part of the "establishment" wing of the Jewish community, this person is more on the "insurgent" side. Somehow, I seem to be bridging that gap -- at least a little bit.

Tomorrow, I have a conference call to discuss my participation on a panel at the Goethe-Institut on resurgent antisemitism and White nationalism. Then Friday, I'm meeting with a student who sought me out to discuss how one researches issues of antisemitism in contemporary academia.

Oh, and Jill and I went to Talmud study for the first time last night.

* * *

Jews are the religious group most likely to view Muslims favorably. And wouldn't you know it -- but those positive sentiments are reflected right back at us -- Muslims also overwhelmingly view Jews favorably!

Very interesting new article in the Yale Law Journal experimentally measures whether people feel free to refuse intrusive search requests. Answer: they don't, which doesn't surprise. What might surprise a little is that even explicitly telling people "you're free to refuse this search" doesn't move the needle much.

Radical settler Rabbis caught on type expressing admiration for Hitler and racism. Nice.

Robert Farley thinks Team Living actually had decent military strategy in the Battle for Winterfell.

Trump pick Stephen Moore might not have the votes to get a Fed seat --  which is weird because, if he's a crank extremist too far gone to even get through this pliant GOP Senate, how did he occupy all these respectable conservative sinecures for all these years? Such a mystery.

Artist behind NYT's antisemitic cartoon denies it's an antisemitic cartoon, says controversy is a product of the "Jewish propaganda machine." Checks out!

Big Media David: We Need To Talk About Right-Wing Antisemitism -- For Real This Time

I'm in Haaretz today, spitting fire on our collective failure to tackle mainstream right-wing antisemitism on the spurious grounds that "everyone knows its bad" (whereas we can obsess endlessly over an antisemitic cartoon in the New York Times because, apparently, people "defend" that). In reality, "not everyone knows" right-wing antisemitism is bad, the right is massive denial about the prevalence and danger of right-wing tropes it regularly deploys at the highest level, and the reason we don't talk about it isn't because it's redundant, it's because we are (in Max Rose's felicitious term) chickenshit.

The editors chose to headline the piece "The New York Times Fuels More anti-Semitism Than Trump and Republicans? That's Bullshit". That wouldn't be a problem, except on Twitter the headline is cut off well before the question mark and it is not redounding to my benefit. So if you only saw it there, and thought "oh God, when did David become a MAGA-apologist?" -- click through the link and breathe a sigh of relief.

TV Timeout

Quick thoughts on some of the television I'm watching right now. Warning -- spoilers ahead for any of these shows:

Game of Thrones

• The last episode was basically unwatchable. Not because it was bad -- although it wasn't great -- but literally: it was so dark and blurry you basically couldn't see anything.
• It's rare one says this about Game of Thrones but -- they were too skimpy on the character killing. Pretty much every major character came out alive. The big exceptions -- Theon, Jorah -- were at the end of redemption arcs anyway. There were no "shocking" or even particularly tragic deaths. Jaime, Brienne, or Grey Worm would've worked fine. Maybe GoT has gone soft in its old age.
• I like Arya killing the Night King. I'd have liked it more if she had directly used some of the shape-shifting assassin skill she'd been developing, rather than sort of jumping out of ... nowhere? How did she get there? Is that supposed to be the assassin skill?

Billions

• While I continue to think this is one of the best shows on television right now, I must admit I'm not enjoying this season quite as much as some of the others. Chuck's plot, in particular, seems to be spinning its wheels a bit. But the Taylor/Axe fight, which I think holds a lot of potential, still for me seems to mostly involve them circling each other and sending out skirmishers. I want a real battle.
• You know who's due for a plot? Sacker.
• I also don't like the direction they've taken the Rhodes' sex life. Showtime has often been weirdly good about handling non-normative sexuality in the least likely places (see also: a gender-fluid teenager in "House of Lies"), and I appreciated how it treated BDSM as non-pathological. This season? Definitely pathological. And that's putting aside Chuck's reveal on  national television -- I'm talking about him physically mutilating himself because he "needs" the pain.
• I do like that they quickly and, I hope, permanently disposed of the Russian oligarch character. One thing I've liked about Billions is that it resists the easy play that rich = utterly amoral such that they'd all just be willing to kill people to get what they want. Yes, they destroy lives via other means, but it is more realistic characterization that they think of what they do as very distinct from violent crime, and willingness to do the one does not translate to the other. The Russian plotline threatened to upset that, and I'm glad it went away.
• Wendy is a straight-up monster, it turns out. Was she always so, or is this character development? I'm not sure, and I don't think that speaks well of how the arc has charted out. But Mafee sure earned that rant.
• Speaking of Mafee, I'm worried about him. He's one of the very few "good guys" left on this show, which makes him a prime target for Axe to destroy/Taylor to betray. I don't want to see him get hurt.
• Above notwithstanding, I absolutely do want to see him in a boxing match with Dollar Bill.
• Taylor's dad = B+. Axe's new girlfriend = A+. Dollar Bill's "final solution" for the chicken problem = A++++.

American Ninja Warrior Junior

• Just renewed for Season Two! This was a great show -- the kids were both adorable and talented, and the conceit of the show transitioned well.
• While I won't say she's destined for a career on television, Laurie Hernandez worked as a sideline reporter. Also, placing Laurie -- who is basically defined by being "small" and "graceful" -- next to a bunch of nine-year-olds who make her look like a lumbering giantess is a never-ending source of visual comedy for me.
• One point of adjustment: the pacing of the show on a season-wide level. The prelims lasted forever. And then there was no change to the course even in the semifinal or final round. Give those who advance a new challenge!

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

• I'd say the jump to NBC is a success. There hasn't been a huge shift in tone, though it does seem like perhaps we're getting a bit more fan service than normal (hey -- we earned it for saving the show).
• Oh, also NBC allows bleeping, which allowed the writers to set-up Santiago's fantastic "This B wants a C in her A" moment.
• Obviously sad to see Gina go -- but happy that Scully and Hitchcock made the main credits!

Project Runway

• I have to say, I like Karlie Kloss -- she who, as I've taken to putting it, "married one of the good Kushners" -- more than I thought I would. Like Heidi, she's sooooo pretty, but also seems fun and nice. She's doing a good job. Way to represent team Jew, Karlie!
• The new judges are forgettable and should just let Nina run things. More surprising is that Christian Siriano isn't popping on screen at all. He's definitely no replacement for Tim Gunn.
• I am enjoying the budding Hester/Tessa rivalry. I'm on Team Tessa -- I like her clean, sharp looks. Hester sometimes does cool things, but also sometimes seems like a Rainbow Brite doll who got locked in a rave for six years.
• Surprisingly, the producers have done a decent job keeping the challenges feeling fresh and novel. Good job, producers!

Trump, Trumpism, and Antisemitism

Much like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, the Poway synagogue shooter claims to not be a fan of Donald Trump because Trump is supposedly too deep in the pocket of the Jews. From this, Trump's defenders argue that it is a slander to tie Trumpism to the shooting or to associate him with any form of antisemitism whatsoever.

While there certainly is direct antisemitism in Donald Trump's behavior -- mostly centered around "globalists", Soros, and "Sheriff's stars", it is true that Trump in his own words is not aggressively antisemitic at the level he is Islamophobic or xenophobic. This, in my view, is almost purely a matter of familial fortune -- the brand of right-wing politics he promotes goes hand-in-glove with antisemitism, and if his daughter didn't happen to be Jewish, I think we'd see far more explicit forms of antisemitic appeals out of Trump.

One implication of that is that Trumpism, if you will -- the political movement of which Trump is an avatar but ultimately only one member -- is a lot more antisemitic than Trump himself is (to take one example: Ann Coulter). And so it is perfectly compatible for people who are in all relevant respects Trumpist, and who inspired by the political movement Trump help usher into the mainstream, to find Trump himself to have sold them out on "the Jewish question". They know what this movement actually stands for, and they know that Trump is holding back on living it out when it comes to the Jews.

The weird analogy I have might well be to Jon Lansman of Momentum. Momentum is an antisemitic movement. Lansman himself is certainly not good on antisemitism, but he has not personally joined in the sort of direct, vicious antisemitic harassment that has characterized the movement he founded. And because he hasn't -- and because he's Jewish -- many backers of Momentum, the movement, detest Lansman, the movement's titular founder. But it would nonetheless be weird to say that because this or that Momentum-esque antisemite publicly avows that they hate Jon Lansman, that therefore Lansman did not help inaugurate a deeply antisemitic movement in the UK. Of course he did.

And of course Trump did here in America. It is basically a historical accident that Trump is not personally more antisemitic than he is (just as it is a historical accident that Momentum happened to have been founded by a Jew). That accident has an effect -- but not as large of one as you might think. Ultimately, Trumpism is a movement that has done more than anything else to mainstream antisemitic violence as a feature of American Jewish life. The types of conspiracies and tropes and anti-"globalist" paranoia that Trump helps stoke -- aided by Republican allies like Steve King and Mo Brooks and Kevin McCarthy -- maybe doesn't go far enough for antisemitic extremists' tastes. But it definitely helps create the environment where they thrive.

Whether they like Trump or not, they're Trumpists. And Trump should be held squarely responsible for the threats he's created.

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.