Category Archives: 2016 President Election

Why the time is again ripe for American socialism

By Michael Espinoza, UCL

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has handily beaten Hillary Clinton to win the New Hampshire primary – and after being dismissed as more or less an ideological sideshow when it first began, his campaign has become an unlikely but remarkable movement.

With the Republican Party in a seemingly unstoppable rightward spiral, as the likes of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump dominate its race, the seemingly unexpected rise of as such a proud left-wing candidate as Sanders might seem inconsistent with every trend in recent American politics. At the beginning of the race, he was unknown to many voters outside his home state of Vermont. He is also the Senate’s only self-proclaimed socialist, a label that many once thought would make him utterly unelectable.

But Sanders’s support for “democratic socialism” hasn’t just been surprisingly popular: it’s rapidly changing the way America perceives socialism and all it stands for.

A major strength of Sanders’s campaign is an economic argument against income inequality. This message is at the heart of Sanders’s self-described democratic socialism, but the “revolution” he’s advocating isn’t a Marxist seizure of the means of production; it’s a democratic political uprising.

But this in itself is hardly anything new by the standards of American politics, even at the presidential level.

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Bernie Sanders’ universalism

Haaretz reports: One of [Richard Sugarman’s] duties seems to be explaining Sanders’ Jewish identity – or lack thereof – to the media. [Sugarman is an Orthodox Jewish academic and longtime friend of Sanders.] In October, Sugarman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that his friend is not “embarrassed or ashamed” of being Jewish, but he is a “universalist” and “doesn’t focus on those issues.” In November, Sugarman made a similar point to NPR – that Sanders is “not into identity politics, and I don’t think … this campaign is going to change him.”

His prediction has held true. Sanders has never referred to his Judaism except in jest – as in his Saturday Night Live appearance – or when asked directly about it by a reporter. In the latter circumstance, he usually refers to his family’s history with the Holocaust and his commitment to social justice and economic equality, but avoids talk of theology or observance.

When, last fall, Sanders was asked on-camera whether he believed in God – by, of all people, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, he avoided directly answering the question, and invoked none other than the Pope in his answer: “I am who I am, and what I believe in and what my spirituality is about is that we’re all in this together. I think it is not a good thing to believe as human beings we can turn our backs on the suffering of other people, And this is not Judaism. This is what Pope Francis is talking about, that we cannot worship just billionaires and the making of more and more money.”

More recently, Sanders shook off the whispers that he may well be an atheist simply afraid to say the word, by telling the Washington Post that “I think everyone believes in God in their own ways,” he said. “To me, it means that all of us are connected, all of life is connected, and that we are all tied together.” [Continue reading…]

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After Bernie Sanders landslide in New Hampshire, team Hillary plans fightback on Israel

The Forward reports: Tuesday night will go down in history as the first time a Jew won a presidential primary.

A jubilant Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, repeated his call for eradicating income inequality, breaking up the big banks and providing free college tuition.

“Together we have sent the message that will echo from Wall Street to Washington, from Maine to California, and that is that the government of our great country belongs to all of the people and not just a handful of wealthy campaign contributors,” Sanders said in his victory speech.

For the Clinton campaign it was a night that made clear that it is time to increase pressure on the Vermont socialist — including a harsher message to Jewish American voters.

“Hillary Clinton has been a very strong friend of Israel and that is something that should not be lost on the American Jewish community,” said Paul Hodes, a former New Hampshire congressman who came to rally for Clinton at her post-primary event. Hodes, who is Jewish and from New Hampshire, told the Forward: “Senator Sanders hasn’t showed himself to be the kind of friend of Israel that Secretary Clinton is.”

Clinton, the former U.S. secretary of state and former U.S. senator, now looks wounded, trailing Sanders by 60 to 39% based on 86% of the returns. [Continue reading…]

Who can suck up to Israel, is a game that only works when everyone plays and the shamelessness is mutual as the Goyim compete as Zionists.

In that respect, the fact that Sanders is Jewish and the fact that he isn’t fishing for large donations, both serve to his advantage. When questioned about his loyalty to Israel, he can reasonably wave off such challenges by pointing out that he’s running in an American presidential election.

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Bernie Sanders has raised $5.2 million since the polls closed in New Hampshire

BuzzFeed reports: The Money Bomb is a short, online-driven fundraising drive tied to a specific event or date. It’s a mainstay of modern, internet-driven politics.

Bernie Sanders has unleashed a new kind of fundraising weapon the world has never seen.

In the hours since polls closed in New Hampshire Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET, the Sanders campaign raised $5.2 million, aides told reporters Wednesday. The average contribution was just $34. [Continue reading…]

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The Supreme Court halted Obama’s climate change plan. This doesn’t bode well

coal-power

Scott Lemieux writes: Hours before New Hampshire’s primary voters made Donald Trump the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday night – I can’t really believe this even as I type it – the US supreme court reminded us of why the upcoming presidential election is so important. On a party-line vote, the court temporarily stopped Barack Obama’s clean power plan from going into effect. This decision could well portend a future one that will have devastating consequences – not only for the climate but for the state of our lawmaking process.

The decision also underscores the urgency of the November elections in two ways: it will be a choice between a candidate who supports taking action against climate change and one who believes it should be ignored, and it will present a choice between a president who believes that the federal government has the authority to effectively regulate and one who believes that the supreme court should arbitrarily throw monkey wrenches into the political process. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. suffering from shortage of immigrants

Financial Times reports: US builders do not suffer from too many Mexican workers, but too few; they stand to gain from immigration reform, not lose. The joke in Texas is that if Mr Trump really wants to put up a wall between the US and Mexico, he will have to open the border first to find enough workers to finish the job.

Across the US, the construction sector — which contributes 4 per cent to US gross domestic product — is suffering from chronic shortages of workers that are pushing up wages and slowing down activity. Of the 1,358 companies surveyed last year by the Associated General Contractors of America, 86 per cent had trouble filling positions, up three percentage points from 2014. More than seven out of 10 contractors reported difficulty finding carpenters, 60 per cent for electricians and 56 per cent for roofers. In 2014, a builder called Camden Property Trust installed security guards at sites in Denver, Colorado, and Austin, Texas, to prevent competitors from poaching workers.

“I could be twice the size in terms of revenue if we had the flow of labour that we could be training,” says Chad Collins, owner of Bone Dry Roofing in Athens, Georgia. “We are handcuffed by the lack of a willing and skilled work force.”

The impact is particularly dramatic in Dallas. Even as US recession fears grow, the city and its suburbs are thriving as companies such as Toyota, Facebook and JPMorgan Chase build facilities. “There is a workforce issue,” says Keith Post, KPost chief executive. “People are stealing and overpaying [workers].” Steve Little, the company’s president, says labour costs have risen 15 per cent in the past two years.

Homebuilder Bruno Pasquinelli, president and founder of CB JENI Homes in Dallas, says delays are mounting. “It’s very difficult to predict when a house is going to get finished,” he says. “Houses that we used to build in 22 weeks are now taking upwards of 30 and bad ones could be 40.”

The labour shortages are counterintuitive. US construction employment fell from 7.7m to 5.4m during the downturn, and it was assumed there would be plenty of workers once business recovered. But some industry veterans retired. Others headed to the oilfields as the shale boom gathered pace. And many went home to Mexico — creating a problem, given the sector’s dependence on immigrants. [Continue reading…]

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Trump to Syrian refugee children: ‘You can’t come here’

The Hill reports: Donald Trump said he’d be able to look into the eyes of Syrian refugee children to tell them they cannot come to schools in America in light of concerns about safely vetting refugees.

“We don’t know where their parents come from, they have no documentation whatsoever,” Trump said Monday during a town hall in New Hampshire.

“I’ve talked to the greatest legal people, spoken to the greatest security people. There’s absolutely no way of saying where these people come from. They may be from Syria, they may be ISIS, they may be ISIS related.”

During the event, a man who said he was from Connecticut told Trump about plans to relocate Syrian families into the community and let their children come to schools. When asked whether he’d be able to “look at these children” to tell them they couldn’t go to school, Trump said: “I can look in their faces and say, ‘You can’t come here.’”

The crowd applauded his answer. [Continue reading…]

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Under Sanders, income and jobs would soar, economist says

CNN reports: Median income would soar by more than $22,000. Nearly 26 million jobs would be created. The unemployment rate would fall to 3.8%.

Those are just a few of the things that would happen if Bernie Sanders became president and his ambitious economic program were put into effect, according to an analysis given exclusively to CNNMoney. The first comprehensive look at the impact of all of Sanders’ spending and tax proposals on the economy was done by Gerald Friedman, a University of Massachusetts Amherst economics professor.

Friedman found that if Sanders became president — and was able to push his plan through Congress — median household income would be $82,200 by 2026, far higher than the $59,300 projected by the Congressional Budget Office.

In addition, poverty would plummet to a record low 6%, as opposed to the CBO’s forecast of 13.9%. The U.S. economy would grow by 5.3% per year, instead of 2.1%, and the nation’s $1.3 trillion deficit would turn into a large surplus by Sanders’ second term [Continue reading…]

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Aviva Chomsky: A newspaper’s crisis reveals unreported worlds

Is there a category of human beings who, in election 2016, have been the focus of more negative attention, fear-mongering, or worse press than immigrants, especially undocumented ones coming from or through Mexico (those infamous “rapists”)?  I doubt it.  Thought of in another way, such immigrants seem to be the only “lobbying group” capable of convincing Republican politicians that our crumbling infrastructure needs to be shored up — hence those monster walls to come along the Mexican border.  Immigrants, it’s now well known, are a shiftless bunch of criminals, or as Donald Trump put it, “If you look at the statistics of people coming, you look at the statistics on rape, on crime, on everything coming in illegally into this country it’s mind-boggling!” And don’t forget the terrorist types supposedly worming their way in among refugees — another category of immigrants — fleeing the chaos the U.S. had such a hand in creating in Syria and Iraq.  Those lost souls looking for asylum here have been a particular target of Republican candidates and office holders eager to ban them from coming anywhere near this country or at least their states.  Put it all together and you have a witch’s brew when it comes to the land of the free and home of the… well, whatever.

So imagine the national shock (had anyone been paying attention) that “The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States,” a study by researchers Walter A. Ewing, Daniel E. Martínez, and Rubén G. Rumbaut released last July through the American Immigration Council, should have caused here.  The three scholars offered truly shocking news.  They crunched the latest numbers and confirmed decades of other studies showing that immigration does anything but increase U.S. crime rates.  Immigrants, legal and otherwise, are charged with far fewer “serious crimes” and are jailed far less often than the native born.  To be specific, their study found that “1.6% of immigrant males age 18-39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3% of the native-born. This disparity in incarceration rates has existed for decades, as evidenced by data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial censuses. In each of those years, the incarceration rates of the native-born were anywhere from two to five times higher than that of immigrants.”  The same, by the way, holds true for incarceration rates “among the young, less-educated Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan men who make up the bulk of the unauthorized population.”

How in the world do such definitive hard numbers fit with the overwrought sense of fear and alarm, the myth-making about immigrants alive in the country today?  In her second TomDispatch post, Aviva Chomsky offers an interesting answer: it’s not that hard to create a nightmare vision of immigrants when they are almost never seen by the Americans you are scaring the hell out of.  Their invisibility in our world ensures that just about any picture can be painted of them without fear of contradiction because there’s nothing in most of our lives to which to compare it.  So consider today just one recent case in which, however briefly, that cloak of invisibility began to be lifted from the remarkably lawful, remarkably hardworking immigrants who are the target of so much calumny this election season. Tom Engelhardt

All the news that’s fit to print
How the media hide undocumented workers
By Aviva Chomsky

In our post-modern (or post-post-modern?) age, we are supposedly transcending the material certainties of the past. The virtual world of the Internet is replacing the “real,” material world, as theory asks us to question the very notion of reality.  Yet that virtual world turns out to rely heavily on some distinctly old systems and realities, including the physical labor of those who produce, care for, and provide the goods and services for the post-industrial information economy. 

As it happens, this increasingly invisible, underground economy of muscles and sweat, blood and effort intersects in the most intimate ways with those who enjoy the benefits of the virtual world. Of course, our connection to that virtual world comes through physical devices, and each of them follows a commodity chain that begins with the mining of rare earth elements and ends at a toxic disposal or recycling site, usually somewhere in the Third World.

Closer to home, too, the incontrovertible realities of our physical lives depend on labor — often that of undocumented immigrants — invisible but far from virtual, that makes apparently endless mundane daily routines possible.

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From Iraq, general rebukes Ted Cruz’s plan to ‘carpet-bomb’ ISIS

The Washington Post reports: The top U.S. general in Iraq on Monday addressed recent political rhetoric in the presidential campaign that the United States should “carpet-bomb” the Islamic State, saying that the Pentagon is bound by the laws of armed conflict and does nt indiscriminately bomb civilian areas.

“We’re the United States of America, and we have a set of guiding principles and those affect the way we as professional soldiers, airmen, sailors, Marines, conduct ourselves on the battlefield,” MacFarland said. “So indiscriminate bombing, where we don’t care if we’re killing innocents or combatants, is just inconsistent with our values. And it’s what the Russians have been accused of doing in parts of northwest Syria. Right now we have the moral high ground, and I think that’s where we need to stay.”

The comments came in response to a question from CNN’s Barbara Starr during a Pentagon news conference. The general was asked why the military isn’t engaged in “so-called carpet-bombing,” a phrase that has been used often by presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Tex.). [Continue reading…]

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Trump is starting to spend money like a real candidate

Vanity Fair reports: as he funnels more of his own money into the campaign [$10.8 million in the last quarter], combined with his first attempts at running T.V. ads, it appears that Trump has begun shifting into a more focused, serious phase of his campaign.

If he wins the Republican nomination, however, Trump can expect an even steeper uphill climb to rival the finances of either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. According to Sunday’s F.E.C. disclosures, Clinton raised $33.1 million in the fourth quarter and spent $33 during that time period, though only $5.7 million came from small donors. Sanders raised $33 million in the last quarter as well — nearly all from small donors — and put up an impressive $20 million in January alone. [Continue reading…]

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Mayors across the U.S. see Donald Trump as a threat to national security

Politico Magazine’s fourth national Mayors Survey (which had 73 participants) found that: mayors of varying constituencies and political stripes agreed on one key priority: diversity training and outreach, with a focus on tolerance and inclusion. Sixty-two percent of mayors said their police forces had a program to engage the Muslim community, and over a quarter of respondents cited “community relations and distrust of law enforcement” as a key challenge to counter-terrorism efforts.

“It’s prudent for us to establish real and sustainable relationships with immigrant and Muslim communities,” wrote Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. “It is equally important to address those that are marginalized and secluded of all groups, particularly youth, to stabilize communities and lower the opportunities for recruitment and propaganda.”

Wrote one mayor anonymously: “Communities are still very much segregated. And public education needs to be intentional about teaching respect in a diverse society.” One mayor cited as a key accomplishment “strengthening our relationships with the many ethnic groups who live [here]. 1 of 4 residents were not born in the US and 1 of 3 are a person of color.”

National politicians, the mayors charged, are harming counter-terrorism efforts through anti-Muslim rhetoric. “Islamophobia is a huge threat to the well-being of my constituents,” wrote a mayor of a major Midwest city. “The president gets that, congress doesn’t.” Added another: “Some candidates for President and Congressional leaders don’t understand that good relations, tolerant policies, and community outreach is critical to getting tips and leads on terrorist activity and keeping our cities safe.”

Asked which presidential contender would be the worst for security, 51 percent named a certain billionaire real estate mogul.

“Donald Trump will be the worst,” wrote Mayor Marilyn Strickland of Tacoma, Washington, population 203,000. “Peddling hate, fear and xenophobia will not make us more safe.”

“Trump would be a disaster,” concurred Mary Salas, of Chula Vista, California, whose city has a population of about a quarter of a million.“He’d create terrible foreign relations — a dangerous climate.”

Still, some mayors took a contrarian view on where the real terrorist threat is emanating from.

“Austin’s experience with terrorism, whether it’s someone flying his plane into the IRS building or shooting at the police station and the Mexican Consulate, has been exclusively domestic in origin,” said Austin Mayor Steve Adler. Said Kitty Piercy, of Eugene, Oregon: “I think having a national wildlife refuge taken over by out of state militia is pretty frightening. We may need to think of American terrorism in whole new ways.” [Continue reading…]

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The GOP candidates are shockingly uninformed about foreign policy

Fred Kaplan writes: hursday night’s Trump-less debate was less blustery than the Republicans’ previous spectacles, but on foreign policy issues, the Donald’s absence didn’t make it less slight, cynical, or shruggingly uninformed.

Earlier in the week, Robert Gates — a lifelong Republican who has served as secretary of defense and CIA director — said the GOP candidates’ discussion of national security issues “would embarrass a middle schooler.” If Gates tuned in Thursday night, he would have had no cause to revise his assessment.

Sen. Marco Rubio started off by promising that, if — or, rather, when — he’s elected president, “We are going to rebuild our intelligence capabilities, and they’re going to tell us where the terrorists are.” Rubio seems unaware that President Obama has vastly boosted spending on intelligence and that the spy agencies’ No. 1 priority is to find terrorists. But Rubio went further: Under his administration, he said, “If we capture terrorists, they’re going to Guantánamo, and we will find out everything they know.” I think this means that he would bring back torture — a technique that George W. Bush ended in 2006. None of the other candidates, or the questioners, seemed to mind. [Continue reading…]

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Why Hillary Clinton’s friend, Robert Reich, is backing Bernie Sanders

Robert Reich writes: Not a day passes that I don’t get a call from the media asking me to compare Bernie Sanders’s and Hillary Clinton’s tax plans, or bank plans, or health-care plans.

I don’t mind. I’ve been teaching public policy for much of the last thirty-five years. I’m a policy wonk.

But detailed policy proposals are as relevant to the election of 2016 as is that gaseous planet beyond Pluto. They don’t have a chance of making it, as things are now.

The other day Bill Clinton attacked Bernie Sanders’s proposal for a single-payer health plan as unfeasible and a “recipe for gridlock.”

Yet these days, nothing of any significance is feasible and every bold idea is a recipe for gridlock.

This election is about changing the parameters of what’s feasible and ending the choke hold of big money on our political system.

I’ve known Hillary Clinton since she was 19 years old, and have nothing but respect for her. In my view, she’s the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now have.

But Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have, because he’s leading a political movement for change. [Continue reading…]

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For Sanders — unlike Clinton — there is no such thing as a noble cold war

Peter Beinart writes: In the final days before she and Bernie Sanders face the voters of Iowa, Hillary Clinton is leveling the same attack she leveled against Barack Obama. She’s saying that on foreign policy, she’s the only adult in the race.

In their January 17 debate, Sanders declared that, “What we’ve got to do is move as aggressively as we can to normalize relations with Iran. … Can I tell you that we should open an embassy in Tehran tomorrow? No, I don’t think we should. But I think the goal has got to be, as we’ve done with Cuba, to move in warm relations with a very powerful and important country in this world.”

When the debate ended, Team Hillary pounced. Ignoring the second half of Sanders’s statement, the campaign released a video of foreign-policy advisor Jake Sullivan asking, “Normal relations with Iran right now? President Obama doesn’t support that idea. Secretary Clinton doesn’t support that idea, and it’s not at all clear why it is that Senator Sanders is suggesting it. … It’s pretty clear that he just hasn’t thought it through.” Hillary herself added that Sanders’s comments reflect a “fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to do the patient diplomacy that I have experience in.”

The language echoes Clinton’s attack on Obama after he pledged in a July 2007 debate to meet leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea without preconditions — a pledge she called “irresponsible and frankly naive.” That attack, like this one, was contrived: Obama wasn’t planning to rush out to meet Iran’s supreme leader any more than Sanders would rush to build an embassy in Tehran. [Continue reading…]

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Wall Street declares war on Bernie Sanders

Bill Black writes: Wall Street billionaires are freaking out about the chance that Bernie Sanders could be elected President. Stephen Schwarzman, one of the wealthiest and most odious people in the world, told the Wall Street Journal that one of the three principal causes of the recent global financial trauma was “the market’s” fear that Sanders may be elected President. Schwarzman is infamous for ranting that President Obama’s proposals to end the “carried interest” tax scam that allows private equity billionaires like Schwarzman to pay lower income tax rates than their secretaries was “like when Hitler invaded Poland.”

Schwarzman and Pete Peterson co-founded the private equity firm Blackstone. Peterson leads the effort to destroy the safety net in America. His greatest dream is to privatize Social Security so that Wall Street could increase its revenues by tens of billions of dollars. Blackstone is a major owner of Sea World, and it was in this sphere that Schwarzman went beyond his delusional rants about Hitler and became vile. When an Orca killed its trainer, Schwarzman lied and blamed the death on the trainer, claiming that Sea World “had one safety lapse — interestingly, with a situation where the person involved violated all the safety rules that we had.”

Schwarzman’s claim that the global financial markets are tanking because of Bernie’s increasing support is delusional, but it is revealing that he used the most recent market nightmare as an excuse to attack Bernie. The Wall Street plutocrats, with good reason, fear Bernie – not Hillary. Indeed, it is remarkable how vigorous and open Wall Street has been in signaling through the financial media that it has no problem with Hillary’s Wall Street plan. CNN, CNBC, and the Fiscal Times, under titles such as: “Here’s Why Wall Street Has Little to Fear from Hillary Clinton,” pushed this meme. [Continue reading…]

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Donald Trump and the ‘rivers of blood’

Sarfraz Manzoor writes: Until recently, Donald J. Trump was best known in Britain for “The Apprentice” television series, the Miss Universe contest and a controversial golf course development in Scotland. And most Britons would probably have viewed his decision to enter the presidential race with no more than mild envy: Why can’t British elections be as much fun as American ones?

Thanks, however, to his incendiary comments about immigrants and Muslims, Mr. Trump has moved from being a buffoonish figure on the margins of British consciousness to the center of political debate. After Mr. Trump said that he, if president, would stop Muslims entering the United States, more than half a million people signed a parliamentary petition, thus requiring a debate in Parliament on whether to bar him entry to Britain. (The debate, which was held this past week in a committee, generated plenty of indignation but had no issue because the power to refuse Mr. Trump admittance is held not by Parliament but by the home secretary.)

Mr. Trump also drew condemnation from leading British politicians, newspapers, the Metropolitan Police and the mayor of London. Even the leader of the UK Independence Party, which campaigns on a strong anti-immigration platform, said Mr. Trump had “gone too far.”

When Mr. Trump speaks of barring Muslims from entering the United States, I hear an echo of a British politician from another age, one who is largely forgotten here but whose views on race and immigration were as polarizing in their time as Mr. Trump’s are now. Enoch Powell was a politician whose career spanned most of the postwar period, first as a Conservative and later as an Ulster Unionist. He had grave reservations about mass immigration and frequently spoke in apocalyptic language about its consequences. [Continue reading…]

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How to determine which Democratic presidential candidate is beholden to wealthy Jewish donors

Politico reports: If Bernie Sanders defeats Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination, he’ll be the first Jewish presidential nominee of a major political party.

But when it comes to his views on Israel, some Jewish Democrats are scratching their heads in confusion.

“His voting record on Israel recently is fine, absolutely fine,” said Steve Rabinowitz, a media consultant and former Clinton White House aide who supports Clinton. “I haven’t heard him once talk about it on the campaign trail. It’s as though he doesn’t utter the word Israel. It just strikes me as odd.”

But over his career Sanders has cast some votes and made critical statements about Israel that unnerve some in the pro-Israel community. That’s all the more puzzling, some say, given his own heritage as the son of a Jewish immigrant father from Poland whose family was wiped out by the Nazis — and someone who spent time working on an Israeli kibbutz.

As Clinton has struggled in recent days to prevent Sanders from notching twin victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, she has zeroed in on what she calls his naive statements about Iran — a country that Israel happens to consider its greatest enemy.

How many Democratic primary voters might have qualms with Sanders is unclear, however. President Barack Obama himself has grown increasingly critical of Israeli policy toward Iran and the Palestinians. Many liberal voters agree: A recent poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that only 4 in 10 Democrats consider Israel to be playing a positive role in the Middle East.

“The faction of the Democratic base that supports a strongly pro-Israel point of view is shrinking,” said Matthew Duss, president of the left-leaning Foundation for Middle East Peace.

But the Democratic Party still features a strong network of wealthy Jewish donors, such as the Hollywood mogul Haim Saban and American Jewish Congress president Jack Rosen, who hold candidates to high standards when it comes to Israel. It also boasts better political organization than liberals who pressure Israel to take a more conciliatory line with the Palestinians and Iran. [Continue reading…]

Some Jewish Democrats are scratching their heads in confusion? If so, that’s probably because Sanders hasn’t offered himself to the highest bidder.

At the same time, there’s no evidence that Sanders has a progressive view of Israeli-Palestinian politics. As Joseph Dana writes:

The problematic and least radical aspect of the senator’s foreign policy is his unwavering support for Israel. When it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict, Mr Sanders’s economic radicalism falls by the wayside.

He has endorsed continuing military aid to Israel along with economic aid to the Palestinians, which has proven to be an effective tool for both Israel and the United States to exercise undue influence over Palestinian decision-making, as evidenced by the withholding of aid after the PLO pursued statehood recognition at the United Nations. Additionally, the senator has seldom condemned the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and said nothing of Israel’s aggression in Gaza over the last decade.

Some have argued that Mr Sanders’s support for Israel is because he is Jewish. Yet, he has barely spoken about a faith-based connection to Israel. He has only cited his religion as an inspiration for progressive activism, especially regarding the struggle for civil rights equality.

Instead of taking a progressive stance, Mr Sanders relies on the security-based narrative that Israel has spun over the international community for decades. Where is the passion and critical thinking that has captured the imagination of millions of Americans and has demonstrated that fresh conversations are possible?

For a politician running a campaign against the “rigged” political and economic system that continues to disenfranchise millions, he is surprisingly content with the prevailing Washington orthodoxy on Israel (and also gun control, but that is a separate issue altogether).

The perplexing part is that Mr Sanders’s orthodoxy comes at a time when American diplomats in Israel are signalling a readiness to chart a new course on the conflict, one that doesn’t accept Israeli PR at face value.

For American single-issue voters whose sole concern is the resolution of the Middle East conflict, the 2016 presidential election won’t be different from any other: there won’t be a single candidate who ranks this as their primary issue (or even top foreign policy issue).

Is this a failure to acknowledge the defining issue of our times? On the contrary, it’s a reminder to be wary of polemicists who pound their podiums when talking about “the defining issue of our times.”

Indeed, if it turns out that throughout this election season, the subject of Israel rarely comes up, on balance that’ll probably be a good thing.

After all, when the subject does get raised, more often than not it is simply for the purpose of finding out who has the least amount of shame in presenting him or herself as a loyal Zionist.

Let’s be thankful if we are subject to as few as possible of these obsequious and obscene exercises.

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