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| Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed and Maine’s Troy Jackson (The Hill) |
If you lean Democrat, you will be focused on the economy and
blame the Republican president and his party for not caring one whit about how
many innocent Palestinians have been killed. You will point to the war with
Iran as being responsible for the high prices of gas and groceries, claiming
that the war has done nothing to make us safer. Israel is hardly on your radar.
To the extent that it is, you place as much blame on Israel for joining Trump’s
war with Iran and buy quite readily into the claim that Israel demolished Gaza
and killed tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians (some calling it
genocide) in its ‘failed’ war against Hamas in Gaza.
If you are a Republican, you tout the war with Iran as the
only thing that prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran was
supposedly only a week away from enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels. You
point to its advanced ballistic missile program and its support of terrorist
proxies throughout the Middle East, especially those surrounding Israel. Israel
is the only democracy in the Middle East and the most important ally the US has
in that region, if not in the world. You also argue that after Iran is either
defeated or capitulates to all US demands - the economy will revert to its
prewar status, when prices were relatively low, stable, and, if anything, on a
downward trajectory.
What impresses me about the Republican narrative is their
concern over the direction of the Democratic Party. If, as many are predicting,
progressive candidates win, the Democratic Party will have a hard time
convincing mainstream Democrats that the extremist values of its progressive
wing align with their own.
But still, people tend to vote their pocketbooks. They will
vote for candidates from the party that they believe can best address their
economic concerns,. That usually means voting for candidates from the opposing
party (Democrats) against the party is currently in power (Republicans). The
only thing that may frustrate that tendency this time is the low esteem voters
have for Democrats. Which is not all that different than the low esteem they
have for Republicans.
Will voters register a protest vote against any Republican
running, despite their low approval ratings of Democrats?
The fact that Republican pundits are railing against the
antisemitism that accompanies the rhetoric of many progressive candidates may
register with some voters. But the economy, is probably what drives them the
most. Besides, the progressive candidates will point to their denials that
anti-Israel rhetoric is in any way antisemitic. Deliberately ignoring that such
rhetoric drives the increase in antisemitism and its attendant violence in many
cases. Thus voters pay little attention to progressives’ that anti Israel
rhetoric. Believing their claims that they are not antisemitic. Just anti
Israel. underscored by pledges that they will fight antisemitism when they get
into office. Besides, antisemtism in just not on the radar of the typical
voter. Or they believe the denials of these progressive candidates.
Republican pundits do, however, correctly frame the issue by
pointing out that Americans, at their core, abhor attacks against the Jewish
people. American’s were genuinely horrified when a synagogue in suburban
Detroit was attacked by a Palestinian motivated by the death of one of his
relatives – a Hamas operative in Gaza. He was killed during one of IDF’s raid
against a Hamas stronghold.
El-Sayed originally characterized that attack as follows:
‘Hurt people - hurt people’. That he later apologized was at best political
theater.
More recently El-Syed refused to condemn a disgusting third
party antisemitic ad on his behalf directly blaming Israeli ‘genocide’ for the
high grocery prices…
