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July 7, 2024
Key Takeaways:
- It's been nine months (275 days) since October 7, 2023, when, on Simchat Torah, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and murdered 1,200 people (including 44 Americans). More Jews were murdered on that day than on any day since the Holocaust. Hamas wounded 3,300 and took 240 hostage during a day of brutal savagery and unspeakable, undeniable sexual violence; 120 hostages, 43 confirmed dead (but certainly more), some raped and possibly pregnant, remain captive in Gaza today.
- The 120 remaining hostages comprise five religions and 25 nationalities, including eight Americans, five probably alive: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Keith Siegal, Omer Neutra, Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Itay Chen, Judi Weinstein Haggai, and Gad Haggai. Freeing every hostage must remain a top priority.
- Vandals ripped down posters of hostages from the wall outside Rep. Brad Schneider's (D-IL) congressional office a week after anti-Israel protesters targeted his home at 2:30 am on Shabbat. These actions deserve our strong condemnation; this must not become the norm in any democracy.
- The Republicans and the Supreme Court are as bad as you think they are. Trump's record is as bad as you think it is. Authoritarians count on despair to sap the energy of their opposition and too many are willing to give up and go along if they don't think their daily lives will be directly affected. We can't let that happen. The antidote to despair is hope.
- It is July 2024. The primary season is over. The convention is in August. It's Biden or Trump. On July 6, Biden registered his best showing yet in a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult tracking poll of battleground states but some people who understand the necessity of defeating Trump think Biden should step down. If Biden stays, it's up to us to ensure Biden wins and fight like our democracy depends on it--because it does. If Biden withdraws, it's up to us to ensure that his replacement becomes the next president.
- Trump is terrible on Israel, antisemitism, and every other issue of consequence, including the most important issue of all: democracy.
Read to the end for corrections, what you may have missed last week, fun stuff, and upcoming events.
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Hi Steve,
George Bernard Shaw said that democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. Trump's success in three consecutive Republican primary cycles and twice winning nearly half the popular vote in November proves that we are living in the worst of both worlds: Too many incompetent Americans are willing to surrender their fates to the corrupt few.
We cannot take democracy for granted. Many Americans would be fine under autocracy as long as their daily lives were not disrupted and the government was coming for someone else. But not me. Not you, I hope. We don't have to win every vote or win every argument to save our democracy. We only have to help enough Americans who spent even a little time on July 4 thinking about what we were celebrating understand that this is the most important election of our lifetimes and act accordingly.
We lose democracy when we lose hope. Autocrats know that. Apathy is their friend. The Republican justices on the Supreme Court are doing their best to undermine the Court's legitimacy and enervate its ability to serve as a check on the other branches of government. The Court has overturned precedent well-established for decades in case after case and made up new law when it suited its purposes, most recently in Trump v. United States, where it essentially held that presidents are above the law--setting the stage for Project 2025 if Trump wins in November.
Alexander Hamilton, who knew the Founding Fathers' intent because he was a Founding Father, wrote in Federalist 69 that after leaving office, the president "would be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law." Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) understood this in 2021. Brett Kavanaugh understood this in 2018. Samuel Alito understood this in 2006. John Roberts understood this in 2005. Or maybe they were biding their time.
The goal is to paralyze us with despair. The antidote is hope, "the active conviction that despair will never have the last word," as Sen. Cory Booker (D-NY) often reminds us.
Don't feel demoralized. Feel energized. If Trump loses in November the immunity case will still be "law," but with an honest president, it won't matter (except for some of Trump's cases), and we'll have four more years to restore integrity to the Supreme Court, whether by replacing justices who resign or, if Democrats retake the House and hold the Senate, by expanding the Court and implementing other reforms.
The challenge of running against Trump is that we don't know where to begin. Studies show that stores that give customers a choice of two or three products to meet a certain need sell more than stores that give a customer one choice. But give a customer 20 choices and sales plummet because the result is decision paralysis.
If all we could say about Trump was that his victory in November would mean the end of legal abortion, we'd have a winning message. If all we could say was that a 34-time convicted felon should not be president, we'd win. If all we could say was that man who paid hush money to cover up sex with a porn star four months after his wife gave birth should not be president, we'd win.
Trump's racism, xenophobia, and contempt for democracy, not to mention his unhinged mind, his detachment from reality, his theft of classified documents, inciting an insurrection, refusing to accept the results of a lawful election, legal liability for sexual abuse, terrible record as president, and long record of antisemitism are matters of fact.
Trump repeatedly invokes Hitler and the Nazis. Trump dined with Kanye West and white nationalist/Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Trump said that white nationalists marching with tiki torches in Charlottesville chanting "Jews will not replace us" were "very fine people."
It all sounds too bad to be true, but it's all true--we have so many winning messages that some voters are tuning out all of them. On what planet does a corrupt real-estate swindler turned game-show host become President of the United States--twice?
Trump's ability to evade accountability stems from, as Frank Bruni writes, "the perverse freedom that comes with a total lack of conscience — with the readiness to stoke people’s darkest fears and cruelest impulses." The question is whether Trump will evade accountability in November.
President Biden can and will beat Donald Trump. But only if we stop speculating about his future. A few of you replied to last week's newsletter with concerns about President Biden's debate performance. Not one of you told me that you would no longer vote for Biden against Trump. Replacing Biden means overcoming the practical difficulties described in this thread and this article, and those difficulties must be factored into any assessment of whether we are better off with Biden or another candidate. In addition, we have no reason to believe that the same media that is giving Trump a pass now would suddenly remember its job if another candidate was running against him.
President Biden proved his fitness for office by his performance in office. The case for four more years of low inflation, low unemployment, record stock market highs, strong support for Israel, and unequivocal condemnations of antisemitism is not hard to make. His record is all we have--most of us think we know what Biden (and Trump) is like day-to-day not from first-hand experience but from interviews or leaks from people with self-serving agendas.
The only way Trump wins is if, instead of talking about Biden's record and Trump's record, instead of spending our time making calls and knocking on doors, we speculate about whether Biden should step down and who the next nominee would be. Unless your name is Joe Biden or Jill Biden, you don't know if Biden is up for running again and no matter how strong your opinion is, you don't get to decide. That's what primaries are for, and they are over.
I don't get to decide either. On Friday, Biden was as clear as he could be that he is running. On July 6, Biden registered his best showing yet in a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult tracking poll of battleground states.
If Biden doesn't run, then I'll support whoever the Democratic nominee is because any of them are better than Trump and all of them, regardless of whether I disagree with them about this and that, will preserve our democracy and govern rationally. Vice President Harris, the most likely alternative, would be a clear and easy choice over Trump, as would the others whose names have been floated.
What matters is resolving this quickly and focusing on defeating Trump in a country where nearly half the country will vote for Trump over anyone.
Israel and antisemitism are reason enough to support Biden--or any Democrat running for president--over Trump. On April 13, 2024, Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles toward Israel. President Biden organized a coordinated response with our allies, moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region, and became the first president to use U.S. forces to directly defend Israel from attack--in this case, an attack that would have been many times worse than October 7. April 13 won't go down in history like October 7 because Biden prevented it from happening but it was a BFD.
The U.S. intelligence and logistical support for the June 8 hostage rescue was only the latest example of the Biden administration's strong support for Israel throughout this crisis. If you've forgotten all that Biden has done for Israel since October 7, including becoming the first president to visit Israel during wartime and his unprecedented $14 billion emergency aid request for Israel, refresh your memory.
But as Michael Berenbaum writes, "Trump is not a president who can be relied on to send warships to restrain Iran and Hezbollah or coordinate a response to direct attacks from Iran. Trump's 'go it alone' attitude would only exacerbate Israel's increasing isolation in the world."
If you think that Trump could have put together the coalition Biden assembled that saved thousands of Israelis from Iran's April 13 ballistic missile attacks, read what two hawkish Republican national security experts say about Trump's fitness for office.
Trump attacked Israel and its leaders days after October 7. Trump said nothing while Republicans were blocking vital emergency aid to Israel for six months. During that same period, Biden approved over 100 arms sales to Israel.
Trump walked away from the Iran Deal while the deal was working and Iran was still in compliance. Then his “maximum pressure” strategy failed, his efforts at the UN to continue the arms embargo against Iran failed, and his efforts at the UN to snap back sanctions against Iran failed. Trump's Iran policy was a disaster.
Trump's moving the embassy to Jerusalem made Israel neither safer nor more secure. Few cared where the embassy was until Republicans decided it would bolster the presidential candidacy of Sen. Robert Dole (R-KA). Now it’s Trump’s antisemitic dog-whistle to right-wing Evangelicals.
Anshel Pfeffer wrote that Trump’s recognition of Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights was an empty gesture--"just as his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was. It won’t change the status of the Golan in international law and with the exception of a few client-states in Latin America, no other country is going to follow suit.”
President Biden often says, "you don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist." I've never heard Donald Trump say that. Not anything remotely close.
Biden's accomplishments on Israel and antisemitism are here and Vice President Harris's record on Israel and antisemitism is here. For the record, Biden's other accomplishments are here (scroll until you've seen enough). If this election is a referendum on the Biden-Harris administration, Biden and Harris should win overwhelmingly.
Corrections. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts, so I appreciate it when readers bring errors to my attention. No one pointed out any substantive errors in last week's newsletter.
In Case You Missed It:
- Vandals ripped down posters of hostages from the wall outside Rep. Brad Schneider's (D-IL) congressional office a week after anti-Israel protesters targeted his home at 2:30 am on Shabbat. These actions deserve our strong condemnation; this must not become the norm in any democracy.
- A Brookings study of all the candidates in the 2024 congressional primaries shows that the winning candidates in Democratic primaries are primarily pro-Israel and that "the extreme left-wing position, the one most often heard in the demonstrations on college campuses, is neither well-represented in the field of candidates nor popular with Democratic primary voters." Meanwhile, the Corbynification of the GOP continues.
- JDCA CEO Haile Soifer writes that Biden vs. Trump is a simple choice for American Jews (and all Americans): democracy or dictatorship.
Tweets of the Week. Doug Balloon and Stuart Stevens.
Twitter Threads of the Week. Schrodinger's Litter Box and Alex Zeldin.
Video Clip of the Week. Get Off My Cloud.
For those new to this newsletter. This is the newsletter even Republicans have to read and the original home of the viral and beloved 2022 and 2023 Top Ten Signs You're At a Republican Seder. If someone forwarded this to you, why not subscribe and get it in your inbox every Sunday? Just click here--it's free.
I periodically update my posts on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism and on the IHRA definition of antisemitism. My definition of "pro-Israel" is here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
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