Catching up on the mid-terms

Commentary

GOP arrogance, campaign donations, Trump, Ye and anti-Semitism…what a week!

With just over two weeks to go until Election Day, mail-in and early voting is beginning to pick up steam. And while I promised to follow-up on my Senatorial donation recommendations with House and Governor races picks, I wimped out; too much work for potentially too little return.

Instead, I thought I’d write about the mid-terms in a little different way.

Let me start with the letter to the editor I wrote which The Palm Beach Post published today. The headline the Post chose for my submission says it all: “Arrogance of GOP office holders unseemly.” While the example of that ‘unseemliness’ is Republican incumbents in Florida, I can almost guarantee these Florida GOP officeholders are not alone.

By the way, as some of you know, I’ve had many letters and about five Op-ed pieces published by the Post. Some of my Florida liberal friends tend to disparage the paper…”I don’t trust it;” “There’s nothing to read;” “They don’t reflect my views.”

Here’s why I read it (along with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Miami Herald, among other dailies) and contribute opinion pieces to it.

On the same editorial page with my letter, the Post endorsed my district’s incumbent Democratic Congresswoman, Lois Frankel as well as Jared Moskowitz, the Democrat running for the open seat in the adjoining Congressional district. (The incumbent, Ted Deutch, did not seek reelection instead becoming chief executive officer of the American Jewish Committee.)

Not only that, they published this political cartoon:

Not much for a liberal to argue about on the Post’s editorial pages today.

Next, I’d like to go back to my contribution analysis. My premise was – unless you have unlimited money to contribute, you’re better off donating where the candidate has at least an even chance to win so you can get the best return on your campaign investment. With that as background, I thought you’d like to read this piece about Marcus Flowers, the Georgia Democrat trying to unseat Marjorie Taylor Green. I’ve attached a PDF of the article by journalist George Chidi which is headlined: Democratic Small Donors Have Found a New Hole to Throw Money Into.

As Chidi writes, “Half the country hates her, and not without reason…Still, it’s hard not to look at this in the same light as Amy McGrath’s $94 million bid against Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell or Jaime Harrison’s $130 million shot at South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham in 2020. Both broke fundraising records challenging political figures that were deeply despised by Democrats and the left. Both lost by double digits.”

It was Amy McGrath and Jaime Harrison, both of whom I contributed to in 2020, and both big losers, which was the impetus for my crusade to donate where the return might be the best.

Finally, this has been quite a week for anti-Semitism.

First, the former, twice impeached President of the United States tweeted (well, not tweeted since he’s been banned from Twitter, but ‘TruthSocialed?’ ) this:

This is appalling. What’s more appalling is that it garnered over 31,000 likes!

At least it drew quick criticism.

“We don’t need the former president, who curries favor with extremists and antisemites, to lecture us about the US-Israel relationship,” Anti-Defamation League chief executive and national director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “It is not about a quid pro quo; it rests on shared values and security interests. This ‘Jewsplaining’ is insulting and disgusting.”

The Jewish Democratic Council of America similarly lambasted Trump’s remarks. “His threat to Jewish Americans and his continued use of the antisemitic dual loyalty trope fuels hatred against Jews,” the group tweeted. “We will not be threatened by Donald Trump and Jewish Americans will reject GOP bigotry this November.”

“If that’s not an antisemitic threat, I don’t know what to call it,” tweeted Laurence Tribe, law professor emeritus at Harvard.

Alex Holder, a filmmaker who made a documentary on Trump, called the outburst irresponsible and dangerous. “As a Jew,” Holder said on Twitter, “I experienced this language firsthand while interviewing Trump.”

The Trump post came just after his sometimes ally – the musician Ye, also known as Kanye West – was locked out of Twitter and Instagram accounts for antisemitic statements, saying he was “going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”

In a statement that only Herschel Walker would be proud of West defended himself by saying he could not be antisemitic because “black people are actually Jew [sic].”

The aforementioned Ted Deutch, in his new role at the AJC, sharply criticized Kanye West’s antisemitic statements, calling them “a clear and present danger to every Jewish person.” Deutch urged Twitter, Instagram and other social media platforms to keep West’s anti-Jewish hate off their channels.

But wait, there’s more.

Trump went out of his way to support West saying “he thinks highly of me and is often misinterpreted,” continuing, “He was really nice to me, beyond anybody. He was great to me and he was great to the MAGA movement which was really impressive. He was really high on a guy named Donald Trump.” (Why do so many Trump statements make you think of the old narcissist saying, “Enough about me. What do you think of me?”)

But who haven’t we heard from on all this? Republicans, exemplified by the fact that the Republican Jewish Coalition, the self-described “unique bridge between the Jewish community and Republican decision-makers,” has remained quiet on social media and on their website, issuing no statements addressing the comments made by Trump or West.

I know this will get me into trouble with some, but I’m going to say it anyway: How any American Jew can vote for Trump or any of the racist, anti-Semitic MAGA candidates around the country he hand-picked and is supporting; how any coalition of American Jews can say silent in the fact of blatant anti-Semitism by two public figures, one of whom is the former President of the United States, is beyond my ability to comprehend!

What’s wrong with these people?

Zei gezunt! (And I mean that in the sarcastically condescending interpretation of that Yiddish phrase.)