r/JewsOfConscience • u/_II_I_I__I__I_I_II_ Jewish Anti-Zionist • Nov 07 '24
Opinion Democrats Ignored Gaza and Brought Down Their Party
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/opinion/democrats-israel-gaza-war.html69
u/touslesmatins Non-Jewish Ally Nov 07 '24
I've actually been really fascinated to see that they are absolutely, 100%, lockstep AVOIDING talking about the genocide or support for Israel as one of the causes. It's almost like there's a directive of silence about it because the absence is glaring. Anyone noticing similar?
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u/_II_I_I__I__I_I_II_ Jewish Anti-Zionist Nov 07 '24
The article is doing poorly on Reddit everywhere except in my news sub.
The comments I've seen online from basic liberals have been ranging from dismissive/copium to raging/bigotry.
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u/PapaverOneirium Nov 07 '24
The amount of “Arabs are going to get what they deserve now” from liberals is… well, kind of exactly what I expected. But disheartening to say the least.
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u/touslesmatins Non-Jewish Ally Nov 07 '24
It's interesting seeing the machinations of the pundit class in real time. Dispiriting, but educational
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u/PapaverOneirium Nov 07 '24
The few days after the election are really important to watch. It is when the narrative is most malleable and hotly contested. It is also important to try and shape it. Because once one takes the lead, it will be the default for the next cycle.
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u/TinyZoro Jewish Anti-Zionist Nov 07 '24
Yes the average liberal take is if they thought the genocide under Biden was bad wait till they get Trump. Like to not see any issue with saying this out loud and consider yourself a normal sensible progressive who can dismissively belittle crazy Trump supporters. It’s absolutely fucking wild. There’s no moral superiority to anyone if you can just blithely ignore twenty thousand dead kids under the political party you support.
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u/tuhrhettz Nov 07 '24
Just share some facts:
In Pennsylvania, 34% would have been more likely to vote for her with an arms embargo, with similar numbers in Georgia (39%) and Arizona (35%)—while only a tiny 7%, 5%, and 5% would have been less likely. She ignored this clear path to victory, costing her crucial young, Muslim, and undecided voters. This oversight was costly and avoidable.
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u/mcgillhufflepuff Ashkenazi Nov 07 '24
What also irks me is how stupid strategists around Harris must be to not urgently say a path needs to change because when us Americans don't like either candidates, many just won't vote.
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u/CosmicGadfly Nov 07 '24
The thing is, these consultants get paid win or lose a % of campaign money. They don't have to be smart enough to win, they only need to be smart enough to keep getting the money.
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u/outblightbebersal Nov 08 '24
Unfortunately, I just watched multiple mainstream liberal pundits on MSNBC say Democrats need to "return to the party of common sense", instead of doing trans rights / college protests / cancel culture.
So....Kamala spent her whole campaign pretending Gaza / trans people / students didn't even exist...and it's still our fault.
Almost certainly, the failed campaign leadership is pumping this message out to every station so they don't get fired for being the most incompetent, out-of-touch, anti-democracy shills who lost to Trump in his historically more beatable election ever. And the worst part is, millions of tv-watching Americans will eat it up, and flock further right.
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u/_II_I_I__I__I_I_II_ Jewish Anti-Zionist Nov 07 '24
Yea, I don't want to sound conspiratorial but it feels downright like her strategists sabotaged her.
Just based on the post-election analysis of it all.
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u/oncothrow Hasidim Nov 07 '24
I'm happy to accept that the analysts themselves (if not the entire political class to an extent) live in a bubble made of their own hubris. They all "know" how things really are, so anything outside of that box doesn't exist to them and is clearly nonsense.
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u/ClassPlus3219 Nov 08 '24
I think they would prefer a Harris win but genocide in Gaza was too important to them to care about it more. They did their real jobs
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u/_II_I_I__I__I_I_II_ Jewish Anti-Zionist Nov 07 '24 edited Nov 07 '24
I liked this article, and while it's just one analysis - I think it resonated with me because I consider the words of activist Jeff Halper, who has written that Palestine functions as a 'testing ground for oppression that is then exported to the world.'
Whether it's Israel's weapons or spyware or trampling over the so-called 'rules based order' - what Israel does to the Palestinians is what will be used as an exemplar for oppressive forces in the rest of the world.
People have already discussed police brutality or the various weapons of crowd control and surveillance.
Israel's draconian, apartheid system is being exported to the world now in piecemeal - first through censorship laws under the guise of combatting antisemitism.
Peter remarks at the end:
For a long time, Palestinians in Gaza and beyond have been paying for that exception with their lives. Now Americans are paying too. It may cost us our freedom.
It's tragic and infuriating and true.
Scattered thoughts/excerpts:
Peter discusses the racial and generational, demographic differences in the election. Older White men tended to support Harris even more than they did Biden.
But these broader dynamics do not fully explain Ms. Harris’s underperformance, because she appears to have lost far less ground among voters who are older and white. Her share of white voters equaled Mr. Biden’s. Among voters over age 65, she actually gained ground.
Young voters & Black voters wanted to cut off weapons to Israel:
The outrage has been particularly intense among Black Americans and the young. This spring, encampments expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people rose on more than 100 college campuses. In February, the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation’s most prominent Black congregations, called the war in Gaza a “mass genocide” and demanded that the Biden-Harris administration stop funding it. In June, the NAACP urged an end to weapons shipments as well. A June CBS News poll found that while most voters over the age of 65 supported arms sales to Israel, voters under the age of 30 opposed them by a ratio of more than three to one. And while only 56 percent of white voters favored cutting off weapons, among Black voters the figure was 75 percent.
Harris did poorly with Black men - slightly/significantly worse than Biden.
Those pre-election polling numbers may explain some of what we saw Tuesday night. Kamala Harris is far more youthful than Joe Biden. Yet, early exit polls — from CNN, The Washington Post and Fox News and The Associated Press — suggest she suffered a sharp decline among voters under the age of 29 compared with Mr. Biden’s result in 2020. Ms. Harris is Black, yet according to CNN and The Washington Post, she did slightly worse than Mr. Biden among Black voters. One exit poll, from Fox News and The Associated Press, suggests she did significantly worse.
Harris consistently made anti-genocide Democrats feel unwelcome, snapping at them in viral moments or regurgitating pro-Israel lobby talking-points in place of any sincere messaging of her own.
Despite overwhelming evidence that the Democratic Party’s most devoted constituents wanted to end sales of weapons to Israel, the Biden administration kept sending them, even after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel expanded the war into Lebanon. And not only did Ms. Harris not break with Mr. Biden’s policy, she went out of her way to make voters who care about Palestinian rights feel unwelcome. When antiwar activists interrupted a speech of hers in August, Ms. Harris snapped, “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that.” At the Democratic National Convention, her campaign rebuffed a plea from activists to let a Palestinian American speak from the main stage. And just days before the election, the Harris surrogate Bill Clinton told a Michigan crowd that Hamas had “force[d]” Israel to kill Palestinian civilians by using them as human shields.
Peter notes that this gave an opening to Trump.
All this provided Mr. Trump an opportunity. According to The Times, his campaign found that undecided voters in swing states were about six times as likely as other swing-state voters to be motivated by the war in Gaza. Mr. Trump wooed them. He pledged to help “the Middle East return to real peace” and lambasted former Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican with whom Ms. Harris had chosen to campaign, as a “radical war hawk.” Like Richard Nixon, who in 1968 appealed to antiwar voters by promising “an honorable end to the war in Vietnam,” Mr. Trump portrayed himself — however insincerely — as the candidate of peace.
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u/oncothrow Hasidim Nov 07 '24
When antiwar activists interrupted a speech of hers in August, Ms. Harris snapped, “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that.”
The irony should be clear. They were trying to save her from losing to Trump. If she had actually listened.
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u/Existing-Stranger632 Nov 07 '24
How though? Trump lost votes this year.
The war and overall state of society likely led to apathy and led to people not voting. But this article is essentially trying to blame the left. The left would never vote Trump, people who give two fucks about Palestine are educated and didn’t vote Trump (if you did please stop pretending you care).
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u/goldstar971 Nov 07 '24
no he didn't. almost half of CA's votes remained untailed and there are millions of votes in other states as well yet to be counted. he gained millions of votes.
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u/CosmicGadfly Nov 07 '24
I'm sorry, but I don't think Gaza had much to do with this loss. Either direction would have been polarizing. We saw that with the ad tactics. They were already painting her both ways as convenient. This is not the issue that lost the election.
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u/gmbxbndp Jewish Communist Nov 07 '24
It's one factor atop a whole heap of them. You can't explain a deficit of 15 million voters by pointing to any one thing. Better foreign policy alone was never going to secure a victory for the Democrats, but it might have made their defeat less crushing.
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u/Existing-Stranger632 Nov 07 '24
Democrats didn’t motivate voters. Plain and simple. The war was a factor but quite frankly the pro Palestine movement did not affect this at all. It’s foolish of us to think that, and it gives permission to democrats to further attack and demonize us.
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u/CosmicGadfly Nov 07 '24
No, you don't understand. If she would have gone a centimeter closer to a public advocacy of Israel criticism, she would have lost a bunch of voters. I'm sure internal polling supported this, just as personal experience does. There are loads of older folks who are so stupidly zionist that they would absolutely drop her over it. Now, arguably, those people may have voted Trump anyway just in case, but I'm betting that there's significant demographic that this applies to.
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u/MinuteWaterHourRice Nov 07 '24
I think that’s BS. She lost Dearborn, the same district Tlaib just won despite Tlaib being openly pro-Palestinian. There was a 20,000 voter swing away from the Democrats. It’s definitely part of why she lost Michigan. Genocide does not motivate voters.
Both candidates are pro-Israel. Trump more than Harris. Most voters are not single-issue, and many of them accept that Harris would be better in many ways than Trump. So if Harris shifts towards a more pro-Palestine stance, those voters most likely would still stick with Harris. Those voters for whom Israel was the single biggest problem, they probably ended up voting for Trump.
The logic of desperately trying to cling to this “middle-ground” voter is inherently flawed and will ultimately cost Harris and the Democrats the election.
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u/marvsup Nov 07 '24
You're missing the point. The campaign was worried about losing Zionist voters if they did anything other than they did. They knew they were risking a lot. It may have even cost them the election. I don't know if I would've made the same choice as them, but, tactically, it wasn't an easy decision. Morally is a different question, obviously.
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u/ClassPlus3219 Nov 08 '24
did you read the article?
"All this provided Mr. Trump an opportunity. According to The Times, his campaign found that undecided voters in swing states were about six times as likely as other swing-state voters to be motivated by the war in Gaza. Mr. Trump wooed them. He pledged to help “the Middle East return to real peace” and lambasted former Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican with whom Ms. Harris had chosen to campaign, as a “radical war hawk.”"0
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u/ulixForReal Non-Jewish Ally Nov 07 '24
Kamala would have probably lost regardless, even though I believe Gaza was a large factor in her losing.
Generally she should have made clear that she wont just continue Biden's policies, not just in regard to Gaza.
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u/Myruim Palestinian Nov 07 '24
I’m asking this in earnest, why are American elections such a cultish process, with cultish attitudes and mentalities surrounding the candidates?
I don’t see any other country whose citizens worship who they’re voting for, or cutting away family members based on their political leanings. A lot of their personalities revolve around being a democrat or republican.
I know not everybody is American here but why are a lot of Americans like this?
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u/IWantFries21 Non-Jewish Ally Nov 07 '24
I think I can answer part of this question. In recent years(I wanna say around 2015 when Trump started his campaign, but Christian nationalists' agenda started with Reagan in the 80s tbh), the Republican Party has specifically targeted people's humans rights, whereas the Democrats have been running by opposing those policies, and in some cases, protecting those human rights. Trump running especially emboldened people to feel more comfortable being openly bigoted.
Many people supporting the Republican Party are openly bigoted. Others are complacent to racism, homophobia, etc. They're more than okay with Republicans encouraging racism, sexism, homophobia etc. and enacting such policies. That's why you usually see Democrats, or left leaning people, cut off people for being republicans. Because Republicans are the ones supporting people being legally treated as second class citizens or worse. Because Republicans are the ones supporting violence and discrimination against them.
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u/Myruim Palestinian Nov 07 '24
Because Republicans are the ones supporting people being legally treated as second class citizens or worse. Because Republicans are the ones supporting violence and discrimination against them.
I’ve gotten this by reading Americans’ tweets and whatnot over the years but at the same time, when Trump got elected the first time back, they reacted the same way and I genuinely thought I’d be seeing public lynchings, reinstating slavery, mass deportations and concentration camps being set up from all the fear-mongering, but I saw none of that and from what I vaguely recall and correct me of I’m wrong, abortion rights in some states were taken away from women…during Biden’s term, not even Trump’s.
To Arabs it doesn’t matter to us in any way, shape or form who the US president is, but a lot of the time we get the sense that Americans exaggerate about this sort of thing. I’m sorry if it seems like I’m not getting it and being insensitive about it, maybe I need to live there to actually understand.
I remember when it was Hillary vs Trump and I was in a school with a lot of British and Irish teachers, and they didn’t teach is anything that day, only opened the live counts from Google and made us watch it. When Trump won, my English teacher said “I’m just worried for you guys” and I didn’t get her concern back then, and don’t get it now either 😅
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Nov 08 '24
Partly because it’s a two party system. So the entire focus of the media and the country is solely on two people, which probably leads to that “cultish” observation you’re making. But honestly, most of us in this sub are leftists who are just as bewildered by American politics as you are 😅 It’s not like we relate to the kind of Americans you’re referring to
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u/ClassPlus3219 Nov 08 '24
The republicans destroyed the schools with No Child Left Behind and the democrats left it in place because they both think they benefit from a stupid populace who end up doing medieval royalty worship
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u/wowitsreallymem Nov 07 '24 edited Nov 07 '24
I’d say it’s one of the reasons but I’m also thinking there are people who would never vote for a woman president. It was surprising how many ‘masculine’ men needed it to be known that they’re not voting for Harris.
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u/ClassPlus3219 Nov 08 '24
if this is actually true you should be extremely mad at the democratic party for nominating 2 women and handing the country over to a fascist when they know a woman can't win.
I don't think it has any basis in truth personally but if you do
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u/youareabigdumbphuckr Nov 07 '24
I mean I feel like vocally speaking out would be the same kind of political suicide. Either way, youre losing large swaths of voters whether they be pro or anti israel
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u/SorosBuxlaundromat Jewish Communist Nov 07 '24
Multiple polls showed a 6 point bump in swing states had Kamala called for an arms Embargo on Israel. It would've been enough to win
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u/ottohightower2024 Nov 07 '24
Its not like polls have been consitently wrong from one election cycle to another...
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u/PapaverOneirium Nov 07 '24
What key voting bloc would she have lost? Support for Israel is strong among (primarily older) American Jews and evangelicals, but the former is a relatively small population that is concentrated in blue states like New York and California and the latter was never going to vote for Harris anyway.
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u/uhln Non-Jewish Ally Nov 07 '24
Lol Copmala lost by a huge margin, it's a collection of many mistakes and the policy of democrats regarding Gaza is just a small part of the collection of the mistakes. The democrats are just looking for a scapegoat
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u/Existing-Stranger632 Nov 07 '24
This is a stupid article and I disagree with it entirely. Do not let them lay the groundwork to blame us for this. The movement did not affect this election. Kamala Harris’s terribly run campaign did. Trump got less votes this year than in 2020 (where he lost the popular vote). People just didn’t vote at all this year. The free Palestine people didn’t vote for Trump. It’s insanity that this article is really suggesting that.
Voters weren’t motivated this year for whatever reason. I feel like there’s a lot of apathy due to the general state of the world atm.
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u/MinuteWaterHourRice Nov 07 '24
Genocide does not motivate voters. Democrats are going to attack anyone who criticizes Israel anyway. Fuck them. They shook bloody hands with devils behind closed doors and we all paid the price for it.
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Nov 07 '24
Yea I don’t think the vast majority of Americans even care about Israel/Palestine in the first place. The majority of Americans just vote against the incumbent if they don’t feel good about the material state of their lives.
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u/sar662 Jewish Nov 07 '24
I see it more as "Democrats promoted ideals over pragmatism and lost an election". They ignored basic stuff and focused on the idealistic to the point that they lost the election.
A second important point is that the Democratic party is not brought down. We lost an election. The party is not over, it just needs work.
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u/ottohightower2024 Nov 07 '24
You just described the progressive ideology on one sentence. Overprivileged people (who tend to be out of touch annoying white campus progressives) tend to have a very idealpolitik view or politics.
Gaza has nothing to do with the Harris defeat. The samw people who care about Palpatine and defeating Trump already voted. She + Walz were just a very unpopular ticket and they underperformed among women and minorities
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