'Lot to unpack here:
Most Jews vote for Democrats but they are still in support of Israel. Mostly. It's kind of like how Catholics vote Democrat while being pro-life.
Yet we have not relinquished our stance on abortion to make those Catholics happy, now have we?
Regardless whether that's true or not, the party voting base more broadly opposes Israeli apartheid, so they just shoot themselves in the foot with this stand.
Oh yeah, and: opposing apartheid is
the right thing to do regardless.
The broader Zionist movement is way more of interest to evangelical Christians than actual Jewish people at this point (and not out of any love for the Jews but more out of a death cult's fantasy over ushering in an apocalypse). The GOP has the pro-Israel policy market cornered. If that's your main issue, you can't do it better than them.
Democratic goals are generally more popular across the board than Republican goals, but when Republicans stand unapologetic for their unpopular principles while Dems back off at the slightest bit of scrutiny, popularity no longer becomes the deciding factor. Strength does.
If the Dems actually tried to
do the right thing more often and threw optics/polling to the wind...
maybe they would not be just as despised among everyday voters as the actually evil GOP.
Also, public opinion of the mainstream media is in the gutter, so much so that it's clearly not just the usual conservative hate over perceived liberal bias. The media is not in a position to set the terms of the conversation any longer. Time to counter-intuitively use their attacks to our advantage. It worked for Trump. It actually also kinda works for Bernie, too (that was what first attracted me to him).
Right-wing media may be strong, but that message takes hold for reasons deeper than just hearing them parrot their usual narrative.
People believe it because they see a woman in a headscarf and "anti-Semitic" associated with her without opposing viewpoints a Left party would theoretically provide... how do you think they came to that conclusion? They have been predisposed to believing it, which is why we need people to be allies over playing politics (and it's not even a pragmatic politics).
Deranged idiots whose lizard-brains can't handle congresspeople who look different from them are NOT the constituency. Trying to assuage their racial anxieties is a great strategy... for
Republicans.
For Democrats, it alienates the people who would otherwise come to them, and those lizard-brained idiots they tried not to offend probably just ended up voting GOP anyway.
That was my point. This is (actually) why they lose. Do the math.
Which is exactly why we need to do a thoughtful critique of all the candidates in the field right now. You'll note that my response to criticisms of Bernie is not to shield him from all scrutiny and say that his critics are hurting him too much to beat Trump, just that the criticisms are a load of bunk.
In other news, Brown is not running.
Most likely because next month Biden is going to throw his hat in and
all polling is saying he'll be the clear front-runner, even ahead of Bernie.Same reason Bloomberg dropped out too I bet.
I dunno, seems like Russian bot rigging to me.
In all seriousness, Biden vs. Trump would make me very nervous. Joe's "brand" always used to be working class interests, but he has made some really lousy takes that lead me to believe he's been in the DC bubble for too long, and has probably lost the ability to relate to what was once his constituency. Trump thrives on his "outsider" brand. I don't expect those poll numbers to hold for Joe.
Sorry if I sounds like I'm trying to bash every candidate who is not Bernie, but if we are to go that route at all, I would rather go with Harris, personally.
I do hope he runs, though. It'll make the anti-Bernie vote more difficult to coalesce, and honestly, the greater the symbolic rejection of Bill Clinton's "Third Way" bullshit and its chief offenders in this primary, the better.