Vibe Shift: Democrats, Israel, and the 2024 election

basso · Oct 31, 2023

Much has been made of the Dobbs ruling, and support for Ukraine, and how the former will galvanize democrats in 2024, while the latter will split republicans.

Is something similar happening on the left wrt Jews, the atrocities of October 7, and the pro-palestinian campus and street protests in the US?

Democrats Risk Long-Lasting Rift Over Israel-Hamas War
Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian liberal factions now divided as ugly accusations fly in both directions

To many on the left, the Israel-Hamas war is spurring what feels like a permanent rupture, when previously sublimated differences become impossible to ignore and everyone must choose sides.

The weeks since the Hamas attacks have riven the liberal coalition, pitting erstwhile allies against each other as ugly accusations fly in both directions. From the halls of power in Washington to street protests and social media, progressives find themselves at odds with those they once saw as kindred spirits.

Both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian advocates describe a feeling of disillusionment as relationships fracture and harsh words are exchanged. The result, many predict, could be a breach that splits Democrats for a generation with untold political consequences.

To liberal Jews devastated by scenes of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, the ensuing weeks have shattered illusions of solidarity, says Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and director of the Anti-Defamation League. College students and faculty, as well as local chapters of Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Socialists of America, have justified or even celebrated Hamas’s actions, while many others have emphasized the Palestinians’ plight and criticism of Israel over sympathy for the victims of the terrorist attacks.

“It has been an incredibly clarifying and terrifying moment at the same time for many progressive Jews,” Greenblatt said. “They’re calling me, tweeting, messaging, expressing shock and sadness that the people they marched with, the causes they marched for, have abandoned them in their hour of need.”

The feeling is mutual for many activists on the left who say President Biden and other Democratic officeholders have blindly sided with a right-aligned Israeli government bent on retribution that disproportionately harms innocent civilians.

“If you are Arab-American, Muslim-American or Palestinian, you feel like you don’t matter, you feel invisible,” said Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist and former spokesman for the Justice Democrats, which has supported the progressive Congress members known as the squad in primaries against more centrist Democrats. “If you are advocating at all that Palestinian and Israeli lives should be treated equally, there’s a feeling that the party doesn’t care about you at all,” he said.

The result, Shahid warned, might be that a president already struggling to ignite the enthusiasm of young and minority voters loses them completely—a recent Gallup poll found Biden losing 7 percentage points of support with voters under 35 in the past month, he noted—or that the party splinters as it did in the Vietnam War era. Others have drawn parallels to the left’s split over Soviet communism in the 1950s.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/democr...ver-israel-hamas-war-ec74044f?mod=djem10point

DaDakota · Oct 31, 2023

Wishful thinking - I support Israel and Joe Biden.

DD

No Worries · Oct 31, 2023

I wonder how long it will take for SCWs to noticed. At some point, I guess that they will get tired of blowing Uncle Putie and get back to Truth Social.

Invisible Fan · Oct 31, 2023

I'm not sure how the reaction with Muslim voters in states like MI will play out next year.

Doubtful they'll vote for Trump, but they could stay home to make a point or flatout refuse to vote similar to Israeli Americans, who could also have a bone to pick w/ Biden a year later should the war escalate out of control even further.

Time for Biden's bearhug on Bibi turn into a submission hold...

basso · Oct 31, 2023

Invisible Fan said: ↑

I'm not sure how the reaction with Muslim voters in states like MI will play out next year.

Doubtful they'll vote for Trump, but they could stay home to make a point or flatout refuse to vote similar to Israeli Americans, who could also have a bone to pick w/ Biden a year later should the war escalate out of control even further.

Time for Biden's bearhug on Bibi turn into a submission hold...
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I don't expect Muslim voters, or Palestinian sympathizers, to defect, but they might stay home. but Jews who feel threatened, might well opt to vote republican, even for Trump. in a country so evenly divided, it would not take much, in either direction, to shift the election.

No Worries · Oct 31, 2023

Invisible Fan said: ↑

Doubtful they'll vote for Trump, but they could stay home to make a point or flatout refuse to vote similar to Israeli Americans, who could also have a bone to pick w/ Biden a year later should the war escalate out of control even further.
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Bibi is completely responsible for the ignoring the pending attack and for how long the retaliation takes place.

Biden not so much.

At some point, when things between Palestinians in Gaza and Israel calm down, Bibi is going to get the boot. Bibi may extend the retaliation for as long as possible, to delay the inevitable.

Again, not Biden's fault.

DonnyMost · Oct 31, 2023

There's plenty of dumbasses on the left in the Israel-Palestine conflict but as always the key distinction seems to be that those people on the left are not very powerful, whereas the dummies on the right are sitting in seats of power all over Washington.

mtbrays · Oct 31, 2023

I don't think there's much to be made about this yet. The viral campus protestors belong to a bloc that typically doesn't vote (students) and large anti-Israel/pro-Palestine protests in large cities are happening in states that are electoral locks for Democrats.

This issue isn't as broad-reaching as Dobbs. Pro-abortion referendums have happened in states like Kansas and Kentucky because there are lot more women voters in all 50 states than there are anti-Israel protestors. Combine that with a president like Biden who has emphatically taken the side of Israel and I don't see how this affects the vote in swing states like abortion access will.

Invisible Fan · Oct 31, 2023

No Worries said: ↑

Bibi is completely responsible for the ignoring the pending attack and for how long the retaliation takes place.

Biden not so much.

At some point, when things between Palestinians in Gaza and Israel calm down, Bibi is going to get the boot. Bibi may extend the retaliation for as long as possible, to delay the inevitable.

Again, not Biden's fault.
Click to expand...

Heavy is the head...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/us/politics/biden-democrats-israel-2024.html
Democrats Splinter Over Israel as the Young, Diverse Left Rages at Biden
As a raw divide over the war ripples through liberal America, a coalition of young voters and people of color is breaking with the president, raising new questions about his strength entering 2024.

The Democratic Party’s yearslong unity behind President Biden is beginning to erode over his steadfast support of Israel in its escalating war with the Palestinians, with a left-leaning coalition of young voters and people of color showing more discontent toward him than at any point since he was elected.

From Capitol Hill to Hollywood, in labor unions and liberal activist groups, and on college campuses and in high school cafeterias, a raw emotional divide over the conflict is convulsing liberal America.

While moderate Democrats and critics on the right have applauded Mr. Biden’s backing of Israel, he faces new resistance from an energized faction of his party that views the Palestinian cause as an extension of the racial and social justice movements that dominated American politics in the summer of 2020.

In protests, open letters, staff revolts and walkouts, liberal Democrats are demanding that Mr. Biden break with decades-long American policy and call for a cease-fire, even as Israel steps up its military operations in Gaza.

The political power of the Israel skeptics within the party is untested, with more than a year remaining until the 2024 presidential election. Their efforts have been fractious and disorganized, and they have little agreement on how much blame to lay at Mr. Biden’s feet or whether to punish him next November if he ignores their pleas.

And yet Mr. Biden is already struggling with low Democratic enthusiasm, and it would not take much of a slip in support from voters who backed him in 2020 to throw his re-election bid into question. His margin of victory in key battleground states was just a few thousand votes — hardly enough to spare a significant drop-off from young voters alienated by his loyalty to a right-wing Israeli government they see as hostile to their values.

At its heart, the turbulence over Israel is a fundamental disagreement over policy, setting it apart from challenges like voters’ dissatisfaction with the economy, which Mr. Biden’s allies believe can be solved with better messaging. The president, who has for decades positioned himself in the middle of his party and has navigated Democrats’ ideological and generational divide for the first half of his term, now confronts an issue that has no easy middle ground.

Perhaps most concerning for Mr. Biden is that in the halls of Congress, the most critical Democratic voices are Black and Hispanic Democrats who helped fuel his 2020 victory. As of Thursday, all 18 House members who had signed onto a resolution calling for an “immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine” were people of color.

“We process pain, deprivation and cruelty personally, having either encountered it in our current lives or having had historical connections to it with our ancestors,” said Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, one of the cease-fire resolution’s co-sponsors. “So we understand that cruelty and war and violence do not have positive outcomes.”

Hundreds of former staff members who worked for the presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts this week signed open letters urging them to introduce a similar cease-fire resolution in the Senate.

The senators have resisted such calls, but Mr. Sanders, Ms. Warren and eight other Democratic senators this week urged a “humanitarian pause,” a position that some other liberal lawmakers and groups have begun to embrace and that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has said “must be considered.”

Other progressive lawmakers, however, argue that such a pause does not go far enough.

“A humanitarian pause, what is that?” said Representative Cori Bush of Missouri, who introduced the cease-fire resolution. “We need a cease-fire. We need to stop bombs from being dropped on hospitals and on schools and communities.”

At MoveOn, the liberal activist group that endorsed Mr. Biden in April, younger staff members revolted after the organization issued an initial statement condemning the Hamas attack that ignited the current war without addressing Israel’s conduct toward the Palestinians.

“There was a vocal percentage of our staff that did express their opinions,” Rahna Epting, MoveOn’s executive director, said in an interview. “I reminded them that ultimately we need to go to the members and see where they are.”

MoveOn’s latest statement on the war, a petition, underscores the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and states that “President Biden and our leaders must publicly call for an immediate cease-fire.”

Differences over Israel policy have caused conflict even among the nation’s top union officials. The executive committee of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. addressed the issue during a tense meeting on Monday night that was dominated by a 30-minute anti-Israel monologue from the president of the American Postal Workers Union, who described himself as an “anti-Zionist Jew.”

Many on the left, however, acknowledge that Mr. Biden remains preferable to a Republican alternative in 2024. Ms. Epting said MoveOn could “support President Biden and apply pressure to him at the same time.”

Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Mr. Sanders who is among the most vocal proponents of a cease-fire, condemned Mr. Biden’s hug-Israel approach — but said he would not withhold support for Mr. Biden next year over the differences.

“Is this worth losing an election to Trump and all that would bring? No,” Mr. Duss said. “At the same time, I think it’s on Biden to understand where his voters are.”

For many on the left, sympathy for the Palestinian cause stems from the same feelings of powerlessness that fueled the protests after George Floyd’s murder three years ago.

“There’s definitely a direct correlation,” said DaMareo Cooper, a co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a collective of progressive community groups. “When we say Black Lives Matter, what’s really being said inside of that statement is a history of oppression.”

Mr. Biden’s allies dismissed the prospect that his position on Israel would damage him in 2024. Representative Ritchie Torres of New York, one of the most outspoken Democratic supporters of Israel in Congress, said he had been offended by cease-fire calls that did not also demand that Hamas release American and Israeli hostages.

“We have to be careful not to mistake a visible vocal minority for a majority,” Mr. Torres said. “The critics of Israel have far more power on social media than in the real world.”

Demonstrations against U.S. policy in Israel have spread from the Capitol and college campuses — Cornel West, the left-wing independent presidential candidate, appeared at a rally on Wednesday at the University of California, Los Angeles — to high schools across the country. Students at several high schools in Northern Virginia walked out of classes this week in a “Humanitarian Walkout Week.” The presidents of George Washington and Emory Universities, among others, condemned anti-Israel slogans chanted at rallies and projected on buildings.

An array of liberal groups have adopted the Palestinian cause. This week in New York, one protest sign read, “Reproductive justice means justice for Palestine.” At another demonstration in Manhattan, hundreds marched under the banner of “Queers for Liberation in Palestine.”

“I feel very betrayed by Biden,” said Angela Balya, 28, a protester in Manhattan who said she had volunteered for the Biden campaign in 2020. “I definitely will not be voting for him again.”

The Sunrise Movement, a coalition of young, progressive climate activists that mobilized on behalf of Mr. Biden’s campaign in 2020, is one such group that has called for a cease-fire. Some in the organization have been “raising questions” about whether they and other young people will mobilize for Mr. Biden again, said Michele Weindling, the group’s political director.

“If the Democratic Party and President Biden continue to send weapons and military support to Israel, it threatens to lose our generation, and that’s a very dangerous choice to make ahead of a critical election year,” Ms. Weindling said.

The United States’ support for Israel is unpopular with voters under 35, polling has shown, and students at dozens of colleges on Wednesday afternoon walked out of class as part of a nationwide mobilization effort by the group Students for Justice in Palestine.

“President Biden has shown to people that there’s virtually no difference between Republicans and Democrats on the question of the mass atrocities being leveled against Gaza,” said Kaleem Hawa, who has helped organize student protests with the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Few liberal organizations have had as raw a discussion about Israel as the A.F.L.-C.I.O. did at the Monday night meeting of its executive council.

Mark Dimondstein, the president of the postal union, argued that Israel and the Palestinian territories should be combined into a single state. He called for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to demand a cease-fire, according to four people familiar with the contents of the meeting.
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basso · Oct 31, 2023

DonnyMost said: ↑

There's plenty of dumbasses on the left in the Israel-Palestine conflict but as always the key distinction seems to be that those people on the left are not very powerful, whereas the dummies on the right are sitting in seats of power all over Washington.
Click to expand...

how the dummies on the left would vote is the point of this thread.

JuanValdez · Oct 31, 2023

dumbartonbass said: ↑

Combine that with a president like Biden who has emphatically taken the side of Israel
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Came to say this. Yeah, there is disagreement on the left, but Biden won't be facing a significant primary challenge. And in the general, he won't be seen as anti-Israel. So, I don't think its a factor for the presidential election. For other seats and for after 2024, it may (and probably should) become more of an issue to be addressed.

basso · Oct 31, 2023

JuanValdez said: ↑

Came to say this. Yeah, there is disagreement on the left, but Biden won't be facing a significant primary challenge. And in the general, he won't be seen as anti-Israel. So, I don't think its a factor for the presidential election. For other seats and for after 2024, it may (and probably should) become more of an issue to be addressed.
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what about those dem voters who are adamantly anti-israel? where do they go?

No Worries · Oct 31, 2023

basso said: ↑

how the dummies on the left would vote is the point of this thread.
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How the dummies on the right would vote is NOT the point of this thread. They are voting Trump, the Great Dummy in Chief.

A fan of Putin, a sworn enemy of the US? No problem. Trump does his bidding anyway.

basso · Oct 31, 2023

No Worries said: ↑

How the dummies on the right would vote is NOT the point of this thread. They are voting Trump, the Great Dummy in Chief.

A fan of Putin, a sworn enemy of the US? No problem. Trump does his bidding anyway.
Click to expand...

@deb4rockets, I found your burner account.

mtbrays · Oct 31, 2023

basso said: ↑

what about those dem voters who are adamantly anti-israel? where do they go?
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They probably live in New York and California or attend college so I don't think they'll matter too much.

FranchiseBlade · Oct 31, 2023

My guess is that Biden supported Israel and the people that vote Democrat will vote for the candidate not against other voters. Republicans seem to be the ones motivated by trying to vote for the sole purpose of upsetting others.

When it is down to Biden and and indicted possibly convicted Donald Trump, voters will look at the choices and make the decisions.

NewRoxFan · Oct 31, 2023

basso said: ↑

how the dummies on the left would vote is the point of this thread.
Click to expand...

There's a point to this thread?

JuanValdez · Oct 31, 2023

basso said: ↑

what about those dem voters who are adamantly anti-israel? where do they go?
Click to expand...

I'm probably sticking with the Dems anyways, thanks for asking.

basso · Oct 31, 2023

dumbartonbass said: ↑

They probably live in New York and California or attend college so I don't think they'll matter too much.
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Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Wisconsin, Nevada...

all have colleges; Michigan has a very large Arab community.

FranchiseBlade · Oct 31, 2023

basso said: ↑

Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Wisconsin, Nevada...

all have colleges; Michigan has a very large Arab community.
Click to expand...

Voters aren't going to vote against Biden and his administration who have helped organize and work with allies to get hostages released, sent additional naval vessels to help Israel, gave additional aid to Israel, stopped attacks against Israel from Iran/Hamas, and were staunch allies because some college kids acted badly and said mean and hateful things.

They especially won't vote for Trump who supports the Russian leader who met with Hamas and whose populations wanted to attack a civilian plane from Israel.

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Vibe Shift: Democrats, Israel, and the 2024 election

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Vibe Shift: Democrats, Israel, and the 2024 election

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