Given all of what you wrote, it comes down to math for the El-Sayed campaign.
If his own messaging was already problematic for voters who see it like you see it, perhaps that cohort was not a particularly strong one for him anyway.
Now, down to the raw math. Expressed in terms of percentage of the Michigan electorate, how large a number is “many other people”? From that number, subtract those that would hold their nose and vote El-Sayed anyway. The number remaining may be seen as worth sacrificing for the El-Sayed campaign to maintain message discipline (esp to not have outsiders constantly defining what the campaign stands for).
I guess it depends how he says it. The basic idea that budgets are tight and the billions we send to Isreal could be better spent in the US for schools and healthcare is not bigotry. The fact that Isreal wanted us to be involved in the current war (and Trump went along with it) seems to be an established fact. Obviously, schools and healthcare would be underfunded regardless of the war, and regardless of our aid to Isreal.
It IS a tricky bit. And you just reminded me of the 2024 and earlier-in-this-cycle say-the-G-word! drumbeat from the hard left to nominally progressive candidates. (Haven’t been hearing THAT so much lately…)
ISTM Stevens grabbed on to this because whether we like it or not, that stupid ad DID touch sone nerves, and she had been looking for some sort of inciting excuse for her effort to “punish” El-Sayed.
But then let’s not pretend that he did all he could to reach out to Jews. He made a calculation - that he could lose their vote and make up for it elsewhere - and maybe he’s even right about that. But surely you can understand why I, or Stevens, or @DSeid, might have grave concerns about the direction in which the winds are blowing if this is the future of the Democratic party. As he said in the other thread, if where we are headed is a party that is happy to dismiss the concerns of the Jewish community, then as soon as there is a non-MAGA alternative, there will no longer be a place for us in the Democratic Party. As someone who has voted Democrat in every election since I turned 18, I really don’t want that to happen. Especially because it’s possible that there simply won’t be a non-MAGA alternative in the foreseeable future and I don’t want to have to choose between a shit sandwich and a bottle of arsenic.
Because it’s a lot of money and he (and I) don’t think it should be spent in that way. 1)it’s not a good use of our money, and 2) there are better uses for the money.
Well, no. For instance, he could have personally visited every Jewish Michigander at home and given them each $100. “He didn’t do all he could” is meaningless.
To be precise - a not insignificant segment of it. There is wide disagreement. But it isn’t small and it includes many Jewish progressives being labeled as the enemy because they don’t condemn Zionism.
The cost of the war in Iran absolutely is a lot, even relative to these large issues. And dumb, costly wars are absolutely a big part of why we have underfunded so many other priorities like health and education.
It may be true that as a calculation the wink and nod to antisemitism is a better play than clearly calling it out. Probably is. There are more who endorse many of the tropes than who think they are hateful. Othering us has historically been a go to. It works.
Of course, but it’s fair politics to say “the money we’re spending on X, could be better used on Y.”
Government budgets are about setting priorities. Some believe NASA’s budget should be cut, but not because they don’t believe in space exploration. They think the money should be spent elsewhere.
There are Americans (including American Jews) who don’t think it’s good for us, Isreal, or the Palestinians for the US to send so much aid to Isreal. Some people who believe that might be antisemitic, but it’s not necessarily where they’re coming from.
Othering Arabs/Muslims (or those, like Obama, who might be wrongly categorized as such) has a much more recent, and more prominent history in US politics. And Rogers has directly othered AES, over and over. Compare that to AES’s campaign, which has never othered Jews, and at worst, has ignored mild antisemitism from a third party ad (from a grifting troll).
How concerned are you about Rogers’ othering of AES (and Stevens’ implicit endorsement of that othering)?
And I’m sure that no one who has ever said that “the money we’re spending on welfare could be better used on Y” was racist? Even if we sub “welfare queen” for “welfare”?
And some believe that the money we spend on [welfare queens/illegal immigrants/insert your own racist meme] should be spent elsewhere. Is it impossible for any of them to be racist because they’re just prioritizing government budgets?
And many of us are warning you that the way that El Sayed goes about voicing his opposition to this state of affairs ties neatly into many antisemitic tropes. Coupled with his own comments and the people he chose to campaign with, and his behavior towards figures like Carlson who are VERY explicit about that message, I think there is a lot to be concerned about.
Would I vote for Rogers? No. Do I care about hate aimed at others? Yes. But I am also aware that no one else will care as much about aimed at me than me, if at all. I will be an ally but not by throwing myself and mine under the bus. That should not have to be the choice.
Seriously. AES knows that his bombing comment was dumb to say the quiet part out loud anyway, he knows that refusing to say Israel has a right to exist concerns some … then it is too much for him to explicitly condemn antisemitism from Uyger, a distraction, and he advertises Carlson?
You really see reaction to that as pathologically insane? No way to it could be rational. Fuck those people?
If they endorse Rogers? Yes, fuck those people. They are bad people, or deranged, or delusional, or suffering from PTSD (etc.), or so profoundly ignorant that it must be willful.
Not at all. Israel is the Jewish state. If we abolish the only Jewish state in the world and replace it with the 23rd member of the Arab League, it doesn’t matter if we call it “Israel” or “Palestine”. Jewish self determination is over.
The question isn’t whether El Sayed believes that there should be a state known as Israel, it is whether he believes that the Jewish people should continue to have self determination, as we have for the first time in thousands of years only since 1948. His answer is a resounding no.