XPost: alt.politics.elections, soc.culture.israel, alt.society.liberalism XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics
In <svnp9c$ffu$
1@dont-email.me> moron Lefty Lundquist <
lefty_lundquist@ggmail.com> wrote:
Joe Biden is the greatest president ever, like JFK. Except JFK
liked women and Biden prefers children.
Young Democrats find U.S. support for Netanyahu’s war effort is
untenable, potentially costing the president millions of liberal
votes.
I don’t write this to downplay the threat that Jacobson’s group, No
Labels, poses to Biden’s reelection. A center-right candidate able
to secure ballot access could claim thousands of voters Biden needs,
namely those Americans who grudgingly voted for him to oust Donald
Trump in 2020 and are dreading doing so once more.
Yet the collective Democratic fixation on No Labels increasingly
looks misplaced — or at least disproportionate given how the 2024
political landscape is taking shape.
Jacobson seems to chase most every name that bubbles up in the news
cycle ( just ask them). Yet she’ll be hard pressed to find the sort
of well-known figure she needs to be viable because they want either
to retain future prospects in their own party (Nikki Haley) or they
don’t want to don the scarlet T in their future obituaries for
having enabled Trump’s return. (Most every anti-Trump Republican
plus Joe Manchin.)
It’s the left that presents the most acute peril to the president.
If Kennedy claims the Libertarian Party line, which he’s warming to,
Jill Stein is the Green Party nominee and Cornel West gets on any
battleground state ballots, they would combine to drain far more
votes from Biden than from Trump. You wouldn’t think Democrats need
much reminding of this scenario, given how many in their
professional ranks lived through two campaigns, 2000 and 2016, in
which they lost the electoral vote in part because of leftist
spoilers.
In these early days of the 2024 campaign, though, it’s the No Labels
push to draft a centrist which has drawn more scorn, alarm and
opposition research among Democrats. Yes, that’s partly because the
party can try to shame Jacobson, who’s married to longtime
Democratic strategist and liberal bete noire Mark Penn. They have
considerably less leverage with a certified vaccine skeptic,
Kennedy, to say nothing of the patchouli caucus, Stein and West.
But it’s also because Democrats are still catching up to the
possibility of their coalition unraveling over Israel’s offensive in
Gaza. Are the well-organized hecklers bird-dogging Biden at nearly
every speech going to turn to a candidate who once proposed a Muslim
ban? Of course not. Yet this White House race, like the last two, is
bound to be won on the margins, and Biden is at risk of losing
critical younger and left-wing voters to third-party candidates or
apathy.
“People don’t understand how few votes [the third-party candidates]
would need to take away,” said Lis Smith, the hard-charging
Democratic operative who has recently signed on with the DNC, in
part to grab voters by the lapels about the threat at hand. “It’s
the whole election.”
Few in the administration sense the danger more than Vice President
Kamala Harris. From holiday parties to a dinner at her residence
last month for a group of prominent Black men, Harris has been
telling sympathetic Democrats outside the White House that she
recognizes the political challenge posed by Biden’s unwavering
public support for Israel, I’m told by officials familiar with her
comments at the events. Harris told people she’s making the case
privately for the administration to show more empathy for the plight
of innocent Gazans, an internal push that my colleague Eugene
Daniels reported in December.
The vice president, too, has been heckled by pro-Palestinian
protesters. And it’s no coincidence that her abortion rights tour
has not yet taken her to activist-filled college towns such as,
well, Ann Arbor and Madison that would otherwise be obvious stops to
motivate core Democrats. (Even going to comparatively conservative
San Jose this week, however, didn’t spare her from protesters.)
Biden himself is a different case. Like everyone in the
administration and any Democrat with a pulse, he’s deeply suspicious
of Benjamin Netanyahu, and privately has called the Israeli prime
minister a “bad fucking guy,” according to people who’ve talked to
the president. (Biden spokesperson Andrew Bates said, “the president
did not say that, nor would he,” adding that the two leaders have “a decades-long relationship that is respectful in public and in
private.”)
Not that the president would ever say such things in public.
However, he’s starting to take steps demonstrating to pro-
Palestinian activists that he hears their complaints.
White House officials told me it was purposeful Thursday, before
Biden made his first trip to Michigan this year, that the president
used his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast to decry hate
against Arab Americans and offer prayers for those “held hostage or
under bombardment or displaced,” while simultaneously releasing an
executive order levying sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West
Bank who have committed acts of violence on Palestinians.
Biden aides have clearly absorbed the blowback they got from even
friendly Democratic lawmakers for making no mention of Palestinian
suffering in official statements they issued marking 100 days since
the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
Indeed, it’s hard to overstate how contemptuous even staunchly pro-
Israel Democratic lawmakers have become of Netanyahu.
One House Democrat told me of a dinner last month with about eight
other colleagues, a cross-section of the caucus ideologically and generationally. “It was unanimous that this Israel-Gaza war needed
to end now and that Biden needed to stand up to Bibi,” this lawmaker
told me, before offering his own view.
“This is a disaster politically,” said this House Democrat, who
rarely criticizes Israel. “The base is really pissed — and it’s not
just the leftists. I have never seen such a depth of anguish as I’ve
seen over this Gaza issue. Bibi is toxic among many Democratic
voters and Biden must distance himself from him — yesterday.”
Part of the president’s challenge, particularly with younger
Democrats deriving their news almost entirely from social media, is
they don’t hear of Biden pushing Netanyahu behind the scenes.
“You create political challenges for yourself when your public and
private messaging aren’t aligned,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama
White House aide who now co-hosts Pod Save America and praised Biden
for his efforts to free hostages and establish a cease-fire. “People
don’t see Joe Biden chewing out Bibi on the phone.”
The White House, in a reflection of their public confidence
(hubris?) regarding the politics of Biden’s positioning on Israel,
arranged a call with Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).
Fetterman, who has delighted in trolling left-wing critics by
resolutely standing with Israel since Oct. 7, told me young voters
should consider the implications of enabling a candidate who would
likely give Netanyahu even more of a free hand.
“If you sit this out, or throw your vote away, you now are
effectively empowering Bibi, and you’re definitely going to be
empowering Trump,” he said.
There is a hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner element to Biden’s approach
to Israel that some in Gen Z can’t fully grasp. His politics are
that of a Cold War Democrat, and a Northeastern one at that. Support
for Israel is part of his liberal DNA, no matter the prime minister.
Jewish voters, Irish ones, Italian, too — that’s the coalition. It’s
a matter of principle, sure, but also domestic politics. But they’ve
not heard of the “Three Is” on TikTok.
For now, Biden is hoping his spy chief, William Burns, can negotiate
a cease-fire-for-hostages deal that would bring a two-month peace to
Gaza.
If that agreement can be struck, then look for Biden to use the
moment to make a public appeal, aimed at American voters and Middle
Easterners alike, for a broader framework for the region. It would
effectively be Biden’s attempt at a geopolitical grand bargain,
combining a path toward a two-state solution with a new U.S.-Saudi
Arabia security arrangement and normalization of ties between the
Saudis and Israelis.
The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, who’s sourced in all the right
places in this White House, described it as “the Biden Doctrine.”
Such a moonshot would pay enormous political dividends. Yet Biden’s
campaign can’t count on it — they must begin restoring the
president’s standing on the left now.
There are gentle ways to do that — Biden’s actions on Thursday — and
more aggressive steps.
The latter will, I’m told, include a multi-pronged offensive against
Kennedy, Stein and West, some of which will come from the campaign
and some from outside entities.
In the short term, that means seizing on any chance to complicate
the ballot access of the third-party candidates and attempting to
discredit their motives or at least highlight the less savory
aspects of their character.
Democratic operative Smith, for her part, is particularly animated
by Kennedy’s extended game of footsie with pro-Trump figures. “It’s
clear Trump world understands what Kennedy could do, which is why
all this money is getting pumped into him,” she said, citing the $15
million in super PAC contributions Trump donor Tim Mellon has given
to Kennedy.
Beyond paid advertising, the president’s aides are still weighing
him joining TikTok and, regardless, intend to leverage the platform
by pushing their digital native supporters to make the Biden case on
the app.
They probably shouldn’t wait much longer.
I got a taste of what’s brewing at a conference this week convened
by the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political
Future. It was a mostly decorous forum in the chandeliered Town &
Gown Club, where a portrait of Pat Nixon still hangs prominently.
Then a student took the microphone and confronted longtime Biden
adviser John Anzalone with a question. Well, it was more of a
statement.
Michigan voters, the student warned, are “not going to vote for
Genocide Joe.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/04/biden-third- party-peril-00139380
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)