Legendary director Jonathan Demme offers the Guardian an analysis I share (and that you never see in the U.S. press), that Jimmy Carter didn't get a second term partly because he took on the Israel lobby.
Demme's "brainwashing" analysis is precisely why I find the recent media excitement over Hillary's signs of independence trivial. Obama has already won the most important post-Hillary battle: he has managed to convince even Hillary's right-of-center Jewish backers that he is not a Muslim, a Palestinian-hugger. Because of his performance at AIPAC and in Sderot, and his aura as the presumptive winner of the election, what befell Ned Lamont in Connecticut won't befall Obama. Remember that after Lamont knocked off the Establishment candidate, the big money followed Lieberman across the aisle, as an Independent. This time round these guys are not going to McCain. The Democratic Party is whole; Obama is now King. That's my observation, anyway, I haven't seen the journalism. But I wager that Obama will get close to 75 percent of the Jewish vote, and that even Haim Saban–who played hard to get in June–will wind up giving Obama money, cause Saban smells a winner.
Demme's analogy breaks down because the brainwashing is expedient. Carter and Obama actually share the understanding that Israel/Palestine is everything for American security and the American interest. I say that as a cockeyed optimist. As I regularly assert here, I believe Obama has the ability to triangulate Marty Peretz and Saeb Erekat. Carter had limited political gifts, Obama has giant ones.
Related posts:
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- Maybe Hillary Should Pull a Lieberman and Run All the Way to November
- Freeman ouster is signal, Obama won’t put pressure on Israel
- Obama Praises Olmert. Why? He’s Disgraced in Israel
- Podhoretz urges ‘wildly disproportionate’ Jewish donor base to abandon Democrats
{ 17 comments }
I don't think Carter's loss had anything to do with the Israel lobby. It had to do with inflation and the Iranian hostage crisis, mainly. I have mixed feelings about Carter–any far lefty will tell you that Carter was well within the US foreign policy mainstream, which in part means that he was perfectly willing to support mass murderers, like the Indonesian military in East Timor. But he had his good points too. (It sounds funny to me to say that someone supported mass murderers but had good points too, but when one is talking about people in power you have to take for granted they are going to behave like sociopaths on some issues.)
Anyway, Carter was perceived as weak and ineffectual and while some of this was unfair, perception is everything in politics. If anything, his success at Camp David was one of the few things where people gave him credit. So as harmful as the Israel lobby may be, it's silly to blame it for everything.
Nah, It was the Jews. Nothing to do with a sky high "misery index" and rolling over for the Iranians like a whipped dog. That couldn't be it.
Carter kept the Israel lobby on board until after he was elected the first time. He dropped them later. With Obama, we shall see.
Carter's failure to get reelected: well, there's lots going on here, as others have pointed out. And lots of leaders found it hard to get relected in the 1970s/early 1980s: Callaghan, Giscard d'Estang, even Schmidt. Unemployment and oil prices will do that to you. But even in broader economic circumstances, your friends and enemies count, and the Israeli lobby was by the end of Carter's term, Carter's enemy. It did not forgive – has never forgiven – Carter for forcing them to make peace with Egypt, and rightly feared that he might offer another dose of the same in a second term.
Anonymous above represents the kind of head-up-their-arse, factually challenged bullshit that has reduced the 'left' to its present irrelevance.It brooks no fact in its zeal to confirm dogma by seeking out economic reasons to explain every event in history.
What ensured Carter's defeat in 1980 was a combination of factors, some mentioned above, but Israel lobby being a key one among them. Carter's presidency had been dogged since day one by the various neoconservative front groups, in particular the Committee on Present Danger. His unprecedented call for austerity brought out all the hounddogs of reaction who derided him for wanting to undermine the American way, which in their view is one of affluence and ambition. But things went completely south after Camp David (which, recall, was signed in the face of lobby opposition) and after Carter threatened to cut off aid when Israel refused to withdraw from Lebanon. Israel directly intervened in US politics to ensure Carter's defeat. Begin was caught on an NSA wiretap giving instructions to the Mayor of New York (Ed Koch I believe) on how to go about it. This resulted in the largest swing away of Jewish voters from a Democratic candidate, costing him the key states.
Sure, that's what did it. And we the LOBBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tipped the balance in a landslide victory for Reagan where he won 44 states including Georgia. I don't mind sparring with Phil and his merry bunch of storm troopers. But pick up a history book every now and then. Martillo is totally off the reservation. Obviously not getting "enough oral sex from his lovely bride, the lovely miss Karen.
.
"Carter had limited political gifts, Obama has giant ones."
Remember the summer of 1976? No, not the girls (yo, Yolanda!), but the aura surrounding the Democratic political candidate. My brother, a journalist at the time, was so hyped on the fresh, Washington-outsider candidacy of Jimmy Carter. With his trademark 50,000-watt smile and gladhanding way with crowds, Carter's political gifts weren't all that limited.
[Did you catch Phil's subliminal message? "Obama has giant ones," LOL!]
Elections have a large pocketbook component. The oil shock, inflation and recession of today rhyme closely with 1979-1980, when Carter's re-election bid was quashed. The slow drip of the Iranian hostage crisis didn't help either.
One praiseworthy aspect of the Carter presidency was that the U.S. was at peace. Carter didn't do much bombing in the Third World; didn't get very many U.S. service people killed.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Obama. His call to escalate the hopeless Afghan occupation, and maybe even extend it into Pakistan, is a catastrophic error. It may very well make Obama a one-termer, like Carter and (more pertinently) like Lyndon Brownnose "Means of Ascent" Johnson, who bailed from seeking a second elected term in 1968 because of the unpopularity of his lethal, losing Asian war.
What a crock, that Johnson derided Barry Goldwater in 1964 as a "loose nukes" nutcase, then went on to kill tens of thousands in his Vietnam debacle. Obama is the very mirror of Johnson's perfidy, posing as an Iraq War opponent thanks to his 2002 Chicago speech, while teeing up the coming Afghan bloodbath.
Remember how the SDS hounded Johnson from office, taunting him with the chant -
'Hey, hey, LBJ
How many kids did you kill today?'
This is how I'm gonna pound Obama's scrawny ass, from the day he's nominated till the day he leaves D.C. in disgrace:
'Hey, hey, Barack Hussein
How many kids have you killed in vain?'
All hail the Viceroy of Vietghanistan …
Reagan's elections marked the entry of Jewish American voters into the Republican Party; He earned a respectable 31 percent of the Jewish vote in the 1984 elections, though it did not match the 39 percent he had won in 1980, when the pro-Reagan Jewish vote largely was the result of voter backlash against the policies of President Carter.
"Martillo is totally off the reservation."–SOG
What reservation is that, the one dedicated to vulgar morons?
No Keating, a mental ward. He's mentally ill. What's your excuse. And your wifes?
SOG, we're not the least bit interested in reading your vulgar stupidity about either Mrs Keating or Mrs Martillo.
We are, however, quite interested in learning why a bigmouth Zionazi such as yourself isn't over in Israel where you belong. Doesn't it get old for you being an alien in Christian America? How much longer until you hook up with rest of your tribe over in your Mediterranean homeland? Why do you keep dodging this question? Is there something about your exceedingly lame self that requires continued concealment? How much longer before you come clean on this?
I'm here to aggravate you Chuck. Specifically you. BTW. Looks like the "Black Jesus" is having some problems these days. Interesting.
I have to admit, I am curious. Martillo's wife is the craziest broad that's walked the earth since Eva Braun and Magda Goebbels. And Keatings supposed Jewish wife married a guy who thinks Hitler was misunderstood and is fond of spouting Nazi slogans. It's like seeing a 12 car pileup on the highway. It's hard not to look.
Why SOG, why don't you look over at Postville, Iowa? It's all there clear as can be for your very own special type of Jew–fuck the goy, whether born in the USA, or from South America. Kosher as can be, quite literally.
Food for thought.
I thought that was your wife's job, "fuck the goy"
Ah, so, SOG, so you agree Postville, Iowa lays out the spirit for your type of Jew! Gee, who'd know? Whatta guy! You're in the zone!
BTW, SOG, you should listen to your fellow travelers more–Witty and his posse around the internet, if not (G-D forbid) Phil–you're not rich, not scholarly, not a media powerhouse, so your job is to just follow orders. After all, this is the system your higher folk have used to their advantage for ages. There's a malfunction in your programming, as if you are the toe on a petty Golem that your creators and maintainers never look at quite enough.
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