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Hillary Clinton just lost the White House in Gaza — same way she lost it in Iraq the last time

Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton

Famously, Hillary Clinton lost her bid to be president in 2008 six years before the election, when she cast a vote for the Iraq war. Barack Obama, who’d been against that war as a nobody state senator in Illinois, was able to run to her left in appealing to the Democratic Party base, and win the nomination.

Hillary’s done it again. Her pro-war comments in that famous interview two weeks ago have painted her into a right wing neoconservative corner. In 2016, a Democratic candidate will again emerge to run to her left and win the party base, again because of pro-war positioning on the Middle East that Hillary has undertaken in order to please neoconservatives.

The last time it was Iraq, this time it was Gaza. Hillary Clinton had nothing but praise for Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza, and echoed him in saying that Hamas just wanted to pile up dead civilians for the cameras. She was “hepped up” to take on the jihadists, she said that Obama’s policy of “not doing stupid shit” was not a good policy. She undermined Obama for talking to Iran and for criticizing Israel over the number of civilian casualties in Gaza. She laid all the fault for the massacre at Hamas’s door.

And once again, Hillary Clinton will pay for this belligerency; she won’t tenant the White House.

Am I saying that the Gaza massacre will have actual weight in American politics in 2016? Yes. I know I’m going out on a limb, but I believe that the discourse on Israel/Palestine is shifting so fast in this country that by 2016 the Democratic Party base will be overwhelmingly against Hillary’s position on supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and that a rival will exploit this sentiment for political gain. And she will tack too late, and too feebly, as she did in 2008.

Consider: Gallup says that Israel’s actions in Gaza were unjustified in the eyes of the young, people of color, women, and Democrats, and overwhelmingly in some of those categories 51-25% disapproval among the young. 47-35 percent among Democrats, 44-33 among women, 49-25 among nonwhites.

Now remind me: who makes up the Democratic base? Women, Democrats, people of color. And as we all know, primaries are dominated by the true believers.

Consider that at the 2012 convention, there was a floor demonstration against the party platform to call Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Barack Obama’s minions railroaded that through because he was worried about losing donors. Those grassroots have only gotten stronger in the years since.

Two years is a long time– who would have bet on Barack Obama in 2006? And I’m saying the Israel/Palestine issue will at last be politicized by 2016; it will be a subject that people discuss openly. Jewish youth and liberal Zionists will have calved off the iceberg of pro-Israel support inside the Jewish establishment; they will be a real political bloc that will give a candidate confidence at last to criticize Israel. AIPAC will be a dirty word for a whole lot more people by 2016; it will be politicized inside the Democratic base. And Hillary is AIPAC’s darling. As MJ Rosenberg jokes, she won’t take a position on Ferguson, MO, without checking in with AIPAC.

Hillary is shrewd. She supported the Gaza massacre for the same reason she supported the US invasion of Iraq: to please the Israel lobby, that segment of American political life that helped get her husband into office over George H.W. Bush in 1992; that purged Jimmy Carter from her party and James Baker from the other one; and that permeated every corner of the George W. Bush administration as well as every Senate office from the Northeast. There’s huge money and establishment/media support in the Israel lobby. That’s why she gave her bombshell interview to Jeffrey Goldberg, who once served in the Israeli army, at a prison where they tortured Palestinians. From his lips to the lobby’s ears.

Jeffrey Goldberg
Jeffrey Goldberg

Shrewd– but too clever by half, as the saying goes. The lobby’s power is ebbing. Gaza has dealt it another blow. Young Jews are openly challenging the Jewish establishment, and mark my word, within a year we are going to see cover stories in national magazines about the Jewish political revolution, featuring inspiring young Jews like Jacob Ari Labendz and Cecilie Surasky and Michael Berg and Naomi Dann of Jewish Voice for Peace. By 2016, we’re going to see “60 Minutes” covering the Israel lobby. It’s not that Zionism won’t still have a friend in high places (just look at the chairman of the biggest media company in the world talking about his personal connection to Israel), but the story will finally be in the news because the Jewish monolith will have fractured sufficiently that the claim that it’s anti-Semitic to address the Israel lobby will have lost all its power. And the unending wars in the Middle East are going to turn people to our hand in religious conflict, and politicize Zionism in the way that FDR and Truman once tried to do, when they said establishing a Jewish state in the Middle East was inviting World War 3. Maybe even Chris Matthews will talk about the lobby.

And Hillary Clinton will once again be isolated in her own party as a warmonger. She has great political gifts. She’s street smart. She’s tough. She can always tell you the lay of the land. She knows the addresses of all the bosses.

But as she proved in 2002 when she voted for the Iraq war, she lacks vision. She has no idea what’s coming.

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If there is such a big change in the democratic camp how come only 3 of them (or was it 4?) rejected the recent resolution during the war?
Where is this big change when it comes to the democrats because frankly I havent seen any proof of it.

I wish you are right, I really do, but I do think you are wrong.

But only partly wrong! Here’s why:

Hillary will win in 2016. Why? Because elections are always on domestic issues. 2008 was decided on the economy, certainly between McCain and Obama. And even between Obama and Hillary, Obama won primarily because of the idea of a non-white president appealed to the notion of the American Dream, that anyone can make it in America.

Iraq didn’t help her, but I wouldn’t say it was her death knell.

Also, in 2016, the idea of a woman president will be strong. The only one who can mount a sufficient campaign against Hillary is Sen. Warren and we have seen that she has been totally craven to AIPAC, too.

But the part that I do agree with you is that I/P is going to be politicized within the Democratic party, finally. We already saw glimpses of it in 2012 and 2016 is shaping up to be that much greater an issue. Hillary will win, and she will bulldoze the base because she has a donor class to please and appease.

But post-Hillary, we will not see someone as craven to AIPAC as she is.

Remember, she is old. She & Bill came of age politically as the Jewish-Zionist establishment was peaking in power. Her daughter is married to a Jew. She is deeply ingrained in our culture, and she identifies much more deeply with Jews than Obama ever did, even if he was always surrounded by Jews politically, his cultural upbringing and coming-of-age was not heavily Jewish. Hillary’s was. And her generation, when she was young, faced a much more monolithically Zionist generation than the upcoming politicians in America who are seeing Jews in their 20s and 30s, where Zionism is much more contested among progressives.

Israel is a car crash as this FT editorial shows.
Is it anti-Semitic to say Israel has gone off the deep end?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ba89d99e-29e8-11e4-8139-00144feabdc0.html

“First, Israel, a mature democracy, is frequently subjected to a double standard that is not applied to other states. To criticise Israel for its intervention in Gaza is not anti-Semitic, even though some of the Jewish state’s supporters claim it to be so. A distinction can be drawn between those who criticise Israel and those who demonise it, subjecting it to opprobrium well beyond what would apply to any other nation. In London this month, thousands marched in protest at Israel’s actions in Gaza. Why have there been few such demonstrations against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, now responsible for 150,000 deaths?

It is also reasonable to ask whether Europeans today display an indifference towards anti-Semitism that is not evident when there are attacks on other faiths. Across Europe those demonstrating against Israel use crude anti-Jewish slogans and images to press home their case, but there is rarely a public backlash. An example of such indifference came in London last week when the manager of a J Sainsbury supermarket store withdrew kosher food from the shelves for fear that anti-Israeli protesters might attack the shop. By doing so, the store appeased Israel haters. It also deprived religious people in Britain of their rights.

The hope of all must be the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a lasting guarantee of Israeli security. Europe’s political and religious leaders must redouble efforts in the fight against all racism. They should defend religious liberty and the right of people of all faiths to practise their religion without fear or intimidation.
The alternative – a world of bigotry and intolerance – is a menace to us all.”

And when Israel is a global centre of bigotry and intolerance, with zero interest in granting Palestinians their rights, what is a thinking person to do ?

“Famously, Hillary Clinton lost her bid to be president in 2008 six years before the election, when she cast a vote for the Iraq war.”

No Dem is going to call out Israel for the racist cruel vindictive deluded tinpot ethnocentric provincial kip that it is. Unless someone can show me where the alternative money for a 2016 run is going from.

Voting against Iraq was easy but against Israel, in 2016? Too early I bet.
the cause is not yet lost in middle America, ya salaam.

And Hillary Clinton will once again be isolated in her own party as a warmonger. She has great political gifts. She’s street smart. She’s tough. She can always tell you the lay of the land. She knows the addresses of all the bosses.

But as she proved in 2002 when she voted for the Iraq war, she lacks vision. She has no idea what’s coming.

HRC may lack vision and merely know how to get the bosses to throw $$$$ her way, but she wasn’t outflanked in 2008 by the left. She was outflanked by a campaign that created an illusion of the left.

Young progressives who will actually show up in the booth or stick their voting envelope in the mail in October-November 2016 are not as excited about the Democratic Party now as they were in 2006 to 2008. There is far more concern about accelerating climate change and its detrimental effects than over Gaza, especially in the Southwest, where the realities of water emergencies will probably dominate public policy in 2015 and 2016. There is a growing awareness that we live in an oligarchical society that is supported by both parties, and that overshadows worries about West Bank settlements.

We ARE a war weary society, even more than eight years ago, but I see no credible challenger for the presidency about to emerge from the left. Both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have mouthed their full support for the “evil Hamas” meme.

If a credible candidate were about to emerge, there is one brilliant blogger who would be keyed in to that by now – Howie Klein, at Down With Tyranny! He doesn’t. (Anyone unfamiliar with Howie’s site might check it out. He knows more about each individual U.S. House District, Senate race and governor’s mansion than anyone else out there.)

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com

Just who do you think is going to seize HRC’s mantle, Phil?