Two men I know who voted for Trump in 2016 explained it to me in coldly racial terms: The Democrats have a strategy for winning high office. They will appeal to minority voters, who are growing in number and will make up the majority of the country in another generation. I want to put off that day as long as possible. My people built American institutions, etc.
This view was clearly not unrepresentative. Trump won the majority of the white vote in the last two general elections, and Trump’s racist messages about Muslims and Hispanics and African-Americans were in line with these men’s beliefs.
The good news from this last week is that the political calculus for electoral victory on such a racist basis has been smashed up. Surely in part because of Trump’s crazy claims that the November election was stolen from him, Georgians elected two Democratic senators, one black, the other Jewish. The next day a mob of hooligans and clowns and bigots almost all white stormed the Capitol at Trump’s urging, and several people died, and Trump’s own party is now running away from him.
Two months ago, Trump was a potent political force who won 74 million votes. Today Trumpism can’t be discounted, but the Republican party is torn apart, and the elders of the party are trying to chart a new strategy.
While a majority of white voters supported Trump in 2020, if you look into those numbers, a large majority of white college-educated women supported Biden; and Trump’s margin was down to 3 percent among white college-educated men.
The idea of white supremacy was made a hideous mockery by the mob at the Capitol; and it was not a winning approach in Georgia this cycle. Obviously the battle is not over for “the soul of America,” the nation’s identity in ethnic terms. But the Democrats’ conception of a diverse coalition has captured the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Diversity is now de rigeur inside the Democratic Party. Biden’s vice president and Cabinet choices are disturbingly conservative/mainstream in ideological terms, but they are ethnically diverse. And he is sure to govern with the idea that Our diversity makes us stronger. I believe that principle has been cemented by this election.
This is a story for me because of the Israel parallel. There were, of course, Israeli flags brandished at the Capitol Hill riot. And it’s no coincidence: Israel’s proudly-stated principle of Jewish supremacy, higher Jewish rights to land and office, have long been a model for white supremacists. As Jewish Voice for Peace commented on the Capitol Hill mob:
Many white supremacist groups both hate Jews and love Israel. Depending on their specific ideology, they may admire Israel as a model ethnic supremacist state, share its Islamophobic and anti-Arab views, and/or want Jews to be corralled in their own state far away from the US.
The contradictions between Israeli ideals and Democratic Party ideals are so glaring today that they are inescapable even to “liberal Zionists.” The Israeli Jewish political system is structured to prevent Palestinian parties from ever entering the governing coalitions. The basic laws of the state are steeped in racism: they derogate Arabic, and they exalt Jewish “settlement” and the exclusive right of Jews to “self-determination.” This Jim Crow/apartheid system is made concrete by separate roadways for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and the shootings by occupying soldiers of Palestinian children who resist the seizure of their property. Haroun Abu Aram, 24, is paralyzed because he tried to hold on to a generator last week after his home was demolished by Israelis. The news yesterday was that the soldier who shot this unarmed man point blank will not be charged with a crime.
Liberal Zionists have had nothing to say about Haroun Abu Aram’s maiming, or the refusal to charge his state-sponsored attacker. J Street wants Trump removed from office and congratulates Raphael Warnock and Jonathan Osoff on their historic victories in Georgia, but has nothing to say about the latest demonstration of Jewish supremacist apartheid in Israel and Palestine. Because Israel is a… “Jewish democracy.” The hypocrisy is overwhelming, and will become unbearable in the new Democratic era.
And israeli racial supremacists are just as odious and despicable.
How much longer will the U.S. be willing to carry “Israel” on its back?
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https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2020/1120/Trump-bromance-broke-Israel-s-bipartisan-rule.-Will-Netanyahu-pay
“Trump ‘bromance’ broke Israel’s bipartisan rule. Will Netanyahu pay?” Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 20, 2020, by Diana Kraft
EXCERPT:
“Well before Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel made the calculated decision to align himself closely with the Republican Party.
“So much so that he’s sometimes referred to as ‘the Republican senator from Israel,’ and Israel itself has been called – only half-jokingly – ‘a red state.’ But as Mr. Netanyahu, a Trump loyalist whose sluggish congratulatory message to President-elect Joe Biden was noted by critics at home, adjusts to the impending transition in Washington, a question is being asked in Israel: Will the country pay a political price for breaking a cardinal rule from its own playbook, that preserving bipartisan U.S. support is sacrosanct, essential for Israel survival?
“Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid was the first to assail Mr. Netanyahu’s ‘Republicans First’ approach, in recent months talking about the virtues of bipartisanship. ‘Israel cannot afford to be a branch of the Republican Party,’ Mr. Lapid warned from the Knesset floor the day before the election. ‘Israel is losing the Democratic Party.’
“Mr. Netanyahu has benefited from his close relationship with Mr. Trump, who enjoys higher popularity in Israel than perhaps anywhere else. ‘Fawning over Trump in a way that almost no other country did, that comes with a cost,’ cautions Shalom Lipner, a nonresident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council who spent more than 25 years working for several Israeli prime ministers, including as a foreign policy adviser. ‘I think that the Netanyahu government should have been more careful to not put Israel in a situation where it stands accused of playing partisan politics,’ he says. ‘To the extent that its relations with the U.S. are unscathed, it will owe in great measure to the fact that Israel will have plenty of friends in the incoming administration as well.’ (cont’d)
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“Polling of Israelis from across the political spectrum has consistently shown a belief that the second most important factor for Israel’s defense, after maintaining a powerful army, is a strong relationship with the United States. That’s predicated on bipartisan support, both in Congress and the White House. While most Israelis may not closely follow the nuances of American politics, they know that every four years a presidential election is held, and that putting all of one’s diplomatic and security eggs in one basket is risky business.”
With the nomination of William Burns to head the CIA, once again Biden is signaling that he is serious about going back to the Iran Nuclear Deal. William Burns was in the forefront negotiating with Iran. Biden has not been shy about getting back to the Iran deal. It seems that war monger PM of Israel is not going to like it, but who cares? Bin Salman is also going to get the cold shoulder treatment from the Biden Administration, and they will miss their useful idiot in the WH.
Trump’s supporters have two grievances. One is that the US in particular, and the world in general, is no longer ruled by white men. Well, that’s true. No one can do anything about that, certainly not the Democrats. But Trump spoke to it, and they responded.
The other is that people like them – ordinary Americans – have been economically shafted for decades. This is the result of predatory capitalism, which is America’s undeclared religion. (Or is it undeclared?) Trump didn’t do anything about this, in fact he made it worse, giving tax breaks to the rich and cutting services to the non-rich.
But the Democrats were no better. Will the Democrats change?