Is Bernie Sanders Suicidal, By Praising Education Under Fidel Castro, And Criticizing Israeli Jewish Pressure Group, AIPAC?

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders seems to be suicidal politically, as he reminds us of the great promotion of education under Fidel Castro’s dictatorship in Cuba, insuring that he has no chance to win the state of Florida. He alienates the Cuban American community in South Florida, in a state that has the third largest number of electoral votes, and while it is true that most Cuban Americans vote Republican, Barack Obama did win Florida twice in 2008 and 2012.

Also, Sanders alienates much of the Jewish community in his criticism of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, which has support of a large percentage of American Jews.

The Jewish community usually votes at least 70 percent for Democrats, but now it is seen as possible that Sanders would gain a smaller percentage of Jewish support than any Democrat in many decades. His being Jewish does not help him, as many Jews see him as a traitor to Israel.

Sanders is making clear just how much of a rebel he is, and putting many Democratic members of Congress in an awkward position, as to whether they can support him.

Sanders comes across as someone who is not willing to compromise, and while that may be appealing to his supporters, heavily young idealists, it puts not only him, if he is the nominee, but the party from top to bottom, in a position where they could see a massive destruction electorally of the Democratic Party!

10 comments on “Is Bernie Sanders Suicidal, By Praising Education Under Fidel Castro, And Criticizing Israeli Jewish Pressure Group, AIPAC?

  1. D February 28, 2020 8:48 pm

    ‘AIPAC Is Losing Control of the Narrative on Israel’

    American Jews are very uncomfortable with Trump, but the pro-Israel lobby has embraced him wholeheartedly.

    By Emma Green (03.26.2019)
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/aipac-trump-policy-israel-divides-american-jews/585727/

    It was the final day of AIPAC’s annual policy conference in Washington, D.C., and the star of the gathering had finally appeared: Benjamin Netanyahu. An estimated 18,000 attendees sat in rows in a large downtown convention center, watching the Israeli prime minister address them through a patchy satellite feed on gigantic blue screens; although Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump in Washington this week, he cut short his trip after rockets fired from Gaza struck a home outside Tel Aviv.

    It was difficult to hear what Netanyahu was saying at times, but the audience didn’t care: The staunch Israel supporters who filled the room gave him standing ovations. The only other speaker who won nearly as much applause on Tuesday morning was David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. He brought greetings from Trump, “Israel’s greatest ally ever to reside in the White House,” as Friedman put it. The whole event underscored the enthusiastic Trump-Netanyahu alliance, even by the standard of the traditionally strong U.S.-Israel relationship. In his meeting with Trump at the White House on Monday, Netanyahu compared him to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king, and Harry Truman, the U.S. president who recognized Israel.

    Anxiety was a consistent theme throughout the conference: American and Israeli leaders condemned rising anti-Semitism and consistently took shots at Representative Ilhan Omar, the freshman Democrat from Minnesota who caused an uproar over her use of anti-Semitic tropes and criticisms of Israel. Many speakers wrung their hands over the way Israel is allegedly becoming a so-called wedge issue in American politics, lamenting partisan divisions over support for the Jewish state.

    And yet, the two men who have been among the greatest drivers of U.S. political division over Israel, Trump and Netanyahu, were celebrated. Inside the grand ballroom at AIPAC’s annual conference, longtime attendees and political leaders forcefully maintained that support for Israel is as strong and unifying as it has ever been. Outside the hermetic world of AIPAC, however, the American political conversation about Israel is shifting, in part because of backlash against America’s and Israel’s right-wing leaders.

    In the lead-up to AIPAC’s policy conference, Republican leaders, including Trump, have been pushing the narrative that Israel and anti-Semitism might be defining issues in upcoming elections, and that American Jews might come to feel like their votes—and donor dollars—no longer belong in the Democratic Party. The president quoted a Fox News segment in a tweet, claiming that Jews are leaving the Democratic Party in a so-called Jexodus. At the conference, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell claimed concern over “the growing tide of anti-Israel sentiment,” describing it as a movement that is “increasingly shaping the left’s agenda.”

    Survey data and historical trends suggest that both of these arguments are tenuous. Jews overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party: 71 percent voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center, and 79 percent voted for Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. And Democrats overwhelmingly believe Israel is an important ally of the United States: In a 2016 University of Maryland survey, 70 percent of Democrats said this is the case.

    Still, Democratic leaders found themselves, yet again, on the defensive. Across the three days of the conference, party representatives sought to assure attendees that Democrats are staunchly pro-Israel, repeatedly taking thinly veiled shots at Omar’s suggestions that American support for Israel conflicts with loyalty to the United States or is motivated by money. AIPAC’s leaders were emphatic that their organization is “relentlessly bipartisan,” which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi later echoed: “Support for Israel in America is bipartisan and bicameral,” she said, “relentlessly.”

    But even as American political leaders forcefully maintained that U.S. support for Israel hasn’t changed, they avoided addressing the incredible discomfort that many American Jews, almost all Democrats, and a wide range of self-described Israel supporters feel about Trump and Netanyahu. Many people who would count themselves among these groups believe that Trump has enabled the rise of right-wing extremism in the United States, including the kind of virulent anti-Semitism that led to the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh last fall. In 2018, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) found that 71 percent of American Jews rate Trump’s performance as unfavorable. (Disapproval of Trump is even higher among Democrats as a whole.) And according to AJC’s survey, 57 percent of American Jews disapprove of how the president is handling U.S.-Israel relations. American attitudes toward Netanyahu are less commonly measured in polling data, but anecdotal evidence from events in recent years suggests that American attitudes toward the Israeli prime minister are cold.

    AIPAC has tried to navigate these tensions among Jews, Democrats, and pro-Israel supporters at several points in recent years, usually awkwardly. In 2016, AIPAC’s president, Lillian Pinkus, apologized for a speech made by Trump, who was then a presidential candidate, because he openly criticized President Barack Obama. That same year, an Orthodox rabbi in D.C. stood up during Trump’s speech, shouting that he is “wicked” and “inspires racists and bigots.”

    More recently, AIPAC endorsed a statement by the American Jewish Committee condemning Otzma Yehudit, the far-right Israeli political party of Kahanists, who believe that Arabs are the enemies of Jews and shouldn’t have political rights within the state of Israel. Although neither statement said it outright, these were oblique criticisms of Netanyahu, who reached out to Otzma in the hope of cobbling together a winning governing coalition in the upcoming Israeli elections.

    “The American Jewish establishment … has conducted itself for decades under the assumption that the right approach to strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship is by unquestioning support for whatever is going on over in Israel,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of J Street, an organization that often frames itself as the progressive alternative to AIPAC. “Where we are, in 2019, is a world in which the overwhelming majority of the people they’re supposed to represent—which is American Jews and others who care about Israel—are deeply upset about what’s going on here and what’s going on there.”

    Despite its bipartisan aspirations, AIPAC is unable to set a consensus D.C. policy conversation on Israel. One of its main legislative priorities, a bill condemning the boycotts, divestments, and sanctions movement in opposition to Israel, generated partisan backlash earlier this year: “Nothing—nothing—will motivate Americans to exercise their rights more than efforts to suppress them,” said Chris Van Hollen, the senator from Maryland. “Trying to suppress free speech, even unpopular speech … will only add momentum.” And when Omar criticized AIPAC directly, claiming that the organization’s influence in Washington is “all about the Benjamins,” or financial influence, Democrats in the House were unable to rally behind a straightforward condemnation of anti-Semitism.

    But at AIPAC’s policy conference, as attendees posed for pictures with a person in a plush, large-headed Golda Meir costume and applauded wildly at mentions of America’s embassy in Jerusalem, Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran deal, and his recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, they did not acknowledge that the American conversation about Israel might be fracturing under Trump and Netanyahu. As the pro-Israel activists listened to American and Israeli leaders tell them that support for Israel is as strong as ever, they gamely nodded along.

  2. D February 28, 2020 9:11 pm

    ‘AIPAC Is Helping Fund Anti-Bernie Sanders Super Pac Ads In Nevada’

    By Ryan Grim and Akela Lacy (02.14.2020)
    https://theintercept.com/2020/02/14/aipac-anti-bernie-sanders-ads-nevada/

    The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is helping to fund a Super PAC launching attack ads against Sen. Bernie Sanders in Nevada on Saturday, according to two sources with knowledge of the arrangement. The ads are being run by a group called Democratic Majority for Israel, founded by longtime AIPAC strategist Mark Mellman.

    The Nevada attack ads, which will air in media markets in Reno and Las Vegas, follow a similar spending blitz by DMFI ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Like the ads that aired in Iowa, the Nevada ads will attack Sanders on the idea that he’s not electable, Mediaite reported.

    DMFI spent $800,000 on the Iowa ads, while the spending on the Nevada ads remains private. AIPAC is helping bankroll the anti-Sanders project by allowing donations to DMFI to count as contributions to AIPAC, the sources said. As is typical with most big-money giving programs, the more a donor gives to AIPAC, the higher tier they can claim — $100,000 level, $1 million level, and so on — and the more benefits accrue to them. A $100,000 donor gets more access to members of Congress at private functions, for instance, than someone who merely pays AIPAC’s conference fee. A $1 million donor gets still more, which means that it is important to donors to have their contributions tallied. There is also status within social networks attached to one’s tier of giving. The arrangement allows donors to give directly to DMFI, which is required to file disclosures naming its donors, without AIPAC’s fingerprints.

    Rachel Rosen, a spokesperson for DMFI, said she was unaware of any AIPAC encouragement to donate to the organization. “As far as we know, what you are suggesting is completely untrue,” she said. “But because we are a separate organization, we can’t know exactly what other organizations are doing. Therefore, we are the wrong address for the the specific questions you ask — they need to [be] directed to AIPAC.”

    AIPAC denied the arrangement. “AIPAC is not and has not been involved in the ad campaigns of any political action committee,” spokesperson Marshall Wittmann wrote in an email. “The accusation that AIPAC is providing benefits to members for donating to fund these political ads or this political action committee is completely false and has no basis in fact.”

    In the past, AIPAC enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Congress. But as it’s cozied up to the GOP in recent years and taken a harder right-wing stance on Israel policy, reflecting a rightward drift in Israel, more Democrats are cutting ties with the group and tacking further left. AIPAC’s faltering relationship with Democrats was the initial spur for Mellman’s new organization, founded by donors and operatives linked to AIPAC.

    On Wednesday, Rep. Betty McCollum slammed AIPAC as trafficking in “hate speech” for a recent social media ad campaign that warned that “radicals in Congress” presented a threat “maybe more sinister” than the Islamic State, along with photos of Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and McCollum. Representatives of AIPAC spent Wednesday and Thursday on Capitol Hill apologizing in private meetings with House Democrats for those ads, claiming that they were made by AIPAC’s Democratic digital firm (though how that shifts responsibility from AIPAC is unclear). Omar, Tlaib, and McCollum were not invited to — nor even aware of — those meetings, despite being the subjects of the ads, Tlaib and Omar told The Intercept.

    Sanders has long been one of the most outspoken critics of unconditional U.S. support for Israel and has become an even sharper critic of the alliance during his 2020 campaign. He said in October that he would condition military aid to Israel on changing its settlement policy, and redirect some military aid to humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. DMFI sent a fundraising email in January attacking Sanders for that comment. While Sanders would certainly be more sympathetic to Palestinians than any president in U.S. history, he tends to qualify support for Palestinian rights by first prioritizing Israel’s security.

    DMFI’s anti-Sanders ads that aired in Iowa in the week leading up to the caucuses had nothing to do with Israel or the Middle East. Instead, they focused on his label as a democratic socialist and his recent heart attack. Following that ad buy, Sanders raised $1.3 million in one day.

    The DMFI ads have been controversial and represent one of the first Super PAC interventions by a Democratic group against a Democratic presidential candidate in the post-Citizens United era. (Hillary Clinton in 2016 had the benefit of the group Correct the Record, which was legally a Super PAC and attacked Sanders. The group coordinated with the Clinton campaign, rather than operating independently, yet that coordination went unpunished.) But the revelation that AIPAC has been encouraging donors to fund DMFI suggests how seriously the lobby is taking Sanders’s candidacy and that it is willing to intervene in the Democratic primary. On Thursday night, news leaked that a Super PAC connected to the Democratic group EMILY’s List had been contemplating an attack ad against Sanders. In a statement, the group said the ad had not been approved and that it would support whichever candidate won the Democratic nomination.

    Big-money groups are doing all they can to ensure that Sanders doesn’t become the nominee, however, and after the Iowa caucuses, DMFI boasted that its ads had left a mark on Sanders. “Now that almost all of the Iowa results are in, the incredibly close race shows that DMFI PAC’s ad blunted Senator Sanders’ momentum,” the group wrote to its email list after some of the results were in. “The network entrance poll proves it. Among those who decided which candidate to support before DMFI PAC’s ad aired, Sanders was in first place by a 6 point margin. However, among those who made a decision while the ad was airing, Sanders came in 5th, 10 points behind the leader.”

    Conservative writer Jonathan Tobin, in a recent piece for Ha’aretz, discussed AIPAC’s posture toward Sanders in a recent column headlined, “AIPAC Must Stop Bernie Sanders — at All Costs.”

    * * *

    In the lead up to the Iowa caucus, the Democratic Majority for Israel, a year-old political action group and super PAC, invested heavily in negative ads aimed at derailing the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Mark Mellman, the veteran Democratic strategist who leads the group, told me that its efforts – which are funded by the party’s leading pro-Israel donors – helped steer late deciding voters away from the Vermont Democratic Socialists.

    It’s in that context that the AIPAC Facebook ads that so offended Democrats must be seen. For centrist pro-Israel Democrats, the problem with Sanders is not just that he is the most critical toward Israel of all the Democrats. It’s that the left-wing activist base that is fueling his candidacy is also largely hostile toward the Jewish state. Sanders is backed by Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich), who are supporters of the BDS movement and are accused of using anti-Semitic language and tropes in their criticisms of Israel’s supporters.

    * * *

    DMFI denies that it has any link to AIPAC, but Mellman’s firm, the Mellman Group, has close ties with AIPAC and consulted for the lobby group’s dark-money cutout, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, as part of Mellman’s work to defeat former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal in 2015. CFNI paid the Mellman Group $241,439 that year.

    Mellman’s firm has also consulted for AIPAC’s educational group, the American Israel Education Fund, which organizes congressional trips to Israel. The Mellman Group was AIEF’s second-largest contractor in 2015, receiving $1.3 million for “program research.” AIEF’s biggest contractor that year was a travel business owned by Sheldon Adelson, a far-right Israel advocate and mega-donor to the GOP.

    At least 11 of DMFI’s 14 board members have links to AIPAC as well, having either worked at, spoken to, volunteered for, or donated to the group, The Nation reported in December.

    AIPAC’s annual conference is in March. A coalition of progressive groups, including the left-leaning Jewish advocacy group IfNotNow, the Working Families Party, MoveOn, and Indivisible, launched a campaign this month to pressure presidential candidates not to attend. So far, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has committed to skip this year’s conference. During a town hall in New Hampshire this month, Sanders told a student that he didn’t think he was going but had “no objection.” He, Warren, and several other candidates skipped it last year.

    * * * * *

    This blog’s topic was recently discussed between “The Hill’s” “Rising” co-hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti and their guest Ryan Grim.

  3. Former Republican February 29, 2020 9:39 am

    Thanks for that, Leia. That Sanders vs. Trump map is exactly what I’m fearful of.

  4. Rustbelt Democrat February 29, 2020 9:49 am

    Agreed, Professor. We can’t afford to have a rebel at the top of the ticket.

  5. Jeffrey Moebus February 29, 2020 12:50 pm

    [Note: Talk about a Dang Fine Question… . This is about folks like Sanders, Biden, Warren, Klobachar, Steyer, and, of course, the Bloomer, among others. Or, for that matter, the Obamas, who are now worth 30 times what they were when he assumed the throne back in 2008. Or the Clintons, neither of whom have ever had a job outside of government.]

    “Why Don’t Pro-Tax Millionaires Just Pay More Tax Voluntarily?” by Gary Galles

    One need not look far for evidence that many Americans want to help the poor. One obvious piece of that evidence is that many give substantial amounts of time, effort, and money to do so. But given that evidence, why do we need government to be so substantially involved in redistribution, backed by coercion, rather than relying on individuals and voluntary associations to provide charity?

    One argument that has been made involves the free rider problem, the argument that leaving charity to voluntary efforts would result in less charity than we “really” want to contribute. In a nutshell, the problem is that my personal contribution, at most, will have virtually no effect in reducing poverty, so that even though I want to do something about it, I don’t contribute because the problem of poverty is so large relative to my resources.

    This argument has led to the conclusion that we need government, and its ability to coerce people, to tax us (more than we would have voluntarily given) to force us to give “what we really want to give,” which could make the “donors” better off despite the coercion involved.

    Continued at https://mises.org/wire/why-dont-pro-tax-millionaires-just-pay-more-tax-voluntarily?

  6. Former Republican February 29, 2020 2:36 pm

    LOL! Troll is back. He don’t want to pay his taxes.

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