[Meteor Blades will return in two weeks]
It’s finally here! International Talk Like a Pirate Day! (ARRRRR — DER!!! says John Bercow.)
Two good articles about the Israeli elections, a close US ally with some domestic political repercussions should Bibi Netanyahu fall...
Shmuel Rosner/NY Times:
The End of the Netanyahu Era
The Israeli prime minister may be fighting to stay in power. But the dynamics that kept him there for a decade have shifted under his feet.
The fog of battle, in other words, is still thick this morning. But some new realities about Israeli politics may nonetheless still be discernible. The election pitted two camps against one another, one supportive of the prime minister and the other opposing him. But the interesting part was the tactics that both camps used as their main means of rallying the troops. Both identified straw men (and women) against which to campaign, scaremongering about the two least favorable groups in the minds of mainstream Israeli voters: ultra-Orthodox Jews, and Muslim Arabs. That such dueling tactics led to a draw not once, but twice, tells us something about why we may be witnessing the end of the Netanyahu era, even if he does manage to find a way to hold on to power.
Back in the old days of Israeli politics, when Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, was in power, the boundary of the political mainstream was marked by his famous saying: “Without Herut and without Maki.” This phrase put the right-wing predecessor of Likud — Herut — and the Communist Party — Maki — beyond the pale of political acceptability. Today, Herut and Maki no longer exist in the same way. And yet, we can see echoes of this sentiment in Israeli politics: There is a mainstream, and a periphery that most Israelis find objectionable.
Yair Rosenberg/Tablet:
The Truth About Bibi, Israel’s Very Dispensable Man
Why Netanyahu’s case for his reelection fails on its own terms
That case goes as follows: Knowing that many Israelis are upset about his double-talk, corruption, and subservience to narrow ultra-Orthodox and settler interests, Netanyahu has sought to cast himself these last two elections as Israel’s “indispensable man.” On the surface, it’s a compelling case. In the last ten years under Netanyahu’s premiership, numerous countries from Latin America to Africa have forged closer relations with Israel. Leaders ranging from Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro to India’s Narendra Modi have flocked to Jerusalem. Even Sunni Arab states have drawn closer to Israel. Bolstered by its vaunted high-tech industry, the Jewish state’s economy has boomed, and weathered even the financial crisis that crippled America and Europe. And of course, Netanyahu has forged a close partnership with the Trump administration, which has granted Israel significant foreign policy dividends. In light of all this, Bibi, claims his campaign literature, is in “another league.” Without him and his statesmanship—whatever his other faults—none of this would be possible or sustainable.
There’s only one flaw in this logic: Netanyahu didn’t cause any of these developments. He’s just taking credit for them...
The brilliance of Netanyahu’s indispensibility argument is that it effectively supersedes any criticism of his conduct. It casts Netanyahu’s indictment for corruption, his alliance with Israel’s racist Jewish Power party, and his constant capitulation to settlers and the ultra-Orthodox, as the price for his geostrategic genius. “You may not like me,” Bibi argues, “but you need me.” It’s a contention that has previously persuaded many Israeli voters to choose him as the lesser evil.
But once Netanyahu’s aura of accomplishment falls away, one is left solely with all the reasons he is unsuited for office and why only 34% of Israelis say they want him to be the next prime minister. This is the man who alienated Diaspora Jewry by reneging on a pluralistic prayer space at the Western Wall, installed a homophobe as interim education minister, preserved the prerogative of a retrograde Chief Rabbinate, and attacked Israel’s police for having the temerity to investigate him.
In the past, Bibi has countered his own unpopularity by running down his rivals, casting them as lightweights unfit to shoulder the burdens of state. That argument is harder to credit now that he is running against a party headed by three former heads of the Israeli armed forces—Benny Gantz, Moshe Ya’alon, and Gabi Ashkenazi—whom he previously praised profusely before they challenged his position. But in any case, this obsessive emphasis on the individual qualities of a prospective prime minister is itself misguided.
But also:
Why are the two IA polls so different? Because IA is hard to poll!!
The idea of Biden is very popular. He’s got the lead, we will see if he can keep it. And spare the ‘polls don’t matter’, they actually do if you want to know what’s going on right now. They can do that without being predictive. of course, there’s also the ‘pick your poll’ problem which is why you should use aggregates.
Do polls really matter? For a polling and elections lesson, go here.
Elaine Godfrey/Atlantic:
Why Ex–Sanders Supporters Are Backing Warren
“The political conditions are different” in this election, Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the WFP, told me earlier this week, after the group announced that 61 percent of its members had voted to back Warren, compared with 36 percent for Sanders. Unlike in 2016, there is more than one progressive candidate in the race to choose from, Mitchell said. Warren “has a track record of finding that nexus between visionary structural change and also the tools to operationalize it.”
Mitchell’s reasoning echoed the sentiments of other progressive voters I’ve spoken with recently. They have affection for Sanders and appreciate what he’s done for the movement, as roughly one dozen voters explained to me this week. But Warren, they argued, is proffering a kinder, gentler version of progressivism—one that is rooted in her experience, simple to understand, and compelling enough to attract a broad swath of voters.
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WaPo:
Tennessee becomes first state with a plan to turn Medicaid into a block grant
Tennessee is setting up the nation’s first test case of how far the Trump administration is willing to go to allow a state the “flexibility” that has become a watchword of the administration’s health-care policies.
If TennCare, as that state calls its Medicaid program, wins federal approval for its plan, it could embolden other Republican-led states to follow suit. It also almost certainly would ignite litigation over the legality of such a profound change to the country’s largest public insurance program without approval by Congress.
Medicaid, originated as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society of the 1960s, is an entitlement program in which the government pays each state a certain percentage of the cost of care for anyone eligible for the health coverage.
Sarah Smarsh/NY Times:
Something Special Is Happening in Rural America
There is a “brain gain” afoot that suggests a national homecoming to less bustling spaces.
The nation’s most populous cities, the bicoastal pillars of aspiration — New York City and Los Angeles — are experiencing population declines, most likely driven by unaffordability. Other metros are experiencing growth, to be sure, especially in the South and West. But there is an exodus afoot that suggests a national homecoming, across generations, to less bustling spaces. Last year, Gallup found that while roughly 80 percent of us live in urban areas, rural life was the most wished for.
If happiness is what they seek, those folks are onto something. A 2018 study by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health reported that in spite of economic and health concerns, most rural Americans are pretty dang happy and hopeful. Forty percent of rural adults said their lives came out better than they expected. A majority said they were better off financially than their parents at the same age and thought their kids would likewise ascend. As for cultural woes, those among them under age 50, as well as people of color, showed notably higher acknowledgment of discrimination and commitment to social progress. All in all, it was a picture not of a dying place but one that is progressing.
Let those progressive votes come and make the rural areas bloom.
Quinta Juresic/Atlantic:
Why the Kavanaugh Confirmation Still Haunts Us
The power of the stories is how normal they are.
So here we are, a year later. The wounds are not going to heal.
The staying power of the Kavanaugh story—or perhaps the Christine Blasey Ford story, or the Deborah Ramirez story—is how normal it is. This might be a strange thing to say about a controversy involving a president, a Supreme Court justice, and some of the most selective schools in the United States. But the broad outlines of the story are so familiar as to be almost archetypal, and for that reason it has the same power that fables do: We can find in it the shadow of our own pain. As Vox’s Jane Coaston notes, many conservatives writing in the fall of 2018 seemed to see themselves or those they knew in Kavanaugh: a rambunctious boy who grows up into, as the conservative commentator Rod Dreher wrote, an “ordinary, bland Republican man,” unjustly persecuted. And many found the allegations themselves similarly familiar. In a second excerpt from their book, published in The Atlantic, Pogrebin and Kelly quote a sex-crimes prosecutor calling Ford’s account a description of “a very bread-and-butter acquaintance sexual assault.”
WARNING: graphic and powerful new ad (what back to school means):
It’s designed to get your attention.
WaPo:
Bernie Sanders has parted ways with Iowa political director
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) parted ways with his Iowa political director in recent weeks, his campaign confirmed Wednesday, part of a series of recent staff shake-ups in key early states.
The campaign announced in March that Jess Mazour would be political director in the first-in-the-nation caucus state, part of a first wave of early state hires. She is no longer on the team.
“We’ll continue to make moves that we feel best position this campaign to win,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said in a written statement after The Washington Post reached out to the campaign about the matter.
A campaign official who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the situation said Mazour was let go in late summer and will not be replaced. Mazour, who was a high-ranking campaign aide but not the director of the Iowa effort, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The campaign did not publicly announce her departure at the time.
No, it’s not a hit piece on Bernie. It’s another sign beyond the polls that his campaign is struggling.
You know who else is struggling?
Politico:
Why it will be hard for Trump to win Wisconsin again
Milwaukee’s Republican suburbs have never really warmed up to the president. That could be a big problem
Few expect the three key counties that surround the state’s largest city to vote Democratic next year. But they say the level of enthusiasm for Trump in Wisconsin’s so-called WOW counties — Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington — matters a great deal in a state where three of the past five presidential elections were decided by less than 1 percent.
In the state’s political equation, they serve as a conservative counterweight to the big Democratic margins traditionally delivered by Milwaukee and Madison. Unless that suburban GOP engine delivers its own blowout win for Trump next year, it will be difficult for him to capture the state a second time…
Locally, the party is attempting to expand on Clinton’s anemic performance in the WOW counties by tapping into a vein of anti-Trump sentiment that they say is palpable. Democrats have had teams on the ground organizing for months in the suburbs.
“I know if we get 40 percent we almost guarantee a Democrat a victory statewide,” Waukesha County Democratic Party Chairman Matt Lowe said. “We’re seeing so many volunteers every day that I don’t think 40 percent is a total pipe dream.”
The Democratic optimism is in part fueled by Trump’s underwhelming 2016 performance in the WOW counties, where he lagged behind Mitt Romney’s 2012 pace. Republicans there haven’t entirely warmed to the president since then
Doug Mataconis:
Democratic Candidates Leading Trump By Huge Margin Among Latino Voters
A new poll indicates that the top tier Democrats lead President Trump among Latino voters by as much as 40 percent, a number that, if it holds, could have a significant impact on the outcome of the Presidential race in a numbers of states:
A new poll released Tuesday shows all top-tier Democratic presidential candidates leading President Trump by more than 40 percentage points among Hispanic registered voters nationwide.
The Univision poll, conducted by Latino Decisions and North Star Opinion Research, shows that 73 percent of Hispanic voters surveyed plan to vote for a Democratic candidate, while only 16 percent plan to vote for Trump.
That’s a drop for Trump, who won around 19 percent of the Hispanic vote according to 2016 polling by Latino Decisions
Democracy Corps:
The public push back against President Trump has produced a level of political engagement the country has never seen before, an elevated anti-Trump Democratic Party consolidated to support the Democratic nominee, whether it is Vice President Biden or Senator Elizabeth Warren. They are defeating Trump by 9and 7 points respectively, with the president stuck at 41 percent, his approval rating. Democrats are poised to push up the 8.6 percent Democratic margin in the 2018 mid-terms - a shattering result if achieved.The percent who say they are “extremely interested” in the election (the percent choosing 10, the toppoint on a 10-rung ladder) has reached 80 percent, the highest point in the history of our polling.
In the ‘what is Trump up to now?’ section:
And this one, keep an eye on it as it develops: