Kamala Harris<\/a>\u2019s joyous campaign went venomous. Trump attacked \u201cthe enemy within.\u201d She and her supporters called him \u201cfascist.\u201d Her negative ratings rose and his momentum returned. USA Today\u2019s Ingrid Jacques complained: \u201cWe already know she\u2019s not Trump. But we still don\u2019t know who she is.\u201d<\/p>\nBy constantly demonizing opponents, anger hijacks your campaign. It generates a politics of \u201call-or-nothing\u201d fights, not \u201cand-and-but\u201d debates. Over decades, Americans developed a consensus on abortion \u2013 despite the politicians, activists, and judges. Most wanted abortions safe, legal, and rare \u2013 echoing Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n
Many Americans were pro-life enough to believe that something precious begins at conception \u2013 and pro-choice enough to protect women\u2019s freedom to decide about their own bodies and potential babies. Today, abortion \u2013 like most issues \u2013 polarizes, triggering all-or-nothing stances.<\/p>\n
That escalation creates a politics of culture wars not political campaigns. True, politics always had a military streak. The word \u201ccampaign,\u201d from the French campagne, means open country, or battlefield. But democratic politics also valued the art of compromise. Today, when most issues exacerbate the national culture war, compromise becomes betrayal. People obsess about validating or invalidating identities rather than rooting good policies in the common ground.<\/p>\n
That spawns a politics of inflaming extremes not expanding the center. Too many woke progressives rule today\u2019s Democratic Party. From calls to defund the police in 2020, to imposing DEI \u2013 Diversity-Equity-Inclusion \u2013 regimes throughout the government, to wooing pro-Hamas hooligans, Democrats keep stoking extremists while neglecting centrists.<\/p>\n
That distortion parallels MAGA\u2019s angry, paranoid politics. The Make America Great Again crowd minimizes the January 6 riots and denies Joe Biden\u2019s electoral victory in 2020, while vulgarizing and racializing political rhetoric.<\/p>\n
Unleashed, these extremists encourage a politics of mobilizing tribes not building coalitions. If Trump ranted less about Haitians eating pets during his one debate with Harris, and didn\u2019t keep reminding undecided voters why so many people loathe him, he\u2019d triumph. Similarly, if Kamala Harris and her surrogates stopped scolding men to vote for her, while deeming masculinity \u201ctoxic\u201d and every Trump voter deplorable, she might have sustained her earlier momentum.<\/p>\n
Self-destructive fanaticism<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n
TRAGICALLY, AMERICA\u2019S 2024 election once again showcases a politics of self-destructive fanatics not constructive democrats.<\/p>\n
Yet, even with two highly-flawed candidates running awful campaigns, most liberal friends won\u2019t criticize Harris, paralleling the Trump-bros who never criticize Trump.<\/p>\n
Even in the Jewish community, Harristas resist saying: \u201cHow dare Kamala call Israel\u2019s actions \u2018unconscionable\u2019 on the CNN Town Hall last week, and I worry that she and the Democrats are too soft on Iran and have been consistently wrong every time they tried restraining Israel since October 7.\u201d Instead, many pro-Israel Democrats reason backward. Liking Harris \u2013 and detesting Trump \u2013 they justify her positions and her rhetoric regarding Israel, Iran, and other issues \u2013 no matter how flawed.<\/p>\n
Similarly, pro-Trump Jews pooh-pooh Trump\u2019s intolerance for so many while tolerating right-wing Jew-haters and antisemites. And Trumpistas are too worried about Harris breaking the world and abandoning Israel to address genuine fears about Trump breaking America.<\/p>\n
Tragically, such undemocratic aggression distorts Israeli politics too. The tribalist venom, the demonization, and the rhetorical escalation oversimplify complex issues \u2013 and make simple issues complex. That\u2019s how knotty dilemmas about managing the Palestinian question, defining our war aims, or freeing the hostages become all-or-nothing contests pitting \u201cgood\u201d \u2013 me and my allies \u2013 against \u201cevil\u201d \u2013 anyone who dares to disagree with us.<\/p>\n
Before you know it, riled-up zealots are spending their Friday mornings and free evenings shrieking outside ministers\u2019 homes for a deal \u201cnow\u201d \u2013 with no deal on the table and the living hostages not identified. Similarly, what could be a simple administrative matter, phasing in more ultra-Orthodox to do national service and defend the state we all share as citizens, becomes a tribal flashpoint.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, as we the people lose \u2013 the extremists lose too. During this ein breira \u2013 no choice \u2013 war, with so many of our kids serving 270, 290, or 310 days in reserves, patience for haredi draft dodging has plummeted and anger is growing. The rigid ultra-Orthodox leadership will soon pay the price \u2013 they have no idea how much goodwill they\u2019ve squandered.<\/p>\n
Similarly, intertwining the broad national desire for evil Hamasniks and Gazans to free the hostages with a specific, longstanding, anti-Bibi agenda was doubly destructive. It delighted Hamas \u2013 and probably prolonged the hostages\u2019 agony by raising the price the Palestinian kidnappers are demanding.<\/p>\n
\u201cDemocracy begins in conversation,\u201d the progressive philosopher John Dewey taught. Let\u2019s hope it doesn\u2019t die of discord.<\/p>\n
Defying this darkness, during this agonizing week in Jerusalem when many of us know one or two or three of the holy soldiers recently killed, let\u2019s learn from the family of the late Rabbi Avi Goldberg, the 43-year-old father of eight. Honoring his and his wife Rachel\u2019s lifelong mission to unite Israelis, politicians are only welcome to Goldberg\u2019s shiva in pairs, one coalition member, with an opposition member.<\/p>\n
Bless them! Once again, our reservists and their families take the lead, offering the tikkun, healing, we need.<\/p>\n
Originally published in JPost<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cDemocracy begins in conversation,\u201d the progressive philosopher John Dewey taught. Let\u2019s hope it doesn\u2019t die of discord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":18084,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topics-geopolitics","library-op-ed","library-publications"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19501"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19892,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19501\/revisions\/19892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}