....the endless campaign gotchas, that is, and their Jewish manifestation: The accusations of anti-Semitism and Israel hatred.
I had hoped for a break after the intensely silly season leading up to the midterms.
Examples from that campaign: Cindy Sheehan, the anti-Iraq war activist. The Republican
Jewish Coalition called her the
"the voice of Democratic opposition to the war." Has she ever even been a Democrat?
Here she says she'd vote for a Republican if he agreed with her on the Iraq war (hello, Chuck Hagel) Republicans never got back to me on that - or on how an activist who has described leading Democrats as "loathsome" became as important a Democrat as Jimmy Carter, who merely earned his party's nomination - yet she seemed to take up the same amount of space in ads decrying what the RJC said was an anti-Israel drift among Democrats.
And does some woman who poses in a photo with Michael Steele, the Maryland Republican who lost his bid for a U.S. Senate spot, count when she says Ben Cardin, his Jewish opponent, would "attack Jesus"? I couldn't name all the people nudging their heads next to mine in a lifetime of photos, and I never ran for public office. Didn't stop The National Jewish Democratic Council from taking up that cudgel.
My hopes for a break were dashed by the absurdly early presidential campaign season.
First, there was the Wesley Clarke dust-up, which I never fully understood: What did the once and possibly future Democratic candidate mean by "New York money people" when discussing pressure on policy makers to confront Iran? The Republican Jewish Coalition insisted the reference was anti-Semitic, but I could honestly not tell what he meant (although the phrase was undeniably ugly and clumsy.) And only Arianna Huffington and her note-taking colleague could say for sure: If the discussion she was having with Clarke was about overall pressure to confront Iran, then Clarke has a problem, because it appears as if he is saying moneyed New York Jews are the principle policy movers in the United States. If on the other hand, they were talking only about the Jewish community, what he was saying is not really controversial: It's not a secret that major Jewish donors trend more hawkish than the Jewish rank and file. It would be as if a Republican was misconstrued as saying that blacks were driving the country into radicalism (which would be racist) but what he really said was that the recognized black leadership was more radical than its base (not necessarily true, but hardly racist, and received Republican wisdom).
And now we have the Henry Ford . If the NJDC is so offended by the museum, why isn't it activating for its dismantling? Why does it matter only when Mitt Romney arrives for a photo-op? And the RJC point about Clinton's speech lauding Ford is well-taken, but they might be a little warier about tossing out hyperbole about "the ultimate in partisan double standards."
The "ultimate?" It's what, 20 months to election day? You can do better, guys.
