Democrats blame Bibi, but voters fault Biden

S

capegoating Jews for someone else’s problems has been a widespread phenomenon for centuries, but something Americans thought got left behind in Europe.

That’s why there is something especially ugly about Democratic political strategist James Carville, who insinuated in an MSNBC interview that if President Biden loses in November, it will be Israel’s fault in general, and Binyamin Netanyahu’s fault in particular.

As Strategist Carville phrased it, at some point, the Biden team will have to tell Bibi: “Hey, dude, we are not going to lose our election because you stand to go to jail. Think of something else.”

Aside from the absurdity that a Biden victory in the 2024 general election is contingent upon his clamping down on Israel, Carville is irresponsibly parroting the mantra that Netanyahu’s every decision, including declaring war on Hamas, is calculated to distract people from his trial.

That’s also absurd, considering the proceedings against Bibi began in 2020, three and a half years before Hamas’s invasion, and at the present pace, the trial may still be going on in 2028, when neither Biden nor Trump will run again. As a sophisticated political advisor, Carville, who first gained fame directing Bill Clinton’s winning 1992 presidential campaign, should be aware that the trial judges months ago recommended that prosecutors drop the most serious charges of bribery (the only ones likely to end in a prison term), because they have failed to prove their case.

Right before calling Bibi a “dude,” Carville rudely intimated that unless “things” (Israel’s war in Gaza) don’t get “calmed down before the Democratic convention in Chicago, it’s going to be a very ugly time in Chicago. I promise you that.”

Sounds more like a threat than a promise.

I’m old enough to remember the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when thousands of armed police and national guardsmen battled more than 100,000 anti-Vietnam War demonstrators in the streets, culminating in hundreds of injuries and ultimately a Republican victory for Richard Nixon over the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey.

Carville is 11 years older than I am. He probably remembers better than I do. His words are tantamount to incitement to violence in an election campaign where the stakes are high and political tempers are flaring.

Carville has no formal position with the Biden administration, but as a CNN analyst and top party fundraiser, he is not just an armchair quarterback. He has clout. Perhaps behind closed doors, he is more honest about the deficiencies that could cause voters to show Biden the door. Biden’s advanced age and his infirmities top that list, but there’s much more going on under the surface.

People such as Carville accuse Bibi of being Mr. Distraction and placing his political interests first, but a Carville colleague, David Axelrod, who is also a longstanding Democratic strategist and former advisor to Biden’s old boss, President Obama, also contends that Biden is out for himself.

In mid-November, when Israel was just kicking off its ground campaign in Gaza and Biden was still squarely on Israel’s side, Axelrod speculated on social media about Democrats replacing Biden with someone younger. “What he [Biden] needs to decide is whether that is wise [running again]; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?”

Douglas MacKinnon, a Republican political consultant under presidents Reagan and Bush the father, reported in the Hill about a conversation he had with Axelrod, in which Axelrod told him that Biden would flunk a one-question survey asking Americans if they are better off than they were four years ago.

“Tens of millions of Americans do believe they were much better off four years ago than now,” wrote MacKinnon. “Americans who know mortgage rates were at record lows; gasoline prices were well below three dollars per gallon; inflation was under control; our border was more secure; our major cities were not homeless encampments; crime was dramatically lower; and the world was more at peace.”

Axelrod has his finger on the voters’ pulses. A New York Times/Sienna poll last month showed that more than half of black voters, two-thirds of white voters, and almost three-fourths of Hispanic voters say the economy is in worse shape than it was four years ago.

This is one big reason Biden’s job approval rating is a paltry 38%. This has nothing to do with how many calories the average Gaza resident consumes every day or how Israel uses American weapons to smoke out terrorists hiding in hospitals and tunnels.

Biden, once considered a centrist Democrat, is increasingly out of touch with the average American voter.

A Gallup Poll released in January 2023 shows that while a record 54% of all Democrats identify as liberal, nationally this represents only 26% of the vote. Some 71% of Americans consider themselves conservative (36%) or moderate (35%).

Biden is on track for a record-poor performance with two of America’s major ethnic groups, Hispanics and blacks.

The New York Times/Sienna poll shows Trump winning 40% of the nation’s 36 million eligible Hispanic voters and a whopping 23% of the 34.5 million black votes.

“Some conservatives are convinced that Mr. Biden has ignored border security to win more Hispanic votes,” wrote Jason Riley in the Wall Street Journal. “If that’s true, the strategy doesn’t appear to be working and may be having the opposite effect.”

The only other Republican who scored higher with the black vote was Richard Nixon in 1960, winning 32%, although he lost a tight race to Democrat John F. Kennedy.

Theodore Johnson, a senior advisor at the Washington think tank New America, encapsulated Nixon’s success with black voters in a 2015 article for Politico magazine, noting that Nixon’s campaign “employed a smaller, focused effort that acknowledged black voters without lavishing too much attention on them.”

The Biden campaign might be lavishing attention on them, but the wrong kind. His obsession with humanitarian aid to Gaza and a Palestinian state is of little concern to mainstream African Americans.

The Times/Sienna poll showed that black voters sided with the Palestinians over Israel by a slim 31%-27% margin. The remaining 42% said they either supported both sides equally or didn’t particularly care. But when asked if Joe Biden’s or Donald Trump’s policies helped them personally, Trump received the more positive accolades (26%–17%).

Even the above-mentioned James Carville is banging the table on this, warning that black males, especially younger ones, are “disengaging,” and if they stay home, this could cost Biden the November election.

There is little evidence to support the notion that the road to re-engaging with them runs through Rafah or Ramallah. It more than likely runs through Main Street, and that’s where Biden is skidding.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1005)