Steve Bullock Is More Popular Than Either Steve Daines Or Señor Trumpanzee In Montana

Let me have a little LOL moment. On May 1, I wrote that "2020 will be another big anti-red wave. The media isn't talking about it yet-- they're a lagging indicator-- but they will." Sabato's Crystal Ball had just explained why they were still betting on the Montana Senate seat to stay red. "Gov. Steve Bullock’s (D-MT) late entry into the race last month prevented first-term Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) from coasting to reelection: We were prepared to move the race to Safe Republican prior to Bullock’s entry; we now list it as Leans Republican. Based on what we can piece together, the race seems like it’s neck and neck at the moment. But does that actually make it a Toss-up? We are not quite there yet."

Of course not. They'll be truly ready when AP calls the race for Bullock on election night. Even then, polling showed that Montana voters like Bullock (49%) better than Daines (45%)-- and that Daines (42%) have slightly higher unfavorables than Bullock (40%) and that in a head-to-head matchup it was an exact 47-47% tie. Doesn't that define the toss-up that Sabato was unwilling to call the race?

Instead, Sabato used "history" to suggest Bullock will lose: "[I]t is very rare for an incumbent senator to lose reelection while that senator’s party is winning the state for president. There are only four examples of that happening in the last seven presidential election cycles, and there were confounding circumstances in three of those four races. Donald Trump would really have to crater in order to lose Montana, which he carried by 20 points in 2016." I was at that low point that I predicted Sabato would be rating Montana a toss up by summer. I think tomorrow is the first day of summer, right? Cook moved Montana to toss up yesterday.

Why not? A more recent poll shows Bullock leading 46-39%. So "toss up" seems nice and safe. Cook's Jessica Taylor wrote that the past few months have "highlighted the unique nature of this race, as the only contest with a sitting governor seeking a Senate seat. And like other governors who have ably handled the pandemic-- especially in comparison to the Trump administration's bungling-- Bullock has seen his approval ratings rise exponentially too, up to 75 percent in one poll. Montana has had one of the lowest per capita infection rates (49th out of 50), with only 20 deaths as of June 17, and Bullock has gotten plaudits for closing the state early as it began to reopen last month. So it's not surprising that Bullock seems to have benefited from his gubernatorial leadership during this crisis and being in the news daily. Recent private Democratic polling in the contest gives Bullock a small lead and finds that Bullock's approval ratings are more than 20 points higher than Daines, though the incumbent senator remains slightly above water. GOP polling also shows that it's a close race, but one where every internal poll for them has still shown Daines leading. Yet, even some Republicans privately admit this is likely to be a margin of error race to the finish line. Each party just believes it's their candidate who will eke out the victory."

Morning Consult hasn't updated their state by state Trump tracker since the pandemic struck. But by late February, Trump's approval rating in Montana had decreased by 18 points since inauguration day and his net approval was just 6 points (52-46%). The most recent polling I could find is two months old and shows Trump leading Biden 45.3% to 39.7%, a 5.6% lead for Trump-- nothing like the 56.2% to 35.7% Trump win over Hillary in 2016. Keep in mind, operations like Cook and Sabato are structurally incapable of taking into account how horrible a candidate Hillary was for Montana in 2016-- or how horrible a candidate Trump is in 2020. Taylor demonstrates what I mean:

Trump is on pace to win the state by double digits, but somewhere perhaps in the mid or low teens instead.

Overcoming that margin is still tough in a presidential year-- when Jon Tester won a second term in 2012 with President Obama atop the ballot, he outpaced him by almost 7 points. Obama lost Montana that year by nearly 14 points. But in 2008, Democratic Senate candidates in competitive races did outpace the top of the ticket by about 12.5 points. Also, Democrats argue that Biden isn't as toxic in the state as Hillary Clinton was four years ago, and note that Obama even came within 2 points of winning the state in 2008. But Republicans say their polling from last month still had Biden far underwater in the state. Plus, if Trump's numbers continue to sour nationally, there's a chance that Republicans can make the argument that there needs to be a GOP Senate still to serve as a check on a Biden administration.

But there's some evidence that maybe Bullock's performance with handling COVID-19 and generally good favorability in the state makes this a unique situation where traditional rules may not apply. Unlike other states with candidates newer to the statewide ballot, Bullock is already well-defined in voters' minds, and it may be harder to change voters' opinions of him. Bullock's fundraising has been impressive since he got in, too-- he outraised Daines by about $2.1 million in the first fundraising quarter, despite being in the race for less than a month before the deadline. In the six week pre-primary filing period too ahead of the June 2 primary, Bullock again outpaced the incumbent by a nearly two-to-one margin and pulled within $1.6 million of Daines's cash of hand advantage.

Both parties have also begun to commit outside resources to the race too. According to data from Advertising Analytics, the Democratic super PAC Senate Majority PAC has reserved about $8.1 million for ads (broadcast/cable/satellite/digital), while their 501(c)(4) offshoot Majority Forward has reserved about $3.3 million. The DSCC has reserved about $5.2 million, set to begin in August. The NRSC has reserved $2.7 million, set to begin in September. The GOP super PAC Senate Leadership Fund has reserved $8.5 million, while their non-profit arm One Nation has reserved about $3.7 million, set to begin next week.

Republicans push back on the notion that Bullock can prevail at a federal level in such a red state, and believe they have plenty of oppo to use against him from his brief, quixotic run for president last year that will ultimately bring down his numbers. They plan especially to hit him on guns after he backed an assault weapons ban, which even Tester does not support. But Democrats counter that Montanans' impression of Bullock is already formed, and that their polling indicates the gun issue won't move the numbers. And they scoff at Bullock's first ad that came out this week, where he says he "won't answer to party bosses," after he was wooed into the race by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and former President Obama. Nationalizing this race and making it more about control of the Senate instead of about whether or not voters like Bullock is key to GOP success.

...Montana is the toughest state on paper for Democrats when we look solely at the presidential numbers. Still, it's been clear for a while that this race is shaping up to be a unique battle between two well-liked Montanans (who both just happen to be named Steve), making it the most glaringly competitive race we've had in the Lean Republican column for the past few months. Several indicators now merit a more competitive rating, and therefore we are moving this race to Toss Up.

Schumer wants to fill the Senate with face Democrats like Kyrsten Sinema, who votes more frequently against progressive proposals than any other Senate Democrat. All of his picks this cycle have been Sinema-types. Hopefully Andrew Romanoff in Colorado and Charles Booker in Kentucky will defeat the Schumer candidates. Bullock is an exception in some ways. He's an actual moderate, NOT a conservative who calls himself a moderate and he's as good a Democrat as anyone could reasonably expect in Montana. And speaking of Kentucky, this Civiqs poll was released yesterday:

Pick One: Fewer Deaths Or More Corporate Profits

Last week one of the famous electoral prognosticators, who never gets anything right until a day or two before the election, looked at the Senate election in Montana and pontificated that "Based on what we can piece together, the race seems like it’s neck and neck at the moment. But does that actually make it a Toss-up? We are not quite there yet." I wrote that he should be there and will be there in a few weeks and went into why, which you can read at the link. But a new poll of likely voters from Montana State University shows Bullock pulling out ahead already.

The Democratic governor-- whose state has the second fewest COVID-19 cases in the country (after Alaska) and just 439 cases per million (compared to a national number of 3,681 per million)-- has pulled ahead of the incumbent Steve Daines, whose head hasn't been pulled out of Trump's ass once this year. Montanans were asked who they would vote for if the election for Senate were held now.

• Bullock- 46%
• Daines- 39%
• Someone else (Libertarian or Green)- 6%
• Unsure- 7%

53% of Montana voters approve of Trump's response to the pandemic, but 70% approve of Bullock's response. (Only 48% approve of Daines' response-- and 28% said they don't know what Daines' response is.)

Bullock isn't exactly a Berniecrat-- not by a long shot-- but he seems pretty good for an establishment guy and is certainly better than any of Schumer's other recruits. I wouldn't be surprised if the Montana Senate race turns out to be the only case in the country where Schumer and I are backing the same challenger.

There seems to be a structural difference between conservatives and progressives when it comes to a very basic perspective playing out right now in regard to how to confront the pandemic-- individualism vs societal cooperation. I bet you're not surprised to see that conservatives value business over life and progressives value lives over business. John Pavlovitz seem to have tweeted it this week:

And for the conservative side of the argument, let's turned to the former-- and hopefully last-- Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, a guest on Dana Bash's show Monday. Christie told her that the country needs to reopen, despite separate key coronavirus models forecasting that thousands may die daily.

"Of course, everybody wants to save every life they can-- but the question is, towards what end, ultimately?" Christie, a Republican tapped to lead President Donald Trump's presidential transition team in 2016, told CNN's Dana Bash on the Daily DC Podcast. "Are there ways that we can... thread the middle here to allow that there are going to be deaths, and there are going to be deaths no matter what?"

Christie told Bash that "we've got to let some of these folks get back to work, because if we don't, we're going to destroy the American way of life in these families-- and it will be years and years before we can recover." His comments Monday echoed similar characterizations by other Republicans-- including President Donald Trump-- that the economic impact of coronavirus is just as devastating to the nation as the virus itself.

When Bash pressed Christie on whether people would be able to accept reopening in light of news of a Trump administration model projecting a rise up to about 3,000 daily US deaths from coronavirus by June 1, Christie responded, "They're gonna have to."

"We're in the midst of a pandemic that we haven't seen in over 100 years," he said. "And we're going to have to continue to do things."

With governors facing mounting pressure mounting to reopen their states' economies and Trump itching to scale back on social distancing nationwide as soon as possible, more than half of states had lifted aspects of their stay-at-home orders as of Monday.

Yet, a separate influential coronavirus model often cited by the White House is now forecasting that 134,000 people will die of Covid-19 in the United States, nearly double its previous prediction. The model, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, had predicted 72,433 deaths as of Monday morning.

Christie, asked Monday what his messaging would be to the American public if he sat in the Oval Office, said, "The message is that the American people have gone through significant death before." He pointed to the first and second World Wars as examples of how "we've gone through it and we've survived it. We sacrificed those lives."

"We sent our young men during World War Two over to Europe, out to the Pacific, knowing, knowing that many of them would not come home alive," he said, adding: "And we decided to make that sacrifice because what we were standing up for was the American way of life. In the very same way now, we have to stand up for the American way of life."

The former governor lamented the "economic devastation" as "equally sad," and told Bash that while he wasn't advocating for crowded public gatherings like rock concerts or football games, "we have to let certain people get back to work because I can see my own state here."

Christie encouraged vulnerable populations to stay indoors, as "they're the ones who are gonna really swallow this burden badly, the elderly and those with respiratory diseases, depressed immune systems from cancer treatments or other things."

"Those folks are going to have to be even more careful than the rest of the population," he added. "I don't know what the choice is."

There's a way to do this and minimize loss of life and there's a way to do this and minimize loss of profit. It's not all black or all white; it's a matter of prioritization. Conservatives pick one way and progressives pick the other. As a voter, you'll have to pick between the two. Liam O'Mara is the progressive Democrat taking on corrupt Republican incumbent Ken Calvert in Riverside County, California. Riverside County has the 4th highest population in California, after L.A., San Diego and Orange counties. But Riverside is second in the number of COVID infections and deaths. CA-42, where Liam is running, gave Calvert a 56.5% to 43.5% win in 2018 (an R+13 PVI). That would be just the kind of district with large numbers of sociopaths who refuse to obey social distancing regulations out of selfishness and disregard for their neighbors. And the county band of supervisors is debating whether or not to just scrap the regulations altogether and open up for business without masks or social distancing. This is the sensible letter O'Mara sent the board:

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) noted that "We can deliver unemployment checks to those who were laid off. We can get loans to small businesses who had to shut down. We can provide stimulus payments to families affected by the pandemic. But we cannot bring the dead back to life. This is why we cannot haphazardly rush to reopen without adequate testing, tracing and isolation."

Bullseye by Nancy Ohanian

Suddenly Defeating Trump Enabler Steve Daines (R-MT) Becomes Even More Important

Jack Ballard

"The sanctity of the historical trust that has endured for generations will be lost with the stroke of a pen and, once the damage of exploitation is done, the beauty bestowed by God could be lost for all eternity."
-Dr. William Steding

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Trump's nominee to manage federal lands wants to sell them. Steven Mufson wrote that "Trump’s pick for managing federal lands doesn’t think the federal government should have any. This week, Trump’s Interior Secretary David Bernhardt signed an order making the Wyoming native William Perry Pendley the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management… By placing Pendley in charge of the agency, Bernhardt has installed a longtime crusader for curtailing the federal government’s control of public lands. In the three decades since serving under Reagan, Pendley has sued the Interior Department on behalf of an oil and gas prospector, sought to undermine protections of endangered species such as the grizzly bear, and pressed to radically reduce the size of federal lands to make way for development. 'The Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold,' he wrote approvingly in a National Review magazine article in 2016. He said 'westerners know that only getting title to much of the land in the West will bring real change.'" Or as Ed Brayton noted at Patheos, another fox to guard the chicken coop.

Time and time again, Trump has nominated, or picked without Senate approval, people whose goal is to virtually, if not literally, destroy the agency they are put in charge of. Scott Pruitt, his first leader of the EPA, was an enemy of pretty much all environmental regulation, as is Trump himself. Despite promises to “drain the swamp,” he continually puts former lobbyists in charge of the agencies that regulate the companies they lobbied for. It’s corruption and corporate control of policy. Welcome to the plutocracy.

This is not an endorsement... although it could turn into one. One of the country's foremost conservationists, Montana author and photographer Jack Ballard, just declared he's running for the Montana Senate seat held by corporate shill and Trump tuchas-licker Steve Daines. Don't expect some fancy introductory video announcement. From what I've read, I don't think that's who Ballard is. And that welcome to the plutocracy line above-- that definitely not who Jack Ballard is. He lives in Red Lodge (population 2,286), the county seat of Carbon County, Montana, in the south central part of the state. Bernie beat Hillary there in 2016 but Carbon County is red-- and it's Trump country. Trump beat Hillary 3,729 (62.8%) to 1,824 (30.7%). And Governor Steve Bullock lost to Greg Gianforte there 3,130 (51.4%) to 2,763 (45.4%). But Bullock won statewide-- and Ballard thinks he can too. Last year Senator John Tester was reelected against Trumpist Matt Rosedale 50.3% to 46.8%.

Photo by Jack Ballard

Brett French, writing for the Billings Gazette reported that "It was like a 'kick in the gut' for Jack Ballard after he was told by state Democratic officials that he would need to raise $1 million to run in Montana’s U.S. Senate primary race. Then he got 'really mad... 'What’s the country coming to when a person (from a rural state) needs to raise a million dollars just to get to the stage?' he said. So the Red Lodge author and conservationist has announced he will join two other declared candidates in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat now occupied by Steve Daines, a Republican. If elected, it would be Ballard's first time to hold a public office."

Ballard said he’s already started the process of calling friends and family for donations, what he called a humbling experience, yet he’s been overwhelmed by the support.

“I will do everything in my power to get money out of politics and get thoughtful, committed, middle-class people on stage,” he said.

Noting that millionaire candidates can contribute large amounts of cash to their own campaigns and hire high-dollar consulting firms, he said the “system is so tilted toward wealthy people from the get-go.”

Calling himself an outdoor guy from Red Lodge, Ballard says one of his top concerns is the Trump administration’s management of public lands to benefit extractive industries, like mining and the oil and gas industry, to the detriment of native habitat and wildlife. He also chided Daines for his proposal to release the state’s wilderness study areas from protection without first discussing it with constituents.

To that end, Ballard said he has a strong commitment to public access to public lands and management that promotes the recreation economy in Montana.

“It seems obvious to me we need to invest in better management and emphasize activities on public land that are better for wildlife habitat,” he said.

Another of his top concerns would be to attempt to reduce medical costs for Americans.

“Without cost containment there’s no meaningful health care reform,” he said.

He said there’s no need to invent a new system; rather, the U.S. could borrow the best ideas from other countries and should consider a price cap on services to contain costs. To start, however, the United States needs a thorough analysis of the system, he added.

As an example, Ballard pointed to charges he faced for a wrist brace following an injury that landed him in an emergency room. When his bill arrived, the brace’s cost was $226. A similar one could have been purchased online and delivered to his home for $65. When he called the California-based brace company to complain, the representative was blunt in rejecting his argument.

“We have a serious health care problem in the United States,” he said. “We pay a lot more on a per-capita basis and receive in some cases inferior service compared to a lot of other countries.”

Ballard, the second youngest of seven children, grew up on a ranch his grandfather homesteaded between Three Forks and Whitehall. He attended the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in 1989. In 1994 he received a masters in education at Montana State University Billings. For 12 years he taught at the College of Education at MSUB.

He is now a full-time writer, former president of the Outdoor Writers Association of America and author of 13 books. He has been married to Lisa Ballard for five years and has three internationally adopted children from his previous marriage.

“One of the most satisfying things I’ve done in my life is try to give those kids a way to be successful in a country that gives them more opportunity,” Ballard said.

He also criticized Daines for supporting President Trump’s tax cut, calling it a mistake for Montana while adding to the U.S. deficit at a time when the economy is doing well. In addition, Ballard said Daines has done “nothing to check” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “worst instincts on bottling up legislation.”

Ballard said he is neither related to the Ballard Oil Co. family nor the Orioles baseball player Jeff Ballard, who was born in Billings.

“If it’s a Ballard who is famous or has money, they are no relation,” he said.

Peter Nelson is the Defenders of Wildlife director of federal lands. Earlier this week, he wrote that "Some of America’s most precious wildlife habitat could be splintered by roads and auctioned to the highest bidder under a proposed new rule. And if the rule goes into effect, there’s not a thing you or I could do about it... Under this proposal, more than 90% of projects to log, mine, drill or develop our national forests would bypass public participation and environmental review. President Trump has declared that aggressively expanding logging is his highest priority on our national forests. This regulation would pave the way by enabling the Forest Service to ignore the harmful impacts of roadbuilding and logging on wildlife, watersheds and other public values... At a time when habitat loss and climate change are accelerating the loss of species, it is unacceptable for the Forest Service to sideline science and the public to achieve President Trump’s dangerous vision for our national forests. Let’s call this proposal what it really is-- a thinly veiled attempt to make it easier rubberstamp permits for industry to exploit our national forests and harm wildlife. We can’t let that happen!"

Wendell Barry's poem, "The Peace of Wild Things" has been circulating online this week as word of Trump's nominee leaked out.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

White Supremists Don't Fight Against Anti-Semitism-- White Supremicism IS Anti-Semitism

German Nazis in black and white; North Carolina Nazis in color

Watching Trump's ugly fascist supporters howling for Ilhan's blood in North Carolina this week, sent a shiver up my spine. By birth I'm a Jew. What would it take to turn that mob against me and American Jews? Ten words from Trump? Five? I was watching authoritarian and fascistic-oriented Americans in that audience. And to hear a neo-Nazi like Trump using some bullshit against AOC, Ilhan, Ayanna and Rashida as "anti-Semitic" was flat-out galling, sickening. I've been involved with an organization called Young Elected Officials (YEO) for many years, and long before either ran for Congress, I've seen the spectacular work Ilhan and Rashida have done as state legislators on behalf of their constituents and their communities in Minneapolis and Detroit. They were both elected to open seats last year because of how their constituents-- not Trump (detested in both cities)-- viewed their records and because of the quality of the their ideas and of their characters. Neither is remotely anti-Semitic, unless you define refusing to pledge allegiance to Benjamin Netanyahu as the definition of anti-Semitism... which would make a majority of American Jews anti-semites.

Yesterday, in her NY Times column, Michelle Goldberg, seems to have noted the same stunning hypocrisy and the "increasingly bizarre turn that American discussion of anti-Semitism has taken," not just among North Carolina rednecks but throughout the regime of a cunning and indisputably racist president.

She began by talking about Trump's actual in-house Nazi, Hungarian fascist Sebastian Gorka routinely accusing Jewish intellectuals and activists of anti-Semitism and Jew-hating. "If this were just Gorka," she wrote, "you could dismiss it as trolling. But his tweets were only a particularly brazen example of how right-wing gentiles are wrapping themselves in a smarmy philo-Semitism to attack the left, even when that means attacking either individual Jews or the political interests of most Jewish Americans.

Republicans routinely defend Trump's racist taunts as having something to do with "protecting Jews." I'd feel a lot better if he were protecting Jews from Confederate racists than from The Squad. But, as Goldberg wrote, "This is a president who regularly deploys anti-Semitic tropes and whose ex-wife said that he slept with a volume of Hitler’s speeches by his bed. When speaking to American Jews, he’s called Israel 'your country' and Benjamin Netanyahu 'your prime minister,' suggesting that in his mind, we don’t fully belong here any more than Omar does."

Is far right Montana Senator Steve Daines a Nazi?

I don't know if Montana Senator Steve Daines is a neo-Nazi or not but he seems to be behaving like one, tweeting his solidarity with Trump by proclaiming that "Montanans are sick and tired of listening to anti-American, anti-Semite, radical Democrats trash our country and our ideals." That sounds like a Nazi to my Jewish ears. And it did to the Montana Association of Rabbis as well, who sent Daines an open letter stating that the rabbis in Billings,  Bozeman,  Missoula, and Whitefish are "unanimously appalled by the ongoing torrent of racist incitement and personal attacks that President Trump continues to direct against Democratic women of color in Congress" and by Daines' complicity. "Montana," they wrote, "deserves and expects more from its representatives. It is not the Montana way to personally attack others for their political viewpoints or positions. It is not the Montana way to promote bigotry or hatred, as the senator himself stated with his fellow representatives on December 27, 2016:  “We stand firmly together to send a clear message that ignorance, hatred and threats of violence are unacceptable and have no place…in Montana or across this nation. Collectively, as Montana’s rabbis, we are the experts on antisemitism in Montana; we have studied it, lived it, and know it when we see it. We refuse to allow the real threat of antisemitism to be weaponized and exploited by those who themselves share a large part of the responsibility for the rise of white nationalist and antisemitic violence in this country. Accusing these representatives of antisemitism is no justification for telling them 'to go back to where they came from' or inciting violence against them. In a direct affront to Montana’s Jewish communities and Jewish leaders, Senator Daines has decided to join in the president’s rhetoric of hate, a rhetoric which presents a serious threat to Jewish communities. We do not feel safer or supported by Senator Daines’ comments, rather we fear the legitimization the president and the senator are giving to racism, xenophobia, misogyny and hatred."

Such Christian appropriation of the fight against anti-Semitism reached its grim nadir this week. As Trump’s racist invective against Omar and three other freshman Democratic congresswomen has dominated the news, the president’s defenders have used Jews as human shields, pretending that hatred of the quartet is rooted in abhorrence of anti-Semitism. On Tuesday, an evangelical outfit called Proclaiming Justice to the Nations accused the Anti-Defamation League-- the Anti-Defamation League!-- of siding with anti-Semites after the ADL called out Trump’s racism. The group even had the audacity to hurl a Hebrew denunciation-- “lashon hara,” or “evil tongue”-- at the Jewish civil rights organization.

Republicans are only a short step away from such shamelessness when they try to deflect from the president’s racism by accusing his foes of anti-Semitism. “Montanans are sick and tired of listening to anti-American, anti-Semite, radical Democrats trash our country and our ideals,” Senator Steve Daines of Montana tweeted on Monday, proclaiming his solidarity with Trump.

When the right presents Trump as an enemy of anti-Semitism, it goes beyond hypocrisy. Jews have thrived here as they have in few other places in the world because America at least aspires to be a multiethnic democracy, not an ethnostate. If Trump succeeds in making citizenship racialized and contingent, that’s an existential threat to American Jews.

Trump and his accomplices are simultaneously assaulting the political foundation of Jewish life in America and claiming they’re doing it on the Jews’ behalf. As the Montana Association of Rabbis wrote in an open letter to Daines on Wednesday, “We refuse to allow the real threat of anti-Semitism to be weaponized and exploited by those who themselves share a large part of the responsibility for the rise of white nationalist and anti-Semitic violence in this country.”

...It’s worth thinking about how we got to a point where anti-Semitism can be exploited as it has been this week. What we’re seeing is the absurd but logical endpoint of efforts to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, and anti-Zionism with opposition to Israel’s right-wing government. Only if these concepts are interchangeable can Jewish critics of Israel be the perpetrators of anti-Semitism and gentiles who play footsie with fascism be allies of the Jewish people. Only if these concepts are the same can an evangelical group claim that Jews are being anti-Jewish when they protest Trump, because Trump loves Israel.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal Zionist group J Street, puts part of the blame for this rhetorical derangement at the feet of the American Jewish establishment. Its leaders made an alliance of convenience with right-wing Christian Zionists, who support the state of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and a bulwark of Western values in the Middle East, but care little about pluralism in the United States.

The Jewish leaders, said Ben-Ami, “made a deal with the devil. And what they’ve done is they’ve laid down in bed with white nationalists and racists and bigots.” Now white nationalists and racists and bigots-- and those politically aligned with them-- feel entitled to use their backing of Israel as an alibi when their leader indulges in racist incitement.

“When they start asking people to go back where they came from, that’s the first line of attack on the Jewish people over centuries,” said Ben-Ami. It’s terrifying enough to have a president who says such things. It’s an almost incalculable insult for Trump and his enablers to act as if he’s helping the Jews when he adopts the language of the pogrom.

ABC News interviewed Rabbi Avi Olitzky of Beth El Synagogue in the middle of Ilhan's Minneapolis district. He had the same feelings any sentient Jew hearing those chants of the North Carolina Trumpists. In an OpEd he wrote for the Times of Israel he warned that "We cannot fall victim to the political tricks that rely on racism, and the meme of antisemitism, to bolster both sides, while still doing immense communal harm... even if [Ilhan] disagrees with the policies of the current Israeli government, I cannot stay silent today. I stand fully beside her-- and her colleagues-- and support her in the face of the recent racist tweets of the president. This is not how we engage in civil dialogue. This is not how we do business and politics in this country. We are and have been better than this. We need to be better than this," And he told ABC's Briefing Room that "this is a very eerie wave of similar situations in history, be that Nazi Germany or elsewhere," noting that the Trumpists seem to have some kind of permission to be "publicly hateful and publicly loud.

"And from the pastors of my favorite evangelical group, Vote Common Good... a t-shirt all Americans should be proud to wear:

Another NY Times Republican columnist yesterday, David Brooks, seemed as disturbed as Goldberg about Trump's fascist rantings. "The real American idea," he wrote in a column titled Donald Trump Hates America, "is not xenophobic, nostalgic or racist; it is pluralistic, future-oriented and universal. America is exceptional precisely because it is the only nation on earth that defines itself by its future, not its past. America is exceptional because from the first its citizens saw themselves in a project that would have implications for all humankind. America is exceptional because it was launched with a dream to take the diverse many and make them one-- e pluribus unum. Trump’s campaign is an attack on that dream. The right response is to double down on that ideal. The task before us is to create the most diverse mass democracy in the history of the planet-- a true universal nation. It is precisely to weave the social fissures that Trump is inclined to tear."


Tony Schwartz wrote The Art of The Deal. No one understands Trump and Trumpism better than he does.