My previous statement on this subject is being vindicated by Jeff Goldberg, the New Yorker writer, a close Emanuel buddy. Read it.
I know plenty of you don't like Goldberg either. But he's pretty progressive on Israel and, I guess because he served in the Israeli army, has no problem telling Israel what it should do i.e. end the occupation.
Bottom line. Rahm Emanuel is going to be the White House enforcer. Forget about his father!
This McCain orchestrated trashing of Sarah Palin is sickening.
Her campaign was horrible. She knows nothing about he issues. She was, almost surely, the worst VP candidate in history.
The Jewish vote went 78 percent for Barack Obama. It is now safe to say that, after 80 years of consistently voting Democratic for President, the Jewish vote is no less predictable than the African-American vote or the vote of union households.
Accordingly, the scare tactics that worked so well against Obama during the Democratic primaries flopped in the general election. The Republican Jewish Coalition, which wasted gazillions on race-mongering, might as well close shop. If a relatively moderate Republican nominee cannot break above 22 percent after six months of lying e-mails alleging that the Democrat is a Middle Eastern terrorist, it is safe to say that the Jewish Republican ship will never come in.
This time I'm really, really not going to mention how Krauthammer bellowed ast the rabbi on Yom Kippur. That is getting OLD.
But today, our boy is kind of sad. He writes about John McCain. "Before our old soldier fades away, it is worth acknowledging that McCain ran a valiant race against impossible odds. He will be -- he should be -- remembered as the most worthy presidential nominee ever to be denied the prize.."
Before the netroots starts attacking Emanuel as an AIPAC stooge, Likudnik, or whatever, let me weigh in.
It's not true. His father is an Israeli and was active in the Irgun, the terrorist group founded by Menachem Begin which famously bombed Jerusalem's King David Hotel.
I don't know what the old man's politics on Israel are today (not all Irgunists were rightwingers). I suspect that, if he was still a rightwinger, he would not have produced a bunch of liberal kids. (Rahm's brother, the Jeremy Piven one, writes often on HuffPo and is a total Hollywood liberal).
Would America have elected Barack Obama if white Americans had not gotten accustomed to seeing (in succession) two African-American Secretaries of State? I don't think so. Before Bush, African-Americans were appointed to some good posts but not to our #1 foreign policy job. Two African Americans (one with a pretty odd first name) served as America's face to the world. That eased Obama's way. It is not Tiger Woods in whose footsteps Obama is walking -- it's Rice and Powell.
I hope sane Israelis understand how damaging it is to Israel to be identified in today's New York Times as being one of three nations on the planet that clearly preferred McCain to Obama.
During the campaign I would have denied that was the case because some American Jews might have been moved by this information to support McCain. (In the end 78% voted for Obama). But I knew it was true as did everyone who knows anything about Israel. And it was not only the right in Israel that was pro-McCain. It was pretty much across the board, EXCEPT for the pro-peace left. (see this rundown)
Lyndon Johnson understood that the honeymoon would be short. After the largest landslide in history -- with the biggest Democratic Congressional majorities ever -- he acted as if he had a year to get his Great Society enacted.
"You've got to give it all you can, that first year," he told an aide. "Doesn't matter what kind of a majority you come in with. You've got just one year when they treat you right, and before they start worrying about themselves."
Other than those personal rites of passage -- and I've had some wonderful ones -- this was the best night of my life.
I have two grandchildren, twins born in February. The first President they will ever know is an African-American. We won't have to teach them about equality and the stupidity of prejudice. We won't have to tell them, as white liberals tend to tell their kids, that they are "just as good as us" because they will know it. After all, the President is black. They won't tear up, as I did, the first time they see the word "President" under a photo of a black man or gaze in wonder at our beautiful African-American "First Family."
To give birth to a new one, for all its people.
We will know once Virginia comes in and Obama actually carries he capital of the confederacy.
I only wish Dr. King and LBJ were here to see what is happening. And Malcolm who, at the end of his life, came to the understanding that America could be capable of even of this.
JTA reports that Steve Rosen, former Director of Policy at AIPAC, has landed a job with Daniel Pipes, whose careeer has gone from various teaching gigs to fulltime anti-Obama and anti-Muslim hate-mongering. Rosen is under federal indictment for espionage.
I'll spare comment on Rosen with whom I worked during my AIPAC days (1982-1986) and who has always struck me as Washington's spookiest character. I will say that in 1984, when he was supporting Reagan and I was gung-ho for Mondale,he told me, "You and I are not that far apart. You'll be surprised to know that my parents were Stalinists."
It's no secret to TPMCafe readers that I believe that -- in addition to all his other qualities that make Barack Obama the best Democratic nominee in the party's history -- Obama's racial background is of incredible significance. My wife, a public school teacher and counselor, reports that, for months now, she has seen the inspirational effect on African-American children (especially the boys). But she also notes the excitement among kids in general, telling me about one white kindergarten kid with Down syndrome, who hardly talks, but when he happened to see the young tall slender gym fair-complexioned gym teacher, started shouting "OBAMA." Nothing else, just the name. And then a big smile.
I'm posting this whole (I don't have a link)not because I think it is going to happen, but because it might. We need to be prepared.
By Gregory Palast:
It's November 5 and the nation is in shock. Media blame it on the "Bradley effect": Americans supposedly turned into Klansmen inside the voting booth, and Barack Obama turned up with 6 million votes less than calculated from the exit polls. Florida came in for McCain and so did Indiana. Colorado, despite the Democrats' Rocky Mountain high after the Denver convention, stayed surprisingly Red. New Mexico, a state where Anglos are a minority, went McCain by 300 votes, as did Virginia.That's the nightmare. Here's the cold reality.
Can you imagine this on our side: enjoying the death of say McCain's mother or Palin's grandmother and speculating that it was timed for election eve?
Inconceivable. That is because liberals just don't think that way. And a few of these rightwingers don't either. But the majority clearly does.
Greg Sargent shares this repulsive mailer the Republican Jewish Coalition is putting out in Ohio. Disgusting stuff. And totally racist.
But, hey, it's the Republican Jewish Coalition and these mailers are in keeping with the McCain/Palin campaign. If McCain/Palin was not running a racist campaign, neither would the RJC. They are a partisan organization and don''t pretend to be anything else.
