Progressives (Liberals)

I think you mean Jew, right.

I hope you aren't raising children.

That was not nice. Family is not supposed to come into this. I raised two sons, both heterosexual, what did I do wrong?

And I hope you are not responsible for anyone's safety but your own.

I hate that you could be in a position to poison their minds. Aside from that I mean no disrespect to your family.

My mind is not poisoned because I think you are completely wrong on almost anything. The last opinion I would value making any such decision is yours. You attack my argument by saying it is evil(hide the children) in some way. It isn't.

So it's not evil to murder Palestinians because they are Muslims?

I never said anyone murdered Palestinians. I never said murder anyone. Who are you talking about? Israel is defending itself.

Amen. With an election whose outcome was as narrow as this one's was, it's a fool's quest to argue about what one single thing was at fault. By definition, there's a whole bunch of things that could have made enough of a difference to put Clinton instead of Trump in the white house. They're all worth pointing out, as you did, and analysing; blaming one while ignoring the others is cherry picking.

You agree though that the winner is determined by the number of votes they get in each state right‽

You also agree that people cast those votes‽

I only mention the Democratic Party screw ups because they are still following the same blueprint to defeat as last time. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time does not make sense.

The danger of conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism
Enfolding criticism of Israel within the definition of anti-Semitism would risk rendering the word meaningless.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/danger-conflating-anti-zionism-anti-semitism-180812094500385.html

I still remember the shock I felt when, at the age of 12, my teacher told me the word "joo" I had just spoken, which I had thought to mean to lie or cheat, was actually "Jew" and was anti-Semitic. Throughout my British childhood, I had used that word casually and frequently, without ever knowing what it really meant. I start with this example to make a simple point: anti-Semitism is so entrenched in our society, so depressingly persistent, that to trivialise it is to trivialise the blueprint of prejudice itself. It is a barometer of moral cowardice: when someone doesn't want to take responsibility for their own faults or problems, they blame the Jews.

At the moment, two phenomena are taking place in UK politics. For the first time in nearly 40 years, a politician with seriously left-wing ideas, and pro-Palestinian sympathies, is approaching political power. Over the past two years, that same politician's party has been going through a series of anti-Semitism allegations so comprehensive and systematic that we may employ the term "blanket coverage".

OPINION
Corbyn and anti-Semitism: Much ado about something else
Sharif Nashashibi
by Sharif Nashashibi
There is definitely a long-overdue debate that needs to be had over anti-Semitism in the Labour Party - but the current barrage of media attention is not that debate. There are definitely some voices who claim to support the Labour Party, and who allow their anti-Zionism to spill over mindlessly into anti-Semitism. What we are witnessing in the UK media, however, is a near-complete evaporation of critical debate. So many aspects of this coverage are disturbing: the widespread assumption among TV hosts and commentators that anti-semitism is a problem exclusive to the Labour Party (polling suggests it is clearly not); the alarming paucity of any evidence or statistics, so that the sentence "anti-Semitism in the Labour Party", repeated ad nauseam, becomes its own self-generating fact; the frankly ridiculous allegations of anti-Semitism levelled at the leader Jeremy Corbyn himself (Alan Sugar, one of the most famous faces in British business, tweeted a photo of the Labour leader sitting next to Hitler); the unconditional authority and respect given to voices who have been widely criticised elsewhere for bias - the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, for example, whose unreserved equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism drew a letter of protest from 88 Jewish celebrities; the lack of journalistic professionalism in giving any sense of proportion to the actual problem (the membership of the British Labour Party is 570,000 - the number of cases pending for expulsion from the party for anti-Semitism, the Guardian reported this week, is 70). Media coverage has been so appalling that, earlier in the summer, a group of 40 senior British academics accused the media of relying for its sources on a handful of "well-known political opponents of Corbyn himself".


The Lobby P3: The Anti-Semitism Trope (26:10)
In particular, the Labour Party is being called "anti-Semitic" because it has refused to recognise the entirety of a disputed definition of "anti-Semitism" - the code of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), repeatedly described in the media as an "internationally recognised" definition, but in reality is a highly controversial one. The IHRA code considers any description of the Israeli State as a "racist" institution to be anti-Semitic - the Labour Party's rejection of this clause has been portrayed as a rejection of the UN bill of human rights. In reality, the IHRA code has not only been challenged by groups such as the ACLU and Jewish Voice for Peace, but was even queried by an all-party Select Committee for the UK Parliament earlier this year. Absolutely none of this nuance makes the mainstream media.

In a way, this really leads us to the heart of the problem - and the heart of Labour's problem. I will choose my next words as carefully as possible, fully aware that the quarter of a million British Jews in the UK are in no way accountable, nor should ever be held accountable, for the actions of an aggressive Israeli state.

There is a basic level of ignorance in British society - partly wilful ignorance, partly genuine misinformation, partly flat-out denial - about how the Israeli state actually came to be. There seems to be in Britain - in TV commentators, in mainstream academics, in ordinary public opinion - a deep reluctance to acknowledge how, in 1948, three-quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs were forcibly evicted, with British backing, off their own land. To recognise this as racist, in the words of the IHRA code, would be "anti-semitic". A large part of the mainstream media anger towards the Labour Party for refusing the "internationally recognised" code is an establishment anger against a political party for refusing to accept the post-war narrative - a narrative, moreover, which has been successfully disseminated and internalised among many people in the UK since 1948. This is the scale of the British Labour Party's problem - if it is to go through with this, it has to ask a large segment of the UK population to unlearn their history.

On the BBC programme Newsweek last week, we saw a visible example of this. The presenter (Emily Maitlis) asked a British Labour campaigner for Palestine whether he thought the Israeli state was a "racist endeavour". The premise of the question itself betrayed how little the presenter knew about how the Israeli state was actually established. The activist avoided the question (he clearly thought it was), even after she repeated it - because to declare, on a BBC programme, that the Israeli state was an act of settler colonialism is, in the present climate, simply unspeakable.

If the mainstream media wins and Labour has to re-formulate its definition of anti-Semitism to fit the one currently used by the government, I see two dangers emerging, one for each side. For pro-Palestinian campaigners, any serious attempt to call Israel "racist" or revise its history will be criminalised. This is not hyperbole: organisers at the University of Birmingham a few years ago asked panellists not to use the word "apartheid" in a debate on Israel and Palestine. Within the Labour Party, the pro-Israeli, right-wingers will have won a subtle victory - a chance to purge the party of Corbyn-supporters under the guise of "extremism".

For the Jewish community, a much more long-term danger emerges. By enfolding criticism of Israel within the definition of anti-semitism, a cherished goal of the Israeli Right will have finally been realised. There is a subtle mechanism here - British Jews critical of Israel (and there are many) will be involuntarily yoked together with Israel itself within such a definition, ironically mirroring the anti-Semitic logic of the mindless idiots who lump all Jews together in the first place. It might not be exaggerated to say that the result of all this, ultimately, will be the death of the term "anti-Semitism" itself as a meaningful word.

So far, in the special elections we haven't done too bad. Democrats might not have won every time, but they came close enough in red districts to where it is encouraging.

The same might happen in mid-terms, we come close to taking over the House and/or Senate but not enough. But if we gain a few more seats it makes it harder for republicans to pass some of the laws they have been passing.

(Maan News Agency)
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/multi-cultural-crowd-rallies-in-tel-aviv-against-likud-apartheid-law/
The Maan News Agency reported that 30,000 people, mainly Palestinian-Israelis but also Jewish supporters, rallied in downtown Tel Aviv on Saturday against the so-called ‘Jewish nationality law’ passed by the far right wing Likud Party and its allies, which places ‘sovereignty’ in the Jewish community of Israel and formally reduces Palestinian-Israelis to second-class citizens, making the colonization of the Palestinian West Bank by Jewish squatters state policy. It is widely viewed by centrist and leftist Israelis and Palestinian-Israelis as an open declaration of Apartheid.

Amos Schocken, publisher of the liberal Haaretz newspaper, addressed the rally. His newspaper called it “a badge of honour for Israeli civil society.” A Haaretz editorial observed of the Palestinian-Israelis, “The most excluded and oppressed group in Israel, and the one most seriously harmed by the nation-state law, proudly made its voice heard in the city square, receiving an impressive show of solidarity from Israel’s Jewish citizens.” according to BBC monitoring.

According to the IHRA's Working Definition of Antisemitism, "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor," is an antisemitic act.

One thing is the Jewish right to self-determination. Another thing is the existence of a State of Israel that, to exist, necessarily oppresses another people, e.g. the present State of Israel. That is racism. The IHRA is attempting to stifle criticism of the State of Israel for what it is, a racist state.

And on the other side, the truth about Islam is suppressed by the UN itself. And cowardly western countries say nothing.

Individual Jews - Some of my favorite people in the world. The Israeli government - racist, murderous

Not sure what point this is supposed to make...

Yeah, Clinton lost the election to Trump because enough people voted for Trump, and not enough people for Clinton.

The voter groups that didn't vote for Clinton to prevent a Trump victory included, for random example:

- Obama-to-Trump voters who liked Obama in 2008, even in 2012 too, but didn't vote Clinton because they actually liked (parts of) Trump's message or just disliked her too much;

- People who didn't vote in the previous election (or previous few elections) because they felt no candidate represented them, but came out for Trump's message;

- Presumed "Never Trump" Republicans who turned out to never say never after all, despite all of Clinton's efforts to hone her campaign focus specifically on winning over their upper-middle class, supposedly moderate votes

- People who voted for Obama, twice, but didn't feel persuaded to come out this time (including a significant slice of black voters)

- People who voted for Obama but this time preferred Jill Stein or Gary Johnson because they found the choice between Clinton and Trump too unpalatable

Did I miss anyone? I'm sure I did.

When people like you pick one or two groups from the above list to blame Trump's election on, while remaining muted about the others, you're cherry picking.

When people pick either Comey, or Russian interference, or Clinton's campaign and advertising strategy, or Clinton's overall (lack of) political/ideological appeal or faulty campaign message, or the (now massive) voter disenfranchisement, or the media's imbalanced focus on Clinton's emails, or whatever other, major individual factor to blame while remaining muted about the other factors, they're cherry picking. The cherry picking usually has more to do with whose ox is being gored than with a sincere analysis of lessons learnt.

This only appears to be correct. I've explained this many times in various threads, but here goes, once more. In the 1824 election, when the United States was effectively a one party nation, Andrew Jackson won the most popular votes, and the most electoral votes, but did not get 50% of either. This meant that there was a sort of run off in the House. All four candidates who eventually ran in 1824 were members of the Democratic-Republicans, usually just called the Republicans. Henry Clay had come fourth, and so he was not in the running any longer. Clay hated Jackson--in a letter to a friend he stated that he didn't think that killing 2500 Englishmen at New Orleans qualified Jackson for the office of President. He used his considerable influence to sway the vote in favor of John Quincy Adams. Adams appointed Clay Secretary of State, in a move which became known as "the Corrupt Bargain." There was a good deal of resentment in the country as a result.

Jackson went back to Tennessee, and began creating the Democratic Party. He won the 1828 election. In 1832, the Democrats took over most state houses in the country, and that was when legislation was passed to set up a winner-take-all system for the allocation of electoral votes in each state. The constitution is mute on the allocation of electoral votes, and the right of the states to certify their own elections is guaranteed by the constitution. (The interference of the Supremes in the 2000 election was unconstitutional, but there is no appeal from decisions of the court, other than amending the constitution.) After 1832, almost all states have adopted the winner take all system for the allocation of electoral votes. Today, only Maine and Nebraska do not allocate electoral votes in a winner-take-all manner. It would require a constitutional amendment to end the use of the winner-take-all system. It is that which makes the Electoral College pernicious.

I’ve been FAR from muted about the others. You can read my last two years of comments if you like.

Votes are all that matter when the rubber hits the road though. Only voters can vote. I’m concerned about voters in 2018 and 2020 not showing up. That’s why I’m pushing *some* blame onto them.