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Hi Steve,
You might vote Republican because you favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporate deregulation. Or maybe because you mistakenly think Republicans are better for Israel (Spoiler Alert: They aren't). Regardless of your reasons, if you vote Republican, you are voting to make abortion illegal, keep assault weapons legal, replace democracy with fascism, and replace pluralism with antisemitism and racism.
All are important, but democracy is fundamental to our national identity. When we talk about "shared values" with Israel, we are talking about democracy. When we honor and remember our soldiers for defending our way of life on Veterans Day and Memorial Day, the way of life we are talking about is democracy.
Supporting a party that is home to 147 House and Senate opponents of democracy and 254 key leaders who back Trump's false claims of election fraud, supporting candidates who refuse to speak out against the cancer within their own party, is an assault on our values and our American way of life. As strongly as we feel about other issues, we must put democracy first. If we lose our democracy, we lose everything.
That’s easy for me to say because I don’t have to choose between democracy and my other values. I’m pro-democracy, but I’m also pro-choice, in favor of banning assault weapons, pro-Israel, and opposed to antisemitism. It’s fine with me if the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. Supporting democracy should be an easy choice for any American and an easy message to sell, but I’m not the best messenger because by voting Democratic and supporting democracy, I don’t have to make sacrifices on other issues. But for Republicans, this can cause upsetment.
Unfortunately, better messengers aren’t effective either. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) vehemently opposes abortion and voting rights. She votes with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) 91% of the time. She departs from Republican orthodoxy only in her insistence on disclosing the truth about Trump's January 6 insurrection. But that was too much for Republican primary voters. She lost to nut-job Harriet Hageman by a 2-1 margin last month after coasting to victory two years ago. Republicans won't listen to Cheney, who agrees with them on nearly every issue, because her opposition to Trump and support for democracy causes them too much upsetment.
Imagine how Cheney would have fared within the GOP had she been guilty not of opposing Trump, but of antisemitism. You don't have to imagine. Jonathan Chait proposes a simple test to measure the influence of antisemites within the Republican Party: "If antisemites were too marginal to pose any danger, it would be easy enough for the party to cut them off. (If you want to know what it looks like when Republicans decide to really throw somebody out of their party, look at their treatment of Liz Cheney.) Instead, they vacillate. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declined to comment on Gosar's attendance at white nationalist Nick Fuentes's conference. McCarthy has likewise promised to restore Greene's committee privileges if Republicans regain the majority."
The Republican Party itself is the problem, and as Bill Kristol (once a Republican and still a conservative) recently observed, “you can’t overestimate how much damage the capitulation of conservative and Republican elites has done. Trump by himself succeeding was bad. The Republican Party going along with Trump — and the conservative establishment legitimating and rationalizing and enabling Trump — created the very dangerous situation we’re now in…and if we don’t have two reasonably healthy parties, the unhealthy party has to be defeated.”
The close of the primary season proves again that the Democratic electorate rejects extremism while, as Dana Milibank shows, "in the GOP, the hard right prevailed, very much confirming the impression of a MAGA takeover of the party." The GOP is what it is. In the end, write Sean Illing and Zac Gershberg, "the only way to confront a seditious conspiracy is to prosecute the criminals and defeat the people who support them at the ballot box."
By definition, anyone who does not support Trump is not a credible messenger to those who still support Trump or who still, while telling us (and perhaps themselves) that they don’t like Trump, nevertheless vote Republican--as if today’s GOP is anything other than a loyalty test that can be passed only by swearing allegiance to Donald Trump. That’s why those of us in the majority must do all we can to win in November: Because if we lose, being in the majority might not matter anymore. And that should cause you a great deal of upsetment.
New polling confirms that Jewish voters remain solidly Democratic. A poll released on Thursday by the Jewish Electorate Institute (JEI) confirms that the Democratic Party is the natural home of Jewish Americans and that the future of democracy and concern about abortion rights is driving the Jewish vote.
JEI’s poll found that 70% of Jewish voters approve of President Biden’s job performance and will support a Democratic candidate in November–both numbers are up from April and exceed those of the general population. 82% of Jewish voters disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, with 57% saying that the decision makes them more motivated to vote. The future of democracy is the top voting priority of Jewish Americans, followed by abortion. The poll confirmed that Jews continue to show a strong emotional connection to Israel, but it ranks very low as a voting priority primarily because other issues affect their lives more directly.
The survey found near-unanimous support for gun safety measures. 96% of Jewish voters support requiring comprehensive background checks for all gun purchases and 91% support raising the minimum age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21.
92% of Jewish voters are concerned about antisemitism, and by a 52-20% margin, trust Democrats more than Republicans to fight it. Jews are far more concerned about antisemitism from the right than antisemitism from the left (61% to 24%). Younger Jews, contrary to what we might expect from anecdotal reports about left-wing antisemitism on campus, are even more concerned about antisemitism from the right than from the left (71% to 21%).
Support for reentering the JCPOA remains rock-solid: 68% of Jewish voters support the U.S. reentering the Iran nuclear deal. Despite a massive Republican disinformation campaign and relative silence on this issue from the administration, this percentage has not changed since April. Supporting the JCPOA is smart policy and smart politics.
The latest on Iran talks. Same as it ever was. The ball is in Iran's court, the Biden administration is not making concessions, and reentering the JCPOA remains possible.
On Wednesday, the U.S. sanctioned ten individuals and two entities, all affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, for their roles in conducting malicious cyber acts, including ransomware activity.
Regarding Iran providing drones to Russia for use in Ukraine, the State Department said that it is a reminder of "the malign influence that Iran represents and that in many ways Iran exports throughout the region and in this case well beyond. We have no illusions about the nature of the Iranian regime. That is not a reason not to pursue a deal that would block permanently and verifiably an Iranian nuclear weapon. That is a reason to pursue such a deal that would permanently and verifiably prohibit Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
"Every single challenge we face from Iran’s ballistic missile program, to its support for proxies and terrorist groups, to its support for Russia in this case, to its malicious cyber programs – every single one of those challenges becomes all the more difficult if Iran has the perceived impunity that would come with a nuclear weapon. That’s why President Biden is committed that Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon. We continue to believe that a mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA is the most effective means by which to achieve that, but that is a commitment that will remain at the center of our foreign policy, JCPOA or not."
As I predicted last week, on Thursday House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats voted down a Republican attempt to throw a monkey wrench into Iran diplomacy by requiring the Biden administration to share sensitive documents under negotiation. Congress will have a chance to vote on returning to the JCPOA and will be provided the full text of any agreement if and when a deal is reached.
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