WHAT “FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION” LOOKS LIKE: America Is Ready for a Jewish Veep. The Democrats Aren’t.
Almost as soon as Harris began her search for a running mate in earnest, a campaign from the progressive left made it clear that the anti-Israel wing of the party would not vote for Shapiro. Though his support of Israel is identical to that of every other contender, though he hates Benjamin Netanyahu a lot, though his view on college campus protesters (he called it “absolutely unacceptable” that “universities can’t guarantee the safety and security of their students”) is the most common, most popular view, none of this was a match for his last name, the fact that he is an observant, kosher-keeping proud Jew, and that, like the vast majority of Jews, he supports the state of Israel.
In their criticism of Shapiro, leftists pointed to the fact that he excoriated University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill for refusing to condemn calls for the genocide of the Jews—I know, what a monster!—that he called on Penn to shut down the anti-Israel encampments, which violated university codes and guidelines—the shame!—and that he told The New York Times, “If you had a group of white supremacists camped out and yelling racial slurs every day, that would be met with a different response than antisemites camped out, yelling antisemitic tropes.” How dare he suggest antisemitism should be condemned, no matter what side it comes from!
As The Babylon Bee put it Monday night, “Democrats Worried Choosing Jewish Vice President May Cost Them The All-Important ‘Death To America’ Vote.” By Tuesday morning, the Harris campaign had turned farce into tragedy and picked Walz for Harris’s running mate.
There can be no doubt about it: there was only one reason to reject Shapiro, and it was that the Democrats would rather cater to their antisemitic base and lose the election than embrace the vast non-antisemitic American middle and win. “You also have antisemitism that has gotten marbled into this party,” Van Jones said on CNN Tuesday. “You can be for the Palestinians without being an anti-Jewish bigot, but there are some anti-Jewish bigots out there.”
This is a party whose “progressive” politics have gone very far “back and to the left,” as Oliver Stone would say, since Al Gore chose Joe Lieberman to be his veep in 2000: Back then, “the media not only applauded it as a historical milestone but considered his piety a political plus: Lieberman was well-known for his devout faith, which, the Democrats/media hoped, would contrast nicely with President Clinton’s cigar-tinged indiscretions. The possibility of liberal blowback wasn’t even considered. But now, the truth is just too big to ignore,” Scott Pinsker wrote yesterday. “When Lieberman was tapped, antisemites weren’t yet a key Democratic voting bloc. Now they are.”