As more details emerge about Hillary’s narrow loss, it seems at least part of it was due to less-than-expected turnout, and/or higher-than-expected small-party vote, among some of our base in key states.
So of course, we Kossacks start to argue endlessly, whether the blame is “rotten Dem Establishment” whose favorite candidate was simply Not Worth It, or “spoiled Dem voters” who simply Don’t Get It.
Instead of continuing to argue in circles, I thought I’d share with you that I’ve been just handed a golden opportunity, a real-life example for what “Not Worth It” looks like in real life. Please join me for a moment of sad comic relief.
Isaac “Buzhie” Herzog is the leader of Israel’s largest opposition party, Labor, and hence the leader of the entire opposition. Formally, he’s the peace-loving, enlightened centre-left alternative to Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s far-right government. (note how all our politicians have toddler nicknames?) Here’s what Buzhie wrote on Facebook after this week’s US elections: (translation mine)
Warm congratulations to the President of the world’s strongest superpower: Donald J Trump!
American democracy today chose to put on top an American leader, who taught the pundits and the skeptics that we are in a new era of change and of replacing the old ruling elites!
You did the unexpected against all odds, surveys and studies by the prophets of the old era.
I am certain that the security and economic pact with our strong and important ally will continue even more under your Presidency.
May you succeed
Donald J Trump.
(yup, he actually ended as if he’s signing with Trump’s name)
For those wanting to laugh a bit more, here are 2 additional tidbits, known to Israelis but possibly not to you:
Ever since losing the election to Bibi’s party in March 2015 (complete with a stunning failure of the polls that showed Labor ahead), Buzhie has been far more engaged in seeking ways and pretexts to join Bibi in a so-called “Unity Government”, than in…, well, than being a meaningful opposition to Israel’s most right-wing government ever. Speaking of “old ruling elites”, Buzhie’s dad Chaim Herzog was himself a Labor politician, parliament member, and the country’s President (an honorary title in Israel, analogous to the Queen of England). The spineless, weaselly and charisma-free Buzhie would have never gotten anywhere in politics without Daddy’s coattails. His paternal grandfather was the Chief Rabbi of Ireland.Unfortunately, the problem isn’t confined to Buzhie alone.
Neither right now: a majority of Labor primary voters (a relatively smaller group than primary voters here, b/c you have to pay membership dues to vote) — a majority voted for him over the former, more feisty woman leader. And a majority of Labor parlamentarians think and act just like Buzhie.
Nor for the past 16 years: the current era in Israel-Palestine reality was launched in fall 2000 when the Oslo peace process hit yet another pothole (not the first), riots erupted (not for the first time), dozens died, mostly rioters shot by Israeli military (not for the first time), and the police also killed Palestinian rioters with Israeli citizenship inside Israel (that *was* a first in a very long while).
But the most unprecedented part came a couple of weeks into the crisis, when then-Prime Minister and Labor leader Ehud Barak, stood up in front of the nation for a live speech, and instead of saying something in line with his party’s platform like “Hang on, we’re working on this”, he said “There is no Partner for Peace”, accepting lock-stock-and-barrel the Right’s take on this #1 issue in the country, and in a single sentence launching Israelis and Palestinians into long years of misery and despair, and his own party into irrelevancy, regardless of its size.
Barak proceeded to give the military a free hand to escalate, and within a couple of months the bloodshed exacerbated to unseen-before levels, his coalition collapse and a special election, only for the PM post, was called. Israeli-Palestinians who had given Barak approximately all his landslide victory margin (over Bibi, who else?) in 1999, boycotted the 2001 special elections en masse. My wife and I joined the boycott. Barak lost by a landslide to aging, unpopular right-wing ex-general Sharon. A month later, his party sans him was inside Sharon’s new “Unity Government”, providing a diplomatically-useful “Peace-loving” fig-leaf to the continued atrocity.
Not unrelated to these development, a year and a half later we arrived in the US for a stay that has now extended to 14+ years. Meanwhile, Labor, despite occasionally choosing leaders that seemed feisty, kept the feist confined to domestic issues only, and toed the right-wing government line on the country’s 800-pound gorilla issue, the one issue that defines “Right” and “Left” in Israel, namely the Occupation of the Palestinian people.
You guys still here? My point was, here for your reference, is a dictionary definition for “Not Worth It”: Israel’s Labor party sicne fall 2000.
Now to the US: I, too, have gnashed teeth and tore hairs during the many times since 2002 in when Democrats in Congress and the White House didn’t fight hard enough for what they presumably believed in. But as a group they never came close to being “Not Worth It”. Individually sometimes yes, e.g., Joe Lieberman. But certainly not on the Presidential level. There has always been a chasm between the Democratic and Republican Presidential nominees, surely in all elections this century.
Somehow, left-leaning voters seem worse at understanding how voting works. Voting is by definition the Least Evil. It is a choice imposed on you between a small number of options, including the option of sitting out or voting for a non-viable candidate/party. Yes, it’s great when you vote with enthusiasm, but even when there isn’t much, it is your simple, basic, supposedly self-evident duty to fill in the ballot for the viable option that’s closest to your views and values, and reserve the boycott option for *very* extreme cases.
By contrast, Republicans get it. On the merits, Donald Trump has pissed off, turned off, and downright scared, way more right-leaning voters than Hillary had left-leaning voters. He should have lost easily. Yet, on judgment day, conservatives wo/maned up, and filled in their ballots in the traditional manner. In a nutshell, this is why Trump is now President-elect rather than Clinton.
Last tidbit, back to Israel: fortunately, over there the main electoral system is proportional-parliamentary (the direct personal PM election we boycotted was a short-lived creature lasting only from 1996 to 2001; Sharon nixed it shortly after being elected). At any point in time, there are ~10 viable parties nearly-certain to get into parliament, so one can find a more solidly progressive option instead of the Not Worth It Labor. There are currently 2 such options.
And yet, far too many left-leaning votes in Israel still get lost. People fall for single-issue parties like various shades of Greens or a cannabis-legalization party, that never make it into parliament; or they vote for “Bubble” scam parties sprouting out of nowhere, promising the world and delivering nothing (despite these scams repeating themselves every election — somehow they remain wildly successful) ; or they vote for “designer” parties which cater precisely to the set of progressive values and sensitivities that their specific 0.1% of the population feels comfy with, naturally ending up with 0.1% of the vote. But hey, at least they “voted for what’s good and not for the least evil”.