Rahm for President or Trans Arugula Allies?
The last and final take about Trump being bad for the Jews, I mean, good
Thanks for your patience while I cut down a huge essay into four parts as I wrap my head around a recent debate at the 92nd St Y, “Is Donald Trump Good for the Jews?”
In earlier essays I took apart the Democratic argument, as presented by Rahm Emanuel, that Trump is bad for the Jews. I just don’t buy it, not when my options are the keffiyeh cosplayers, Queers for Palestine and when pathologically anti-Israel activists like Zohran Mamdani run for mayor of New York—all while telling me that they embrace terrorist violence in the name of social justice. Sorry guys, ethics don’t work that way. We’ll get to Martin Luther King jr later for his moral reminder.
The meta takeaway of the debate is far bigger than the topic at hand. The big picture is that former White House advisor and chief-of-staff, financier, Congressman, Mayor and Ambassador Rahm Emanuel is refreshing his profile in the party. He’s been on a slew of podcasts and TV appearances. Now the Free Press reports he’s mulling a run for president in 2028. That’s what this is about. His attendance at the Y is only explained by his presidential ambitions. He’s not hawking a media property to add to his nest egg, he’s pitching himself to a friendly audience.
The problem with Rahm, beyond my needling him for boorish behavior and inability to think critically about his party, is that he represents a vanishing Democratic coalition. My problem with Rahm isn’t with Rahm, it’s with his choice to remain with his party, or what’s left of it.
That's the irony of my critique. Even though Emanuel is manipulative and lacks interiority, I wish he was more successful, not less. It’s impossible for me to imagine the current party empowering Jews like himself. Sure, Jill Stein, Brad Lander (NYC mayoral candidate), Jerry Nadler (NYC congressman), Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders are Jews, but most of them are extremists within their parties and outliers among normal Jews, who love Israel like how normal Italian-Americans love Italy. It’s just natural to this ethnic group. Yes, the NY Times carefully promotes the rare exceptions of a handful of very liberal Jews who want Israel to go away, these are what black people called Uncle Toms in an earlier era, but I’m telling you, they’re rare. Also, the NY Times told us Biden could do long division in his head in 2021, so you tell me about their accurate reporting.
The other few Jews I mentioned, like Schumer and Nadler, will soon retire and not be replaced by a new moderate generation of Jewish political leaders. That era seems to be over. Governors are a different story, but after Dems ditched Shapiro, it’s hard to make the argument that the DNC will promote centrist Dem Jewish governors anytime soon, if ever. More on that in a moment.
I won’t forgive DNC insiders for lots of things, like not leaking stories about Biden’s infirmity in 2024 2021. How does it support democracy to advocate, twice, for a leader who can’t lead? Doesn’t that mean someone unelected was in control? Who was that person and what decisions did they make?
That’s the big scary question. For the purpose of this essay, which has a narrower focus on protecting or threatening Jewish Americans, what, to me, is the most damning evidence of Democrats institutional bigotry is not nominating Josh Shapiro for VP because… he’s Jewish.
All other VP contenders in 2024 shared Shapiro’s middle-of-the-road support for Israel, a longterm ally that was under attack from most of the region: Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen, with Egyptians funneling weapons into south Gaza. Unlike progressive zealots who seem to have quasi-mystical beliefs ungrounded in empiricism, no VP contender advocated murdering every Jew in Israel to promote social justice. That’s what Congresswoman Rashid Tlaib meant with her call for “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” in November 2023, a month after Hamas tried to accomplish just that.
Since Shapiro’s Israel policy didn’t differ from the other contenders, it’s clear that progressives in the party deemed Shapiro haram (Arabic for forbidden) for being Jewish. Kamala Harris had that important faction in mind when she made her pick for veep. Remember, she blocked radical pro-Palestinians from the DNC convention coronation, you give a little to get a little, right?
I know we’re told in conventional medial channels that Republicans are pure evil and the Democrats are pure good, they’re just hapless at times, there are just a few bad apples in the otherwise perfect barrel, but the reality is Dems play to an illiberal base just as much as Republicans do, and suffer the same moral consequences.
Too bad for Harris, who was a dud, her pick of Mike Walz was also dud. Every pot has its lid, as my mother says. Watching Walz’s debate with JD Vance was nearly as damning as Biden’s catastrophic meandering with Trump.
Objectively, after watching all this, the majority of Americans said to themselves, “Nope.”
In case you think I’m too pro-Jewish, see antisemitism under every rock and the truth is Harris just chose Walz for political reasons pointing to his efficacy, please note that Minnesota isn’t a swing state. What benefit did he confer? Oh right, he’s a regular white guy. Let’s see if that's true.
Mike Walz recently said he was selected as VP candidate because, "I could code talk to white guys watching football, fixing their truck."
Anyone who says “I could code talk to white guys” can't authentically communicate with white guys, or anyone. They’ve revealed the truth of their political identity: they’re a partisan entangled in meaningless locutions one can learn from social media if they didn’t go to college in the 2000s.
I don’t know if Shapiro would have gained traction for American voters as a Jew, but aren't the Democrats the party of minority uplift? They fall all over themselves for more and more minutely described “marginalized” people with precisely-curated identities of victimhood. Last time I checked, Jews qualify for precisely-curated victimhood narratives for, say, the past 2,000 years. Throw in Purim (Jewish commemoration of surviving genocide in ancient Persia) and now we’re talking 2,500 years.
For some reason, Democratic fawning over minorities, including newly created ones with fun acronyms as we’ll see below, doesn’t extend to a Jewish governor with a track record of winning elections and building infrastructure in a purple state.
Is that weird, or is that discrimination?
Trump is racist at times, if not always. He doesn’t hide his, at best, outdated language from the 1960s. At worst, he believes white people are better than everyone else based on their mythic origins in the Caucasus Mountains. It’s impossible to explain away Trump’s very public insistence to consider the death penalty for the Central Park 5 before and even after they were all acquitted—and the real murderer died in prison. He settled DOJ litigation with his father for excluding black people from their housing estates. He’s also dined with antisemites and his close acolytes appear on podcasts with avowed racists.
I’m listing all this to be fair, neither party exists in a vacuum. Both are guilty of “racial preferences,” or “racially-charged language” which are terms the liberal media uses for racism.
We’re told that while Republicans eat climate-killing red meat with Nick Fuentes, Democrats are the true champions of all humanity. That means for everyone. All of us…
Except men and boys, who are derided with terms like manopshere, the bros suffix (cf Bernie_, tech_, crypto_). Or they invent terms like toxic masculinity but you can never say [insert negative prefix] femininity. They also exclude all white people, all straight people, all religious Christians, all biological girls and women who demand privacy and, oddly, want to keep their bodies intact from trendy, unscientific, permanent medical interventions that seem slightly less accurate, yet way more harmful, than blood-letting. And they exclude normal Jews. And Asians, but only when they’re applying to college, so it’s not all bad, and now Hindus. Sorry guys.
The list I’m sure will only lengthen, I’m looking at you, you ableist Islamophobe. When was the last time you helped a blind legless Musilm woman secure her niqab! You reek of “privilege.”
Anyone else remaining is just fine! You count as diverse, you’re included, you deserve equitable outcomes. All ten of you. For now.
Beyond the moral failure of coopting your base’s bigotry, it was objectively stupid politics to discriminate against Shapiro. Rahm Emanuel didn’t mention any of that.
Maybe Harris would have always lost the popular vote but edged in an Electoral College victory in Pennsylvania and other swing states. We’ll never know. Either way, it comes to one conclusion: Rahm Emanuel will never wield power in a national campaign. Unless he switches parties.
As a humorous interlude, if you think I’m making up all this Democratic bigotry stuff and am fearful of DEI for no reason, here’s a website screen grab from a farm in upstate New York. It was to trying to sell me a food subscription, what’s called a CSA share and a great way to support small farms, at my local community center:
In case you can’t divine their feeling about Middle Eastern foreign affairs, a region I’m guessing none of these farmers have visited, studied or speak any of the languages, here’s their Instagram post about my favorite subject:
All eyes are on Rafah today. Our hearts and tears go out to the Palestinian people as Israel pushes forwards with the military invasion on Rafah....
Let’s go on a limb and say none of these QTBIPOCs (cutie-by pocks?) vote Republican. Are you telling me they’ll elect a Jewish political leader who speaks Hebrew, whose father was born in Jerusalem—and fought in a Zionist militia called the Irgun?
While I’m scared of identity politics that chooses winners and losers, let’s be honest, this is also super fun. Let’s reread the farm’s website and now use other identity terms to understand their rock steady commitment to discrimination.
“Rock Steady Farm is a straight, male-or-female only cooperative. We train white, straight, male-or-female only farmers. We center white straight farmers in our work to build a liberatory future.”
1939 German agricultural handbook or 2025 leftwing American website?
So that’s a no to Rahm Emanuel and a no to JB Pritzker, who’s also Jewish. He’s been to Israel and probably eaten hummus, which is one step away from genocide.
Gavin Newsom has zero Jewish blood. Does this give him a better chance to win the vote of the trans allies of arugula? Or will a black centrist emerge, like Maryland governor Wes Moore, who wins their support because he has, what’s the word, a superior skin tone?
This is where clinging to the post Civil Rights Movement has brought us: certain Democratic candidates are forbidden from running because of their race. I’m no visionary historian, but hey look over there, is that Martin Luther King junior quaking in his boots?
Fun fact: Alex Haley and Jackie Robinson were Republicans.
If you think I’m only focused on Jews, recently UC Berkeley voted to forbid Hindu appreciation month. Apparently non-Muslim Indians, who are the majority of Indians (Indian comes from the Indus River Valley; add an “H” to get their ethnic belief system), score poorly in the race hierarchy, as decided by students at one of our most prestigious universities.
Nothing to worry about. These elite students will only become our leaders and inform which of us are better than the others, based on characteristics the Berkeley grads select themselves.
Now imagine if these graduates took over most corporations, a political party, Hollywood, every museum, all universities and the entire news media.
Oh wait…
My guess is that the identity-worshiping, Rafah-yearning farmers are more likely to rally to fellow travelers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, Jamaal Bowman, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and their ever-expanding cohort of far left, hardcore ideologues. One can hope that if these progressives chant loudly enough for terrorism in Israel, which will obviously come here to America, the fact that they’re straight humans faithful to their original genitals won't be immediately disqualifying.
I know I’m being cheeky, but with identity ideologies, who’s to say a more properly-hued androgyne won’t emerge to win progressive votes based on a trans identity and the correct melanin concentration? Obviously this person will be 1/16th Native American, a convert to Islam and, one can hope, have a major physical disability.
Once you play the game of ranking humans, get ready to lose to someone suddenly higher-ranked than you. That’s how bigotry works: it intensifies. Whites hate blacks, then whites actually hate white Catholics, and on and on until there’s one person originally from XYZ county in England who’s only had maybe only one gay thought, he never did anything about it, at least not after college.
How do I know the progressive capture of the Democratic party is ongoing? One data point is the relative success of the AOC/Sanders rallies that mobilized future voters, the other is the vote tally for legislation earlier this year to defund the Israeli military. Yes, this is (sadly) related to race/gender/sexuality discrimination.
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Andy Kim (NJ), and 12 other senators recently tried, in a Republican-dominated Senate, to defund Israel. Why waste their time doing this? Democrats are in the minority, they can’t pass anything, especially in the era of the filibuster which requires 60 votes. The progressive Democrats were sending a message to their constituents that if Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Iraqi Shia militias all attack Israel, the only Jewish country in the world, their priority as left-leaning social justice Democrats is to defund Israel.
This is the vanguard of the party. Not remnants from the 1990s like Rahm Emanuel.
Sorry achi—Hebrew for “my brother.” I wish it weren’t so, believe me.
It's too bad Bret Stephens, the debate moderator, didn't extend the talk to its logical conclusion. He let two smart Jews debate the risks of Trump, but he didn’t ask the most important question for New Yorkers in a deep blue state with closed primaries:
Are Democrats good for the Jews?
Or, I would add, for anyone?
If you don't consider yourself a QTBIPOC with deep emotional commitments to the Levant, will the party truly advocate for you?
I'm not being theoretical. David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland, Florida high school shooting who has become a political figure, recently won an election for a senior leadership position in the DNC. He’s now being removed because he's a white male. Not because of his policies or votes or for anything he said or did, simply because of how he was born. Really.
Again, Rev MLKjr would shudder at the party that inverts his call by now judging a person for their color, not their character. We tried this before in America. Despite the cheap textiles, didn’t turn out so great.
Are Democrats dangerous for the Jews?
That’s the question most secular New Yorker Jews who go to Whole Foods more than synagogue can’t imagine affirming, but the answer is clear: they are now, and will only become more so, endangered by the left.
Tell me why I can’t take a walk on the very liberal Columbia campus and need three layers of security at my tiny synagogue in very liberal Brooklyn? Tell me why Jewish parents of college age kids worry about sending them to liberal universities, which is all of them?
Tell me if you would advise a recent college graduate to hide her Star of David necklace before a job interview at a liberal organization?
A majority of working class people, white women, Latino men, young black men and many East Asians, Indians, Latinas, young people of all backgrounds, and Arabs have come to the conclusion that yes, Democrats are worse for them than Republicans.
Until there’s a credible option, it’s time for Jews to arrive at their same conclusion.
Inherited political affinities for a once-relevant party should pale in comparison to the exigencies of a life free from discrimination.