Well, of course. I mean, it’s working sooooo well for Blair’s toadies, why wouldn’t they?
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NY Democratic Party is trying to import the smear campaign against Jeremy Corben.
https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2018/09/03/rabbi-sacks-anti-corbyn-crusade/
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Is it a smear campaign if it’s true?
It’s a smear campaign because it’s not true. Jeremy Corben is being attacked because he supports Palestinian rights & has done so for ages. He’s being attacked by the media in the UK because they see antisemitism accusations as the best way to take down a leftist socialist leader. Anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism.
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You’d only think so because “New York” is seen as synonymous with “New York City”. But its a big state and the central division is between the NYC metro area (broadly Downstate) and more conservative outlying areas (Broadly Upstate, but some areas of the NYC metro as well). Our state Senate is GOP controlled, due to a close split and a couple of Blue Dog Dems from Upstate that caucus with the GOP. And the House has been GOP controlled off and on for the past couple decades. State wide offices tend to be a DNC lock, but regional races tend to be a hell of a lot more varied based on geography, with conservatives loosely outnumbering the left across the state. Even some parts of the NYC Metro (like where I live) send Trumpists to the US House.
Smearing Nixon for her sexuality would play rather well in chunks of the Upstate region, but at the risk of alienating the most populous areas of the Downstate.
It makes a hell of a lot of sense if you know where Cuomo’s at in the state. He’s not terribly well liked among NY democrats, and never really was. His approval ratings have been falling steadily. Cuomo was not elected on the strength of state wide support from the left.
He got significant support from more conservative DNC voters, center right independents, and moderate GOP voters upstate. And that over came the fact that he wasn’t terribly well liked on the left, or among the DNC base. And for color on this: Has firm backing from the very conservative Orthodox Jewish block in the NYC metro. A block that are often GOP voters. Smearing Nixon as an antisemite caters to that block, and noone else in the state will even notice. Its a common as fuck tactic here across the political spectrum.
He’s been continually criticized for cosying up to upstate conservatives, and GOP politicians. Catering to the GOP lead House. Screwing urban areas to gain political purchase in more rural ones. ETC. That’s what his shit fit with Deblasio is about. Get in repeated spats with the Mayor of NYC to show the rest of the state you’re not owned by the City. Let critical urban infrastructure explode, and make noise about Upstate getting resources it deserves (though there’s no more resources going there than there would have been anyway). And its why his campaign has been so stupid. He’s shouting the word “Progressive” as loud as he can despite having had no record or association with progessivism his entire career. Because he’s vulnerable to a plausible challenge from the left. But he’s been more quietly doing shit like this, and throwing big chunks of the state under the bus. To shore up that center right backing that forms his base. He’s making a huge thing out of pushing pack on Trump, because its an easy way to shore up the left without actually making any policy commitments.
As a New York voter, maybe. Nixon has essentially the opposite problem. In terms of national level politics she’s saying all the right stuff. And does seem to have developed a very deep understanding of the issue’s she’s campaigning on.
The problem is that her entire platform seems to be determined by, focused on, and developed through NYC politics. She’s talking almost exclusively about urban issues, or issues unique and more important to NYC. And even when she’s not. She talking primarily about how they impact NYC, or in a way that clearly focused on NYC. It sounds great in NYC or outside the state (where NY is synonymous with NYC). But as some one who lives in the Metro area, though not in city limits or an Urban area. I don’t think I’ve heard her mention any local issue, or state wide issue that mostly impacts us once.
Its not very encouraging. She looks very much like a candidate running for City office. Not a high level state wide one. It doesn’t speak to an understanding of what it would take to run the whole state. Or a particularly broad understanding of this place beyond her own backyard. Her biggest background in politics is campaigning for, and acting as a media surrogate for Bill Deblazio. And it shows, because her whole campaign looks very much like an extension of that.
Even disregarding whether that’s a good thing, or she’d be good at the job or not. That really, really, really, doesn’t play well upstate or in rural areas.
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When it all first started it was accusations of anti-Semitic attacks against anyone who didn’t drink the kool-aid, all part of the Momentum dog-piling of anyone they disagreed with - traitors, and ‘Blairites’ (but I repeat myself), and really it wasn’t that noticeable above the high background level of misogyny in these attacks. I put it down to trolls being trolls and expected Labour to put a lid on it.
<insert tumbleweed gif here>
At this point I thought Corbyn was weak and ineffectual as a leader, because he didn’t come out and tell them to knock this shit off.
Over time, though, more and more has come out. More anti-Semitic attacks, the mural incident, the platform-sharing. Corbyn either remained silent, or condemned it in the mildest possible terms and my opinion shifted. I now thought he wasn’t anti-Semitic, but perfectly willing to give a pass to others that were and this largely seemed to fit with his pro-Palestinian stance.
I’ve tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, I really have. He seems like a decent person (albeit a terrible leader), but when he said that ‘Zionists’ don’t understand English irony despite having lived in the UK “for a very long time, probably all their lives” I can’t give him a pass anymore.
So I’ll ask again, is it a smear campaign if it’s true?
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Corbyn said a small group of particular English people disrupting a particular meeting had less of a sense of English irony than the particular Palestinian diplomat they were interrupting even though they were English. He was talking directly to hecklers, not addressing all Jews or even British Jews. But these misunderstandings happen. Without end. There has been an ongoing smear campaign since Corbyn was elected leader of the opposition 3 years ago. Currently the topic is antisemitism.
A US version of Corbyn: Ocasio is elected leader of the Dems and tells you up front the party is against neoliberalism, wants grassroots democracy throughout the party, throughout industry, throughout politics, throughout media. This would threaten support for Israel to do whatever they wanted. It would threaten arms sales and all the wars. How would Clintonites, GOP and US corporate media react?
This is why British trust in news media ranks 33rd out of 33 EU countries 4 years in a row. Here’s John Cleese presenting the EU report on the BBC:
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The Socialist Standard also had an article about the Jewish Bund (A diaspora Jewish organisation) a few months ago but I can’t find that article.
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Is there a plan for how to hold the Democratic coalition together? How’s it going to work with Zionist American Jews and deeply anti-Israel Muslims in the same party? For that matter, relations between Jews and blacks in the US have historically been terrible, and are getting worse not better, notwithstanding Jewish support for the civil rights movement. Other major fractures are between blacks and gays, with a very bad history of animosity, and between poor blacks and Hispanics, also with a history of violence and driving each other out of neighborhoods, and Asians vs other groups that benefit from affirmative action to the detriment of Asian students. Any ideas how to hold this crew together? Because the fault line being revealed here is one of several deep fault lines within the coalition and there needs to be some strategy for dealing with this if this group of very different groups is going to act as a team.
Make clear that anti-semitism, homophobia, racism, or sexism aren’t welcome or helpful? Make clear that we have issues that we share in common that we need to address, but that certain groups do have specific issues that need to be addressed? Stop ignoring those issues that make white men uncomfortable and directly address them? Come to a realization that life is messy and we’re not going to always agree, but that we can indeed come to a consensus and make the world better for all of us?
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I an election in my home area, an ally of the standing candidate circulated a flyer accusing the opposition of being a pedophile. Politics, eh?
Tend to be a part of the GOP base, and are a smaller but influential component of the religious right. Though as you can see from Cuomo’s attachment there, often cross over to center right DNC in intrastate or municipal politics.
Tend not to be a factor in the US, but certainly aren’t a major part of of the DNC coalition. Not all Muslims are deeply anti-Israel. And there isn’t anything I’m familiar with similar to an actual/influential anti-Israel caucus/movement in American politics. None the less a specifically Muslim one, or as a part of the DNC coalition, or as a driving factor in Muslim politics in the US.
This doesn’t reveal the sort of divide you think it does. As there is a rather influential block of very orthodox, very pro-isreal Jews in the US that is very politically conservative. This is a common tactic to shore up the more conservative Jewish vote. Accusations of antisemitism or anti-Israel leanings. GOP politicians do it to each other, DNC politicians do it to each other. DNC politicians do it to GOP politicians and vice versa. And its incredibly common to target NYC Jewish communities to accomplish that. In the hopes that a smaller effort targeted at the heart of that block will go unnoticed.
What you’ve seen here is a politician tack center right, not some ethnic divide in the DNC coalition.
As for the rest of it. While those are real factors and real problems. They aren’t for the most part cracks in the DNC coalition. The places where they are most present are the same places where the DNC is most dominant, Cities. They’ve been issues for decades, and were often much bigger problems decades ago. And yet all these groups still support the DNC.
And a fair bit of our current, leftward and progressive shift is driven by the sort of inter-sectional, cooperative politics that was cooked up precisely to deal with these issues. On the ground, in these communities. Organizers, academics, and activists have been actively hashing this shit out for decades. And that’s provided the base line apparatus for the new, expanded, left wing in American politics. The Women’s March was planned through these groups. Obama started out in politics as a community organizer in that environment.
Frankly, these “cracks” in the coalition you’ve discovered are a fair bit of what that coalition was built to deal with.
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But how will the Republicans ever stay together with evangelicals fighting with Catholics over which is the Antichrist, the Koch’s funding Democrats and the Kushner’s and Trump’s arguing over who gets the top bunk in the prison cell?
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But he already has that block voting for him. If he’s worried about carrying their vote in the general election, he can smear the GOP candidate. The problem with smearing Nixon is that (unlike some Labour politicians like Corbyn and Livingstone) it is patently untrue, there is no there there.
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I didn’t say it was a good strategy. Just that it was a common one.
As I understand it primary wise its a turn out thing. Nation wide the block in question is mostly a GOP one. But in and around NYC enough of that block is registered Dem. Even though they’ll tend to vote GOP or for more conservative DNC candidates. And tends to be older, and thus reliable primary voters. So it becomes effective to make sure they show up for your primary.
There also seems to be an assumption that if you can get NY’s orthodox community talking negatively about an opponent. It’ll filter out to the rest of the Jews in the world, and improve your performance with that demographic. And if that ever worked. It definitely doesn’t now. With younger and less orthodox Jews moving ever lefter, and becoming less and less comfortable with blanket support for Israel. It also doesn’t seem like the NY Orthodox and Ultra Orthodox community is all that central to anything anymore.
But like I said. Right in line with Cuomo’s overall strategy. He’s quietly pandering to the center right. While shouting TRUMP BAD PROGRESSIVE GOOD. And its also right in line with how much of an idiot he is. This wasn’t going to slip by quietly. This wasn’t going to work. Like his “America was never all that great” speach. And his third “My dad was cool” opening of the new Tappan Zee Bridge. All he’s done is earn a fuck ton of eye rolls, and an eventual problem in the general.
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Make that Andy Cuomo’s Democratic party. You know, the disgusting troll who thinks he can be POTUS. Too, how better to follow up Hillary Clinton in 2016 than with someone even more dislikable?
And too, as we learned in 2016, the Electoral College is pro-Republican.
Meanwhile, as a New Yorker, I hope to be able to split my vote in November, voting for Andy (somewhat less of two evils) and for the Republican Lt. Governor. Maybe leaving the state in GOP hands would dissuade him from running for POTUS. Unlikely, but still.
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