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I don\u2019t like to criticize anyone for doing the right thing.<\/p>\n
And what follows isn\u2019t criticism, really, just an observation about the agonizing position in which the president and his administration suddenly find themselves. Joe Biden has behaved admirably in supporting Israel and Ukraine against two distinct flavors of fascist irredentism. It\u2019s just hard to see how it ends well for him politically.<\/p>\n
I hope you enjoyed your break from Eeyore yesterday<\/a> because today he\u2019s back and gloomier than ever.<\/p>\n On Thursday night, Biden addressed the nation<\/a>. The immediate goal was to persuade Americans to back Israel\u2019s war on Hamas, but the more ambitious task the president assigned himself was convincing his audience that that conflict and Ukraine\u2019s fight with Russia are two sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n Both allies are combatants against \u2026 oh, let\u2019s call it an \u201caxis of evil\u201d for lack of a better term.<\/p>\n Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy\u2014completely annihilate it.<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n So let me share with you why making sure Israel and Ukraine succeed is vital for America\u2019s national security. You know, history has taught us that when terrorists don\u2019t pay a price for their terror, when dictators don\u2019t pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction. They keep going, and the cost and the threats to America and to the world keep rising.<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe. American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it\u2019s just not worth it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Iran, another member of the axis, is supporting both enemies of democracy in this war, Biden pointed out. In the end, he uttered the word \u201cIsrael\u201d 23 times\u2014and the word \u201cUkraine\u201d 24. Which was, er, unexpected in a speech that was supposed to be about Israel.<\/p>\n But not that unexpected. Under the circumstances, not linking the two conflicts would have been political malpractice.<\/p>\n MAGA Republicans long ago soured on supporting Ukraine against a post-liberal strongman who cloaks his authoritarianism in Christianity. As Democrats rallied behind the Ukrainian cause and the war settled into a stalemate, the wider GOP base gradually moved toward the populist position. A Quinnipiac poll<\/a> published a few days ago found 61 percent of Republicans now believe the U.S. is doing too much to help Ukraine, which means the next round of funding<\/a> for Zelensky\u2019s forces in the Republican-controlled House (I use the word \u201ccontrolled\u201d loosely) will be rough sledding.<\/p>\n The obvious solution for the White House, then: Link funding for Ukraine to funding for Israel, an ally whom most Republicans support staunchly<\/a> (if perhaps temporarily<\/a>). The White House\u2019s proposed $106 billion aid package<\/a> for both countries is effectively a poison pill, forcing MAGA Republicans to choose between blocking aid to Israel for the sake of blocking aid to Ukraine or to grit their teeth and swallow both at the same time.<\/p>\n It makes strategic sense. The people whom you would expect to be upset about it were upset about it<\/a>. Just tell me this: How likely is it that the political outcome for Biden in all this will be a good one?<\/p>\n I\u2019ll accept \u201cwho cares?\u201d as an answer\u2014it\u2019s usually the right one when discussing a politician\u2019s fate\u2014but we\u2019re all going to care next November. A lot.<\/p>\n Going all-in on supporting Israel and tying that support to Ukraine will exacerbate two problems that have dogged Biden. One is unrest among progressives over the pace of \u201cprogress\u201d under his administration. The other is the persistent sense of abnormalcy during a presidency that was supposed to restore normalcy to America.<\/p>\n Whatever you thought you were getting when you voted Democratic in 2020, a Bush-ian call to arms against Axis of Evil 2.0 probably wasn\u2019t it.<\/p>\n An Oval Office address allying the president with Israel in the eyes of the world seems at first blush like a clever way to split the Republican Party. The American right has traditionally viewed Israel as a bulwark of Judeo-Christian values against a barbaric enemy and itself as a bulwark of support for Israel against left-wing apologists for barbarism in the United States. Having the head of the Democratic Party position himself as Israel\u2019s champion will scramble that paradigm and confound some Republican populists prone to believing that everything Democrats support is evil and wrong.<\/p>\n In fact, a grand rethink might have already begun.<\/p>\n Mitch McConnell just stated on the Senate floor that this attack on Israel is a threat to America.<\/p>\n It is not.<\/p>\n The threat to America is happening every day at our own border!<\/p>\n America should NOT engage in another war in the Middle East and must STOP funding the war in Ukraine! pic.twitter.com\/MhmQPqxFxU<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene<\/p>\n (@RepMTG) October 16, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Mark my words: a ground invasion into Gaza without a clear objective will be a disaster. If the U.S. is asked to fund now or backstop later, we need to answer those questions *now*. It\u2019s shameful the rest of the GOP is too scared to have an open debate on this when we need it\u2026<\/p>\n \u2014 Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) October 20, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Just so we\u2019re clear:@charliekirk11<\/a> is implying Bibi Netanyahu purposely let Hamas <\/p>\n murder 1,200 Israelis \u2014all as part of a plan to acquire more power in Israel<\/p>\n Unbelievable pic.twitter.com\/2M7a7AfrNp<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 John Hasson (@SonofHas) October 14, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Those are (relatively) savory examples. There are less savory ones<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s good for Biden when right-wingers are at each other\u2019s throats, and they will<\/em> be at each other\u2019s throats<\/a> as Israel\u2019s war plays out. Just not, perhaps, as much as left-wingers will be.<\/p>\n There was news yesterday that a \u201cmutiny\u201d is brewing inside the State Department<\/a> among employees who are unhappy with the administration\u2019s support for Israel. One staffer has already resigned, and claims to have received encouragement from many colleagues who feel the way he does. Reportedly a \u201cdissent cable\u201d is being drafted to formally notify Antony Blinken and the department\u2019s leadership how unhappy the dissenters are.<\/p>\n Earlier the same day, a group of more than 400 congressional staffers released a letter<\/a> calling on Congress to support a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas before the Israel Defense Forces\u2019 (IDF) ground campaign begins. Granted, that isn\u2019t a huge percentage of all Hill staffers, but the point isn\u2019t to imply that these voices represent the majority of Democratic opinion\u2014they don\u2019t<\/a>.<\/p>\n The point is that these voices exist; they\u2019re a political problem for Biden and his party; and they\u2019re likely to grow larger and louder once urban combat in Gaza commences.<\/p>\n Justice Democrats is a well-known progressive outfit dedicated to electing leftists in the \u201cSquad\u201d mold. I invite you to scroll through their feed<\/a> on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter to see how they\u2019ve been reacting to the new conflict in the Middle East. A taste:<\/p>\n Sending billions more in bombs and weapons to the Israeli military that has mercilessly murdered over 4,000 innocent Palestinians is unacceptable. <\/p>\n Every member of Congress should vote against further funding for this genocide. pic.twitter.com\/T56qdFGpK3<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Justice Democrats (@justicedems) October 20, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s a sign of things to come. Because realistically, there\u2019s no outcome to Israel\u2019s offensive against Hamas that the left-wing base will regard as acceptable, if by \u201cacceptable\u201d we mean justifying the conflict retroactively.<\/p>\n Even a ground incursion that led, miraculously, to the IDF liquidating Hamas\u2019 leadership with few civilian casualties would be disdained by progressives as a case of the \u201ccolonizer\u201d having imposed its will through violence. The far more likely (probably inevitable) scenario is that the battle is a bloody mess, innocent Palestinians caught in the middle do most of the bleeding, and Israel fails to eliminate Hamas entirely. Left-wing outrage will grow day by day. The perception that Israel\u2019s operation achieved nothing meaningful at great human cost will become leftist orthodoxy.<\/p>\n And those leftists will blame Joe Biden, a president for whom they feel no special affection, for having taken moral ownership of the conflict preemptively and enthusiastically.<\/p>\n Worse, because the president has now linked Israel\u2019s cause to Ukraine\u2019s, progressive disillusionment about the former may start to weaken Democratic support for the latter. Exasperation at the IDF\u2019s campaign in Gaza may remind the left of its anti-war glory days, a position from which it\u2019s drifted over the past decade as the right has pivoted toward isolationism under Trump. Mainstream liberals will never follow the anti-anti-Putin lead of the populist right, but it\u2019s easy to imagine a drift back toward anti-interventionism that accelerates their restlessness with the pace of Ukraine\u2019s effort.<\/p>\n By next summer, the president could find himself under pressure to bring both conflicts he sponsored to unsatisfying ends, before either Ukraine or Israel has achieved its goals. The only thing worse than defying your base by condoning war is to come back with little to show for it.<\/p>\n Joe Biden can\u2019t afford to lose any more support<\/a> before Election Day, especially with prominent left-wing alternatives like Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the race. The odds are very good that his position on the new Axis of Evil will end up costing him some.<\/p>\n But not just on the left.<\/p>\n Political nerds gasped collectively on Thursday when CBS News<\/a> dropped these new numbers:<\/p>\n The same poll<\/a> showed higher support for sending humanitarian aid to Gaza than for sending weapons to Israel, leaving even the pros<\/a> flummoxed and struggling to make sense of it. A Quinnipiac poll<\/a> published a few days ago found healthy American support for sending weapons and military equipment to the Israelis at 64-28. Democrats favored the idea by a margin of 30 points, Republicans by double that number.<\/p>\n The polls seem irreconcilable. Maybe the CBS News data is the outlier. But it wouldn\u2019t shock me if it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not because the public is turning against Israel, the best efforts of Rashida Tlaib and other hospital-bombing truthers<\/a> notwithstanding. If voters are leery of American involvement in this matter, I suspect it\u2019s because they fear that domestic and now foreign affairs under Biden\u2019s leadership have spun entirely out of control. Their impulse, perhaps, is to pull back before something cataclysmic happens.<\/p>\n There are people in the government<\/a> who share their anxiety, allegedly.<\/p>\n Impressive monthly jobs reports have obscured how much voters still chafe at the state of the economy. Inflation remains too high even according to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell<\/a> and public disgruntlement about it has begun to produce genuinely frightening polling for Biden 2024. When Gallup<\/a> asked recently which party would do better in handling the economy, the GOP came away with its biggest lead in more than 30 years. A new Morning Consult<\/a> survey of seven battleground states saw Trump ahead of Biden by four points overall and by 12 points on questions about which candidate could be trusted to handle the cost of everyday goods and services. There are even numbers circulating that show Republicans erasing their traditional deficit with Democrats when voters are asked which party cares more about \u201cpeople like me.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Inflation is, quite literally, beyond the White House\u2019s control and has remained that way for two years. That\u2019s not what people who voted for normalcy in 2020 were counting on. Go figure that the president\u2019s plan to run on \u201cBidenomics\u201d<\/a> hasn\u2019t done a thing for his job approval so far.<\/p>\n Then, on Thursday night, Americans turned on their televisions to find the \u201cnormalcy\u201d candidate asking them to get pumped about bankrolling a two-front proxy war against Russia and Iran that might plausibly spiral into a wider conflict involving American troops. Asking taxpayers to send billions to one foreign military after we\u2019ve sent many billions more to another was destined to be a hard sell at a moment when daily necessities are more expensive than they\u2019ve been in years. But linking the two conflicts conceptually, as Biden did, also implicitly confirmed that the risk of a wider war is real. To the casual voter, the White House appears to have lost control of international affairs now too.<\/p>\n Which might explain the reluctance to arm Israel in the CBS News poll, assuming it\u2019s accurate. The less confidence the electorate has in Biden, the less inclined it\u2019ll (logically) be to entangle itself in dangerous conflicts abroad. Ironically, the president has been keen to warn Israelis lately not to let their righteous rage at Hamas\u2019 atrocities lead them to make strategic miscalculations like the U.S. did after 9\/11. American voters may feel the same way about Old Man Biden himself: His burst of moral solidarity with Israel is welcome, but they doubt his judgment in a crisis.<\/p>\n If that\u2019s so, then his pivot from \u201cBidenomics\u201d to war president<\/a> as a campaign theme won\u2019t work out as well for him as he might hope. He\u2019s most likely going to be running against a strongman, and a strongman is never more appealing than in moments of chaos. Whatever Trump\u2019s faults, his supporters will insist, he\u2019ll at least restore order.<\/p>\n For some voters, in other words, the \u201cnormalcy candidate\u201d on the ballot in 2024 might be \u2026 Donald Trump. Sure, he might try a coup every now and then, but with him in charge at least wars won\u2019t be breaking out all over the world and food won\u2019t cost 30 percent more than it used to. Or so Americans who lived through four years of his leadership without any major wars or inflation might tell themselves.<\/p>\n There were warm words for President Biden following Thursday night\u2019s speech on, of all places, Fox News<\/a>. \u201cI think it may be remembered as one of the best\u2014if not the best\u2014speeches of his presidency,\u201d Brit Hume gushed. \u201cOn two important counts, I think he did remarkably well and was quite strong, quite firm.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s nice. Thirty years ago, when America still had a huge faction of swing voters, it might even have been significant. Show of hands, though: In the America of 2023, how many Fox News viewers will not only give Biden credit for his position on Israel, but will resolve to vote for him over Trump because of it?<\/p>\n Of those Republicans who might consider voting for him, how many will end up talking themselves out of it on grounds that Trump did a lot for Israel too (which he did, per the Abraham Accords)? Or that Biden is actually part of the problem here because he sought rapprochement with Iran, or because his recent efforts on Israel\u2019s behalf somehow weren\u2019t robust enough? Or that, even if Biden is preferable to Trump on Israel, he\u2019s too much of a disaster on other matters like securing the southern border to ever consider supporting him over the proto-fascist favored by the GOP?<\/p>\n There\u2019s no constituency for taking on Axis of Evil 2.0 except among centrists, and most of the center-right won\u2019t vote for him, period. Of those who will, I suspect most were already committed to him on pure \u201canyone but Trump\u201d grounds.<\/p>\n The cohorts that are most likely to switch their votes based on the president\u2019s response to Hamas\u2019 rampage, it seems to me, are pro-Palestinian leftists who\u2019ll treat it as the last bit of encouragement they needed to vote third-party and normie voters who fear that an 81-year-old president is no longer on top of events here or abroad.<\/p>\n We may not need to wait until Election Day next fall for evidence. Rep. Dean Phillips is reportedly angling to enter the Democratic presidential primary<\/a> and give the president some token opposition; he\u2019s no radical, but if there\u2019s a groundswell of leftist discontent with Biden\u2019s foreign policy, he\u2019ll be the logical repository for a protest vote in states like New Hampshire. A surprisingly weak showing by Biden would imperil his candidacy and make a Trump restoration that much more likely.<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s done the right thing on Israel, yet it\u2019s probably still a vote-loser for him on balance. And although he had sound reasons for linking Israel\u2019s cause to Ukraine\u2019s, we should worry that the left-wing base\u2019s disdain for the former and the right-wing base\u2019s disdain for the latter will lead each side toward contempt for the entire project conceptually, ultimately undermining support for both allies.<\/p>\n I warned you that Eeyore would be back today.<\/p>\n\n
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behead children
take 100+ people hostage<\/p>\n\n