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Israel held its third election in a year yesterday and once again the right wing is on top. Netanyahu won a large plurality though he is indicted and about to go on trial on corruption charges. The new left bloc of three parties including Labor and Meretz got all of seven seats.

There is now just one address for liberal and leftwing politics in Israel: the Joint List of Palestinian parties, the third largest vote getter with a whopping 15 seats, up from 10 last April. It is said that the Palestinian parties drew Jewish voters. That is something the Joint List wanted: Joint List for a Joint future!

There is no real resistance to policies of annexation and apartheid except from the Joint List. Netanyahus chief rival, Benny Gantz, hurt himself among Jewish voters by suggesting and then withdrawing the possibility that he could form a government with the help of the Palestinian parties (Oren Kessler said on i24 News just now). While Trumps peace plan, which cements apartheid, was supported by Gantzs party and Netanyahus: so an overwhelming percentage of Jewish parliamentarians over 90 by my count back the destruction of plans to divide the land and measures to annex portions of Judea and Samaria.

Lets be clear about what we see in Israel. This is a Jewish democracy, the advancement Israels supporters in the U.S. are constantly crowing about. It is a country where the worst fears of Arabs are stoked by politicians, even as the government ethnically cleanses Palestinians. It is a country where any Jewish politician who says he is going to work with Palestinians is quickly marginalized.

Likud ad shows Benny Gantz sitting with Palestinian politicians Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi. March 2020. From Netanyahus twitter feed. That image was followed by the one below.

Likud ad shows an Israeli voter reacting to the possibility of Benny Gantz making a political coalition with Palestinian politicians Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi. March 2020. From Netanyahus twitter feed.

The Jewish democracy demonstrates just what liberals and lefties always warned you about nationalism. It is intolerant and racist and paranoid and blindered and fascistic, it builds a security state armed to the teeth against multiple enemies. And three elections inside a year in Israel offer indelible proof that This is what Jewish nationalists want. A society governed by an authoritarian leader, no matter how corrupt. Just so long as there are no Arabs anywhere near power.

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian leader, said the election was a victory for annexation and apartheid, and Yossi Alpher at Americans for Peace Now says thats the sad math of the Israeli electorate:

Gantz stumbled. He knew a large majority of Israeli Jews were enthusiastic about Trump and his policies. A dove at heart, Gantz tried to persuade voters that he, like Netanyahu, would annex territories, but only after consultation with the international community. Too many potential Gantz supporters got the message: when the smoke clears, he wont really annex because the international community and the Arab world have made it clear that they vigorously oppose annexation.

By the same token, Netanyahu repeatedly hammered away with the argument that without the Joint Arab List, Gantz would have no coalition and that the Arab MKs are a traitorous fifth column. Gantz denied unconvincingly that he would need the support of Arab MKs. Yet he could never point to alternative support Anti-Arab voters did the math.

This political trendline has been in place for 50 years now, since the 1967 war at least: The secular social democrats who founded the state (Labor Zionists) have lost out to the right wing of Revisionist Zionists. Even Meretz cast its Palestinian Knesset member overboard to run this time, in that three-way left coalition that included a rightleaning leader.

The definition of insanity is said to be ignoring the same result when it happens again and again, and we must ask all liberal Zionists: What is your vision of a Jewish democracy? How will it come about?

For years now liberal Zionist organizations have been working against Netanyahu, to their credit; and what do they have to show for it? As a panel at AIPACs policy conference said yesterday, Israeli voters dont care what American Jews have to say about their elections. No, because in the end those American Jews have been completely docile, supporting the Jewish democracy no matter how xenophobic, murderous, and discriminatory. Even liberal Zionist organizations have embraced extravagant aid to Israel and bipartisan political support for Israel and condemned the nonviolent boycott movement as antisemitic. With that sort of acceptance, why would Israelis ever care about some mild demurrals?

Last nights election is yet another wakeup call to American progressives There is only one way forward for a true left/liberal democrat. To recognize that the only hopeful signs in Israeli society come from the Palestinian politicians. They are the leaders who envision a pluralistic society and who hate Jim Crow. They head the third largest party and who knows what they could become if only non-Jews were allowed to vote in territories where Israel is sovereign?

There is a small price to pay for such a political alliance. To stick the idea of Jewish democracy in the dustbin of history.

H/t Scott Roth and James North.

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Two words that strike terror into a liberals heart: Jewish democracy - Mondoweiss

RO Socialists narrow the gap on the Liberals after bringing down the Govt.

Romanias National Liberal Party (PNL), which still operates the acting Government and will seek confirmation from lawmakers for another cabinet, has lost ground in the latest electoral poll conducted by polling agency IMAS at the request of Europa FM radio station.

PNL had a score of 40.7% in February, down from 47.4% in January, according to the Europa FM Barometer compiled by IMAS.

After having constantly strengthened its voters support over the past year, the party that came to rule in November to be overthrown three months later is now experiencing a decline that takes it to exactly the level it was before settling in Victoria Palace in November, Europa FM comments.

In contrast, the former ruling party - the Social Democratic Party (PSD) saw its score increase from 20.6% to 25.8%.

The developments are likely related to the dismissal of the Liberal cabinet led by Ludovic Orban following a no-confidence motion filed by PSD, at the beginning of February.

Save Romania Union (USR), the third-largest party in terms of voters' preferences, plunged to only 10% from 12.4% in January and a maximum of over 21% in July 2019.

If parliamentary elections were to take place next Sunday, none of the other parties would pass the electoral threshold of 5%.

Pro Romania, the party of former PM Victor Ponta is at 4.6%, UDMR has a score of 4.4%, ALDE - 4.3%, Plus (USRs alliance partner) - 3.5%.

One in five voters remains undecided while 4.4% of those surveyed said they would not go to vote.

The survey was conducted by IMAS between February 11 and 28, on a sample of 1,010 people and has a margin for error of 3.1%.

(Photo: Pixabay)

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RO Socialists narrow the gap on the Liberals after bringing down the Govt. - Romania-Insider.com

Perhaps Canadas soon-to-be-former leader of the opposition shouldnt have waited so long to unleash his inner Scheer.

For much of his term as Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer struggled to establish an identity. For a time he seemed just too chipper to take seriously. People appreciate good manners, but Scheers chipmunk grin didnt exactly reek of gravitas. Once the election drew near he shifted to attack mode, veering at times into insult. The change did little to help decide what to make of the Tory leader.

Maybe the knowledge that his remaining time is limited has set Scheer free. As the Liberals twist and turn in Parliament in the face of cascading dilemmas, Scheer has enthusiastically unloaded on the government with a mix of invective and scorn. Justin Trudeaus verbal response to Indigenous blockades was weak, weak, weak, weak, he said, a word salad that pandered to a small group of radical activists.

Maybe the knowledge that his remaining time is limited has set Scheer free

Dialogue is not going to pay the bills for people who are facing layoffs because of people breaking the law who have no connection to the Wetsuweten First Nation, he charged, so upsetting the prime minister that he refused to let him attend a meeting with other opposition leaders.

If that bothered Scheer, it didnt slow him down. He drew protests in his hometown of Regina for suggesting protesters check their privilege and let other people do their jobs. He blamed Teck Resources decision to cancel a mega-project squarely on Trudeau, issuing a statement claiming the prime minister was afraid of his own caucus.

The prime ministers weakness over the last few weeks has sent a signal to businesses across Canada that the rule of law will not be upheld, court injunctions will not be enforced and major projects cannot get built, it said.

He even took a swipe at the CBC for posting an article criticizing a kids TV program for being insufficiently anti-capitalist. Why is the CBC acting like capitalism is a bad thing? he tweeted. Kooky college professors are nothing new, he said, but the CBC should leave the left-wing bias out of its coverage.

Is this a man who, after spending an entire campaign refusing to clarify his views on abortion and same-sex marriage, finally feels able to drop his guard and express himself? The timing may be bad for his career, but good for his party: a Nanos poll shows Conservatives have passed Liberals in popular support, widening the gap that saw the Tories win the popular vote while losing the October election.

Of course, its not all about Scheer. The growth of discontent results mainly from the prolonged confrontation with Indigenous groups over rail blockades, and the perception of a government flailing about forlornly for answers on a number of fronts. Though Teck abandoned its project before the Liberals had to render judgment on it, divisions within the government were obvious. While other countries managed to evacuate citizens from China over the Wuhan virus, Canada couldnt seem to find anyone willing to let it land a plane. And after defending his actions in the SNC-Lavalin scandal by decrying the danger of foreign ownership, the prime minister seemed notably unvexed when Bombardier, another supposed Quebec industrial gem, sold off its rail operations to a French firm.

In any event, its rich pickings for opponents, and Erin OToole, for one, seems intent on embracing Scheers approach as he beats the bushes for support in the race to succeed him. OToole has been all fire and brimstone in the conflict over blockades. Intimidation and physically preventing people from going about their lives is different (from peaceful protest), he asserted. It is a form of common law assault and should, in the appropriate situations, be treated as such.

An OToole government would identify major railways, ports, highways and bridges as critical national infrastructure and introduce a Freedom of Movement Act making it a criminal offence to block a railway, airport, port, or major road, or to block the entrance to a business or household in a way that prevents people from lawfully entering or leaving.

OTooles main rival, Peter MacKay, has been more circumspect, seemingly following the dictum that its never wise to interrupt an opponent, in this case Trudeau, when hes in the middle of making a mistake. Given the extent of the governments troubles, both men, and others in the contest, should be champing at the bit to get the leadership question settled and turn their attention to a government that fumbled away its majority and now seems intent on botching its minority as well. After the October election there were suggestions Trudeau would have a year or two before once again facing voters, but this is a wounded government that would be eminently vulnerable to a competent opposition. The challenge for the Tories will be to prove theyre up to it, and soon. The Liberals may not go on defeating themselves forever.

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Kelly McParland: Hurry up, Tories. The Liberals won't keep defeating themselves forever - National Post

Damon Linker

What do you do if you are a center-left thinker confronting the train wreck of the Democratic nomination contest just now, with the strong possibility that socialist Bernie Sanders will be the nominee? Might we actually have an election where some liberals will leave the country if they win?This weeks episode takes up the scene with Damon Linker, senior correspondent for The Week, and assistant professor of the liberal arts at Ursinus College. And one of my favorite center-left writers.

Our conversation ranges widely from the state of the Democratic nomination contest and some of the central issues involved, to current book projects and currents in political philosophy today, and finally to a brief look at what ails the academic publishing marketplace today.

You know what to do next: Listen here, or download the episode from our hosts at Ricochet.

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The Power Line Show, Ep 170: The Agony of a Liberal, with Damon Linker - Power Line

Back in the Obama years, Democratic partisans had a contemptuous slogan for leftist critics of the president. People who insisted that the president could and should be doing more were adherents of the "Green Lantern Theory" of the presidency, after the comic book where someone in possession of a particular ring can do anything, limited only by their imagination and will. By this view, the presidency is an inherently weak office and leftists who think putting a more progressive person in the White House will make a big difference by itself are naive and foolish.

Ezra Klein follows this line of argument in a new piece at Vox, attacking what he calls "epiphany politics," exemplified in differing strains by Democratic candidates like Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden who argue they will be able to break through congressional gridlock. Just look at Obama, who "passed more and more consequential domestic legislation than any president since Lyndon Johnson. But it was a fraction of what he promised, and the bills that did pass were shot through with compromises and concessions," Klein writes. "He promised hope and change, but not enough changed, and that robbed the activists he inspired of hope."

Now, passing anything at all through Congress is always a challenge. But critics of Green Lanternism drastically understate the freedom of action that Obama had, especially in his early presidency. He had a huge opportunity to transform the United States into a better place and chose not to do so.

This reality is revealed clearly in A Crisis Wasted, a book by Obama fundraiser Reed Hundt, who also worked on the transition from 2008-9. Hundt was personally present for many of the key decisions and interviewed many of the key players later for the book.

To begin, Obama's first and most important decision actually happened before the presidential election, when he allowed President George W. Bush's then-Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, to define the priorities of the bank bailout. As the financial crisis gathered strength in 2008, Bush was largely checked out from daily governance, and Paulson took control. He wanted desperately to restore the pre-crisis status quo saving the banks while forestalling any serious challenge to to their profitability or political power. This approach ruled out any root-and-branch reform.

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But as Wall Street needed bigger and bigger infusions of government cash and credit to keep from collapsing, the bailout became a gigantic scandal, and Paulson felt he needed political cover. His own party would not support him, and Democrats had control of the House, so he turned to the Democratic presidential nominee (who was widely expected to win) for support. Obama gave this willingly, and whipped votes for Paulson's $700-billion blank check used to bail out the banks. Paulson's first bill was so outrageously lax that it failed in the House, but after the markets tanked, a second version that had slightly more oversight and homeowner assistance but was basically similar did pass.

The argument from the Obama camp was that it would have been irresponsible to force Paulson to tack conditions on to the bailout, even though he absolutely could have done so, since it was Democrats providing most of the votes. "We could have forced more mortgage relief. We could have imposed tighter conditions on dividends and executive compensation," Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee told Hundt, but Obama didn't want to be seen as exploiting the disaster.

In reality, it was a hideously irresponsible not to do so. The crisis put Wall Street in a desperately supplicant position, providing a brief golden opportunity to crack their stranglehold over the federal government. But by quickly restoring the gigantic profits of the banks, Obama preserved the tendrils of corruption that to this day reach throughout Congress, kept the financial system bloated and crisis-prone, and ensured the later Dodd-Frank financial reform would be pitifully inadequate. And by characterizing the crisis as a natural disaster-esque event instead of the product of Wall Street greed and crime, Obama made himself a heat shield for banker swindlers, burning away much of his political support and opening up space for Donald Trump to later claim the mantle of populist crusader.

Once Obama had chosen the Paulson route, his second-greatest mistake, the foreclosure crisis, followed naturally. House Democrats had included a sweeping provision enabling homeowner assistance in the bailout but left the details to the next president, who they figured would be a Democrat and hence trustworthy to use his authority to actually help homeowners. They figured wrong.

Obama assigned homeowner assistance to his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who turned homeowner assistance into another backdoor bank bailout. As Carolyn Sissoko explains in great detail, even after the financial sector had been stabilized, the banks still had huge volumes of worthless mortgage bonds on their books. Geither chose to use mortgage policy to stealthily move these losses from banks to homeowners and the government. There were two primary strategies. First, Geithner pushed Obama to renege on a promise to support allowing homeowners to write down the value of their primary mortgage to the home's assessed value. Then he refused to allow principal reductions of mortgages in his homeowner assistance program. Either of these would have allowed homeowners to write off hundreds of billions in bad debt, and hence blown a hole in bank balance sheets. Because Obama had ruled out a drastic restructuring of Wall Street, this couldn't be allowed.

Administration insiders were perfectly clear about this decision. There was "$750 billion of negative equity in housing the amount that mortgages exceeded the value of the houses," Goolsbee told Hundt. "Somebody would have to eat that money. For sure the banks couldn't take $750 billion of losses[.]" The result: something like 10 million people lost their homes.

Finally, there was the undersized stimulus, which administration economist Christy Romer calculated should have been as big as $1.8 trillion, but instead ended up being about $789 billion. Obama apologists like Michael Grunwald (who ghostwrote a Tim Geithner memoir) insist that the administration got as much as could have been gotten through Congress, given moderate Democrats' fears of deficit spending. That might be true, but it's impossible to say, because the White House never even tried to pass anything bigger, despite having 58-42 Senate majority and a similar advantage in the House. When initial economic data about the scale of the collapse turned out to be a drastic underestimate, the administration did not escalate its demands. Nor did they put a proper-sized stimulus before Congress and then point to ensuing market panic and the ongoing economic collapse to bully wimpy Democrats if it failed which is precisely how the bailout got passed mere months previously.

No doubt this kind of hardball tactic would have been thought "irresponsible" as well. But the insufficient stimulus was a disastrous failure that doomed the economy to ongoing economic stagnation, doomed the Democrats in the 2010 midterms, and delayed the employment recovery so long that Trump is getting all the credit. It is poor leadership to not exert one's authority to the absolute utmost to stop a depression.

The administration also rejected clever proposals to increase the size of the stimulus while keeping its headline price down. It could have refinanced state debt at rock-bottom federal interest rates, thus giving states greater room to spend. It could have created an infrastructure bank, which would have legally allowed 10 dollars in loans for every dollar appropriated. It could have gamed the 10-year budget window by spending (or cutting taxes) and then compensating with tax hikes that would not take effect until years later. But even though Hundt personally proposed a green infrastructure bank to Obama's top economic team, the administration rejected all these on ideological grounds.

Now, Klein is definitely correct to say that the president has little power to pass legislation in times of divided government. A gridlocked, non-functional Congress is now the rule rather than the exception. It will be difficult-to-impossible to pass any legislation through a Republican-controlled Senate, whether that is Medicare-for-All or Amy Klobuchar's agenda. Furthermore, as far as we can tell, the next president will not have a financial crisis to leverage in negotiations.

But the flip side of congressional gridlock is that power has flowed to the presidency over the years. Many of President Obama's failures in the aftermath of the crisis were in the details of how he chose to execute his authorities, especially who he appointed to his cabinet. President Trump has carried out enormously consequential policies outside of Congress like the Muslim ban, the trade war with China, throwing thousands of people off Medicaid, and the enormous bailout of farmers through aggressive use of executive orders and by taking up neglected authorities Congress delegated years ago.

Now, those policies are awful, but better ones are readily available. An entire recent issue of The American Prospect was dedicated to unilateral action the president could take immediately including canceling almost all student debt (which is directly owned by the government), creating a public option for banking, restoring the union rights of home care workers, slashing carbon emissions, and much more.

Would many of these actions be challenged and eventually roadblocked by the conservative Supreme Court? Surely. But to declare defeat before the battle is even fought is exactly how Obama approached his response to the crisis. As Trump shows, the courts move slowly, and you can put them on the back foot with a flurry of executive orders, tweaking the legal justification if one gets shot down.

And since Obama failed to rein in Wall Street, and the Dodd-Frank reform is being shredded under Republican government, another financial crisis of some size is surely coming sooner or later. The next Democratic president must be poised to seize any opportunity. They should be ready to exercise every last scrap of authority to improve the lives of the American people instead of fussing about propriety and appearances, or pretending the world's most powerful office is hemmed in on every side.

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Liberals need to stop pretending the president has no power - Yahoo News