Monthly Archives: September 2024

44 Years Ago

29 Sunday Sep 2024

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On the morning of Rosh Hashanah in 1980 (5741), I delivered a sermon about the central theme in the national conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs to a packed sanctuary of 1,400 congregants. As a fledgling 30 year-old rabbi at Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco, I had no idea what my congregants were thinking. I was a rookie rabbi then speaking about what was – and still is – one of the most hotly debated issues in the world. As I spoke, I watched their faces and eyes, and I paid attention to their body language as I moved through my text. I knew that what I was saying was controversial, but I didn’t know if they were with me or against me. I would find out immediately after the service ended.

My first instinct was to push things further than I did – to call for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But that was 1980 and no one was doing that except a few of my friends who were left-wing Labor Zionists (and not congressional rabbis) and a small minority of Israelis. I was told that I’d lose my job if I gave the sermon I really wanted to give.

44 years later, as this awful war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas continues and the hostages languish in tunnels beneath Gaza, and recent polls show overwhelming distrust and fear felt by Israelis towards Palestinians and Palestinians towards Israelis, and as Israel fights the Iran-created and -controlled terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon that has fired 8000 precision rockets at Israel since October 8 last year, and a wider war threatens all the peoples of the Middle East, I could lift much of what I wrote then and give a similar sermon this year, with adjustments given the passage of time and events.

In my newly published book “From the West to the East – A Memoir of a Liberal American Rabbi” I tell the whole near-violent story of what happened that day 44 years ago, and I explore and go deeper into what I’ve learned throughout my 45-year career as a liberal rabbi in San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles. I talk about family, faith, human rights that I’ve championed (and the blow-back I’ve so often received), travel, Israel-Palestine (of course), and everything in-between.

If you have already purchased my book – thank you. If not, I invite you to do so now. It is filled with many dramatic stories that I’ve experienced; and I share my encounters with many remarkably wise and consequential people who have helped to shape my ideas and attitudes.

My Memoir is available on Amazon or through the publisher – see links below. If you are moved by the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon.

If you would like to reach out, I’d love the chance to speak with your community in person or virtually about my story and the moral, religious and political challenges confronting us all in these difficult and challenging times.

I hope that this New Year 5785 will be for you and all those you love one of good health and well-being,  and that the Jewish people and all peoples of the Land will know peace and security in the New Year and the hostages will be returned home.

L’shanah tovah u-m’tukah.

Publisher – https://westofwestcenter.com/product/from-the-west-to-the-east/

Amazon – https://tinyurl.com/2s43mj4p

Al Tid’ag – Don’t Worry

26 Thursday Sep 2024

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Before I share with you an extraordinary surgery experience I had, I want to emphasize that I’m okay and will be fine in about a week.

For the past four months I’ve had continuous bronchial problems, a strong colored phlegm-filled cough and a head cold. At last my doctor put me on antibiotics, but they didn’t clear up my symptoms. He suggested that I see a pulmonologist (lungs). The pulmonologist was convinced that my problem wasn’t based in my chest and lungs (though they were secondarily affected), but in my sinuses, and that I should be examined by an Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) doctor. To be certain, my pulmonologist ordered scans of my chest and head and passed them along to my ENT physician who showed me the scan of my head on a computer screen. He pointed out that there are two large sinus cavities behind my forehead, eyes, cheek, and jaw that show up as black on the screen if they are normal and open. I was more or less fine on the left side – black. On the right side, there was no black at all indicating that my sinuses there were impacted. He told me I had one of two treatment choices: a three-week regimen of antibiotics, that he was certain wouldn’t solve my problem, or surgery.

I asked what would the surgery entail. He explained that it would be done in 1.5 to 2 hours under general anesthesia. He would insert a probe into my nostrils with a small light and camera at the end of it, and he would drain and remove any polyps that might be there. It was an out-patient procedure and I would go home the same day.

When he explained, I cringed. Sorry for passing along the specifics, my gentle readers, but I wanted you to get the full picture.

I asked him, “If this were you – what would you do?”

 “Surgery,” he said.

“Ok – how soon can you do this?”

“The soonest is in 3 weeks.” We scheduled the surgery for yesterday, September 25 first thing in the morning.

Over the following two weeks after my decision, I got all the pre-op check-ups that were required from my internist and cardiologist. My son David, picked me up at 6 am for a 7 am call time at the Marina del Rey Hospital, a site associated with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Everyone from admissions to the nurses who prepped me were wonderful – kind, inquisitive and helpful as they explained everything I needed to know.

At 9 am, my RN nurse came into the room, a lovely masked young woman named Ronah with a Magen David hanging on a necklace around her neck.

She said, “I see on your chart that you are a rabbi. I’m Jewish too.”

“I know,” I said. I see your Magen David.

“I’m Sephardi,” she said. “My parents are Iraqi and Moroccan and we lived in Israel when I was young. My boyfriend is a Persian Jew.” She spoke English with an American accent.

“Do you remember your Hebrew,” I asked.

“Ken – betach – yes – of course,” she said. From then on we spoke only in Hebrew, which relaxed me – somewhat.

“Eich atah margish – How are you feeling?” she asked as we entered the OR and she placed the oxygen mask over my face.

“Ani chosesh chareda harbeh – I’m feeling very anxious,” I answered.

She took my hand gently and held it until I drifted into unconsciousness. The last words I heard her say were “Al tid’ag  – Don’t worry.”

There were 7 people in the OR including my doctor and the anesthesiologist. Before I drifted into unconsciousness, I said to everyone: “Thank you for all you are about to do.”

When I awoke, the recovery nurse, named Liv, couldn’t have been kinder as well. The doctor told me that everything went perfectly well, that he removed all the fluid in my sinus cavity and polyps that likely were cause of the impaction. Barbara came into the recovery room smiling at me, asked my nurse all the questions Barbara needed to know to care for me over the following days, and an hour later Liv wheeled me to the valet. I stood and tentatively got into the car (I was feeling woozy), and we drove home.

The anesthesia high (like a drug trip) and the painkillers stayed with me until the evening. The combination plus another painkiller afforded me an intense feeling of physical well-being, but I knew well that the next few days would be likely the toughest after the anesthesia wore off. My kids were texting me and I spoke with them later in the day.

My feeling of gratitude for the love of my family and the great medical care, for the kindness of every nurse who cared for me, my doctor and anesthesiologist (a woman from Iran – I spoke to her with the few Farsi words I learned long ago – which delighted her), and every single nurse, especially Ronah and Liv, and my ENT doctor and anesthesiologist, will stay with me always.

I intend to write a letter to Cedars-Sinai and ask that everyone who attended to me receive a copy of my letter so they know how grateful I feel towards them.

Many years ago, when I had prostate cancer surgery, I bought a two-pound box of Sees dark chocolate creams and had it open in my hospital room. I offered a piece to everyone who came in. I remember one very large man, a custodian, who was quietly taking out the trash from my room late at night. I asked him his name. He told me (I’ve forgotten it now), and I said, “Want a chocolate?”

He looked at me like I was nuts.

I said, “Really. Take one.”

He happily did so. I then said, “Take two more – they’re here for you and everyone who visits me or has a job to do in my room. Tell everyone they are welcome to come on in whenever they need a chocolate fix.”

He said, “Thank you bro – no patient has ever done this before.”

I said, “Bro – I’m so grateful that you all saved my life. This is the least I can do in return.”

He smiled and went on his way.

Gratitude (Hebrew – הכרת הטוב – literally, “recognition of/knowing the good”) has always come easily to me. I learned this foundational value from an early age from my parents and its ability to create close relationships. I don’t regard it as a quid pro quo – just as an attitude of the heart towards others who are kind and generous. Both of our sons (now 39 and 34) are the same way, and our son and daughter in-law are teaching that value to our grandchildren (ages five and a-half and two and a-half).

Post-op, I’m doing now everything the doctor and nurses told me to do – sinus rinsing, no strenuous exercise except easy walking around the house, taking the painkiller as needed.

I wanted to write this blog while I was still in the thrall of my experience with such kind medical professionals because I believe what I have experienced and felt has a strong common take-away for us all.

I know that the best hospitals (here in LA include Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the Reagan Hospital at UCLA where I’m a patient – there are other great hospitals in LA too) are in stiff competition with one another for patients, donor and government grants, etc. Patient service is a high priority for both moral and pragmatic reasons. But, that pragmatism doesn’t negate the importance of kindness of staff who have devoted their lives in service to others.

In advance of the surgery, I received at least 6 texts reminding me what to do, as well as 3 phone calls checking from my doctor’s office and the hospital going over details and asking if I understood everything. I also received by email a packet of materials to read that covered the pre-op period, the surgery itself, the immediate post-op tasks I needed to remember to do and not do, and the two post-op appointments in the next two weeks. I should be 100 percent recovered in a week, a day before the onset of Rosh Hashanah 5785.

One of the things I’m also grateful for is Medicare. Everything I experienced was covered 100 percent (except, of course, the premiums). But, I know there are still so many Americans who don’t have adequate health insurance, though the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has dramatically embraced millions of Americans.

I remember asking a nurse 15 years ago immediately after I was in recovery from my cancer surgery (it is now completely controlled by medication), “What do people do who don’t have insurance?”

“They die,” she said matter-of-factly.

One day, everyone (hopefully) will benefit as I’ve benefited from our health care system and all the doctors, nurses, orderlies, custodians, and hospital staff who have treated me with such kindness and professionalism.

Ralph H. Blum (1932-2016), a cultural anthropologist and author, offered this insight: “There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.”

How right he was.

Central Conference of American Rabbis Statement Condemning Donald Trump’s Dangerous Antisemitic Campaign Rhetoric

24 Tuesday Sep 2024

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Introductory Note:

The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) is the Reform Movement’s Rabbinic association of more than 2000 ordained Reform Rabbis who serve the Jewish people in a variety of positions worldwide. I have been a member of the CCAR since I was ordained by the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (the Reform movement’s rabbinic seminary) in New York in 1979. I am gratified by the following statement of condemnation of Donald Trump’s antisemitic rhetoric and I urge that this statement be disseminated widely not only to the Jewish people, but to all those who may be taken in by Trump’s outrageous statements about the role of Jews in American society today in our relationship to this American election and to the people and State of Israel.

This CCAR statement is limited to what Trump said most recently in relationship to the election and Jews and does not note past statements, such as his calling “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville, Virginia when referring to Neo-Nazi demonstrators who carried torches and shouted outside a Reform synagogue “Jews will not replace us”. It also does not refer to Trump’s ongoing misogyny, racism and hostility to black and brown immigrants. Senator Rafael Warnock (d. Georgia) put it well when he noted in response to Trump’s antisemitic rhetoric on Sunday morning that there is so much hate in Trump’s heart that it constantly flows outward.

Note below that the CCAR does not take partisan political positions (as this statement says clearly), and when I served as the Senior Rabbi of Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles and before that in congregations I served in Washington D.C. and San Francisco, I did not do so either because both Democrats and Republicans were/are members of my congregations and I respect those who think differently from me regardless of political affiliation. However, I made an exception one time in 40 years – in the 2016 presidential election in which I endorsed Hillary Clinton for president against Donald Trump because it was clear to me then that Trump’s hatred of large numbers of Americans based on race, gender, ethnicity, and religion and his threat to American democratic traditions and norms disqualified him from serving as President of the United States.

Here is the CCAR’s Statement.

September 23, 2024

The Central Conference of American Rabbis is grateful that both major candidates in the 2024 United States Presidential Election, Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump—together with their running mates—have taken strong stances in response to antisemitism. Antisemitism is a significant and growing problem in the United States, finding a welcome home at both the extreme right and left of the political spectrum.

At the same time, the Central Conference of American Rabbis strongly condemn Former President Trump’s repeated claims that Jewish Americans who vote for Vice President Harris would do so only because they suffer from mental illness and that American Jews would be to blame if Former President Trump did not prevail.[i]

The former claim fails to recognize that Jewish Americans, like all voters, have a variety of issues, both domestic and internal, which inform whom they will support this election. We also denounce the claim that Second Gentlemen Doug Emhoff is not a good Jew.[ii] Jews practice Judaism in a variety of ways and it is not the role of our leaders to judge and disparage how people practice their religion.

We are most troubled by the inflammatory claim that American Jews will be at fault if Former President Trump does not win the election. Falsely claiming that Jews, who represent less than 3% of Americans, will single handedly determine the winner of the election plays into age-old antisemitic lies about Jewish power. Former President Trump’s rhetoric relies on what Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt has called the “antisemitic conspiracy myth” that Jews enjoy disproportionate power and exercise outsized control in and beyond America.[iii] This dangerous rhetoric seeks to target the Jewish community at a time of heightened antisemitism. It is part of a disturbing pattern of Former President Trump attacking those who disagree with him.

It should go without saying that American Jews, no matter which party they support, are loyal Americans. While we condemn these baseless attacks, we also encourage all Jews to vote in the upcoming election and to support non-partisan get out the vote efforts. Our democracy depends on the participation of all citizens of our country. 

Rabbi Erica Asch, President
Rabbi Hara E. Person, Chief Executive
Central Conference of American Rabbis

Why the Electoral College Should be Abolished or Effectively Nullified

22 Sunday Sep 2024

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I love reading about American and world history, but the Electoral College system that elects the President of the United States has always confused me. This past week, Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of history at Boston College, laid out clearly the history of the Electoral College. Before I quote her complete missive below, I want to explain for those (like me) who have found the workings of the Electoral College so confusing, how it works and why the national Republican Party is so fixated on eliminating one Electoral College vote in the State of Nebraska in order to even more advantage the Republican Party over the Democratic Party than is currently built into the Electoral College system thereby denying the principle of one person-one vote that is the hallmark of democracy.

How does the Electoral College work?

Each state is granted 2 votes in the Electoral College for each State Senator plus votes equaling the total number of congressional districts in the state (e.g. the largest State of California has 54 Electoral College votes including 2 Senators and 52 congressional seats; the smallest State of Wyoming has 3 Electoral College votes including 2 senators and 1 congressional seat). 270 Electoral College votes are needed to win the presidential election and if neither party receives 270 Electoral College votes, the election for President is decided in the House of Representatives with each state delegation having one vote. In such a case, the largest State of California, with a population of 39,128,162, and the smallest state of Wyoming, with a population of 586,485, would each have 1 vote. A majority of states (26) in the House is needed to win the presidential election. Senators would elect the Vice-President, with each Senator having a vote. A majority of Senators (51) is needed to win.

What is so important to the national Republican Party about Nebraska’s one Electoral College vote?

There are more Republican Party dominated States than Democratic Party dominated States which is why the national Republican Party has put so much pressure on the Nebraska State Legislature to fold the one “blue” congressional district into the winner-take-all Electoral College count for that “red” State, thus eliminating the “blue” congressional district from the Electoral College. For the same reason, the Republican Party refuses to give residents in the territory of Puerto Rico the vote in American presidential elections, even though Puerto Rico is an American protectorate and has a population of 3,268,802, more than the population in 20 States. The District of Columbia (with a population of 678,972) is also not a State, but its citizens do vote in the presidential election. D.C. is given 1 electoral vote for its 1 congressional district but no electoral votes for 2 Senators (which it does not have), as opposed to the smallest state of Wyoming that has 3 electoral votes (2 senators and 1 congressional representative). DC and Puerto Rico are both dominated by the Democratic Party.

How can the Electoral College be abolished and turn the Presidential election into the winner of the popular vote?

To abolish the Electoral College and allow the country to directly elect the US President would take a constitutional convention. Under Article 5 of the Constitution, an amendment must be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification.

To do this, obviously, is a far stretch given the strong resistance of the many small states (though some small states are “blue”, far more are “red”). Reaching a two-thirds vote of the States is next to impossible as the “red” states would be forced to give up their un-democratic advantage over large populated “blue” states should there be a tie in the Electoral College (269 votes each), and they would never do that.

Is there an alternative to changing the Constitution and making the presidential election based on the popular vote as is the case with every other election for every other office in the United States?

Yes – it is called “The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” in which States pledge to award all their electors to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of whether that State voted for the winner. To date, 16 states and the District of Columbia have joined the Compact for a total of 205 electoral votes. Once additional states, with a total of 65 more electoral votes (enough to reach 270 votes), join the Compact, it will go into effect and the next President will be effectively the winner of the national popular vote. To see which states have agreed to join, see https://citizenstakeaction.org/how-to-fix-the-electoral-college/.

I hope the above clarifies how the Electoral College is a corruption of democracy. Here is Heather Cox Richardson’s excellent review of the history of the Electoral College and how the framers of the US Constitution came to this unique system of electing our nation’s most important and powerful leader.

“On September 16, CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten wrote that while it’s “[p]retty clear that [Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala] Harris is ahead nationally right now… [h]er advantage in the battlegrounds is basically nil. Average it all, Harris’[s] chance of winning the popular vote is 70%. Her chance of winning the electoral college is 50%.” Two days later, on September 18, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) skipped votes in the Senate to travel to Nebraska, where he tried to convince state legislators to switch the state’s system of allotting electoral votes by district to a winner-take-all system. That effort so far appears unsuccessful. 

In a country of 50 states and Washington, D.C.—a country of more than 330 million people—presidential elections are decided in just a handful of states, and it is possible for someone who loses the popular vote to become president. We got to this place thanks to the Electoral College, and to two major changes made to it since the ratification of the Constitution. 

The men who debated how to elect a president in 1787 worried terribly about making sure there were hedges around the strong executive they were creating so that he could not become a king. 

Some of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention wanted Congress to choose the president, but this horrified others who believed that a leader and Congress would collude to take over the government permanently. Others liked the idea of direct election of the president, but this worried delegates from smaller states, who thought that big states would simply be able to name their own favorite sons. It also worried those who pointed out that most voters would have no idea which were the leading men in other states, leaving a national institution, like the organization of Revolutionary War officers called the Society of the Cincinnati, the power to get its members to support their own leader, thus finding a different way to create a dictator.

Ultimately, the framers came up with the election of a president by a group of men well known in their states but not currently office-holders, who would meet somewhere other than the seat of government and would disband as soon as the election was over. Each elector in this so-called Electoral College would cast two votes for president. The man with the most votes would be president, and the man with the second number of votes would be vice president (a system that the Twelfth Amendment ended in 1804). The number of electors would be equal to the number of senators and representatives allotted to each state in Congress. If no candidate earned a majority, the House of Representatives would choose the president, with each state delegation casting a single vote.

In the first two presidential elections—in 1788–1789 and 1792—none of this mattered very much, since the electors cast their ballots unanimously for George Washington. But when Washington stepped down, leaders of the newly formed political parties contended for the presidency. In the election of 1796, Federalist John Adams won, but Thomas Jefferson, who led the Democratic-Republicans (which were not the same as today’s Democrats or Republicans) was keenly aware that had Virginia given him all its electoral votes, rather than splitting them between him and Adams, he would have been president. 

On January 12, 1800, Jefferson wrote to the governor of Virginia, James Monroe, urging him to back a winner-take-all system that awarded all Virginia’s electoral votes to the person who won the majority of the vote in the state. He admitted that dividing electoral votes by district “would be more likely to be an exact representation of [voters’] diversified sentiments” but, defending his belief that he was the true popular choice in the country in 1796, said voting by districts “would give a result very different from what would be the sentiment of the whole people of the US. were they assembled together.” 

Virginia made the switch. Alarmed, the Federalists in Massachusetts followed suit to make sure Adams got all their votes, and by 1836, every state but South Carolina, where the legislature continued to choose electors until 1860, had switched to winner-take-all. 

This change horrified the so-called Father of the Constitution, James Madison, who worried that the new system would divide the nation geographically and encourage sectional tensions. He wrote in 1823 that voting by district, rather than winner-take-all, “was mostly, if not exclusively in view when the Constitution was framed and adopted.” He proposed a constitutional amendment to end winner-take-all.

But almost immediately, the Electoral College caused a different crisis. In 1824, electors split their votes among four candidates—Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William Crawford—and none won a majority in the Electoral College. Although Jackson won the most popular votes and the most electoral votes, when the election went to the House, the state delegations chose Adams, the son of former president John Adams.

Furious Jackson supporters thought a developing elite had stolen the election, and after they elected Jackson outright in 1828, the new president on December 8, 1829, implored Congress to amend the Constitution to elect presidents by popular vote. “To the people belongs the right of electing their Chief Magistrate,” he wrote; “it was never designed that their choice should in any case be defeated, either by the intervention of electoral colleges or…the House of Representatives.” 

Jackson warned that an election in the House could be corrupted by money or power or ignorance. He also warned that “under the present mode of election a minority may…elect a President,” and such a president could not claim legitimacy. He urged Congress “to amend our system that the office of Chief Magistrate may not be conferred upon any citizen but in pursuance of a fair expression of the will of the majority.”

But by the 1830s, the population of the North was exploding while the South’s was falling behind. The Constitution counted enslaved Americans as three fifths of a person for the purposes of representation, and direct election of the president would erase that advantage slave states had in the Electoral College. Their leaders were not about to throw that advantage away.

In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery (except as punishment for a crime) and scratched out the three-fifths clause, meaning that after the 1870 census the southern states would have more power in the Electoral College than they did before the war. In 1876, Republicans lost the popular vote by about 250,000 votes out of 8.3 million cast, but kept control of the White House through the Electoral College. As Jackson had warned, furious Democrats threatened rebellion. They never considered Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, whom they called “Rutherfraud,” a legitimate president. 

In 1888 it happened again. Incumbent Democratic president Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by about 100,000 votes out of 11 million cast, but Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison took the White House thanks to the 36 electoral votes from New York, a state Harrison won by fewer than 15,000 votes out of more than 1.3 million cast. Once in office, he and his team set out to skew the Electoral College permanently in their favor. Over twelve months in 1889–1890, they added six new, sparsely populated states to the Union, splitting the territory of Dakota in two and adding North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming while cutting out New Mexico and Arizona, whose inhabitants they expected would vote for Democrats.

The twentieth century brought another wrench to the Electoral College. The growth of cities, made possible thanks to modern industry—including the steel that supported skyscrapers—and transportation and sanitation, created increasing population differences among the different states.

The Constitution’s framers worried that individual states might try to grab too much power in the House by creating dozens and dozens of congressional districts, so they specified that a district could not be smaller than 30,000 people. But they put no upper limit on district sizes. After the 1920 census revealed that urban Americans outnumbered rural Americans, the House in 1929 capped its numbers at 435 to keep power away from those urban dwellers, including immigrants, that lawmakers considered dangerous, thus skewing the Electoral College in favor of rural America. Today the average congressional district includes 761,169 individuals—more than the entire population of Wyoming, Vermont, or Alaska—which weakens the power of larger states.  

In the twenty-first century the earlier problems with the Electoral College have grown until they threaten to establish permanent minority rule. A Republican president hasn’t won the popular vote since voters reelected George W. Bush in 2004, when his popularity was high in the midst of a war. The last Republican who won the popular vote in a normal election cycle was Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, in 1988, 36 years and nine cycles ago. And yet, Republicans who lost the popular vote won in the Electoral College in 2000—George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore, who won the popular vote by about a half a million votes—and in 2016, when Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes but lost in the Electoral College to Donald Trump. 

In our history, four presidents—all Republicans—have lost the popular vote and won the White House through the Electoral College. Trump’s 2024 campaign strategy appears to be to do it again (or to create such chaos that the election goes to the House of Representatives, where there will likely be more Republican-dominated delegations than Democratic ones).

In the 2024 election, Trump has shown little interest in courting voters. Instead, the campaign has thrown its efforts into legal challenges to voting and, apparently, into eking out a win in the Electoral College. The number of electoral votes equals the number of senators and representatives to which each state is entitled (100 + 435) plus three electoral votes for Washington, D.C., for a total of 538. A winning candidate must get a majority of those votes: 270.

Winner-take-all means that presidential elections are won in so-called swing or battleground states. Those are states with election margins of less than 3 points, so close they could be won by either party. The patterns of 2020 suggest that the states most likely to be in contention in 2024 are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, although the Harris-Walz campaign has opened up the map, suggesting its internal numbers show that states like Florida might also be in contention. Candidates and their political action committees focus on those few swing states—touring, giving speeches and rallies, and pouring money into advertising and ground operations. 

But in 2024 there is a new wrinkle. The Constitution’s framers agreed on a census every ten years so that representation in Congress could be reapportioned according to demographic changes. As usual, the 2020 census shifted representation, and so the pathway to 270 electoral votes shifted slightly. Those shifts mean that it is possible the election will come down to one electoral vote. Awarding Trump the one electoral vote Nebraska is expected to deliver to Harris could be enough to keep her from becoming president.

Rather than trying to win a majority of voters, just 49 days before the presidential election, Trump supporters—including Senator Graham—are making a desperate effort to use the Electoral College to keep Harris from reaching the requisite 270 electoral votes to win. It is unusual for a senator from one state to interfere in the election processes in another state, but Graham similarly pressured officials in Georgia to swing the vote there toward Trump in 2020.”

A Proud Israeli-Arab Citizen Speaks Out

18 Wednesday Sep 2024

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Yoseph Haddad, a 39-year old Arab-Israeli citizen and journalist, well-known throughout Israel, spoke recently before the Austrian Parliament about the Israel that I know as a liberal Zionist, and about the distortions by the European media and many on the American far left about Hamas’s ideology, nature and intentions vis a vis Israel. His 15-minute speech (see You-Tube link below) is a must-listen address by an Israeli-Arab who understands what this awful war is really all about and about the standing of Israeli Arabs today in Israeli society, however imperfect for Israeli-Arab citizens. The situation in the West Bank for Palestinians, however, is very different as they live under a military administration and near violent Israeli settlers and growing Palestinian terrorism.

When the dust of this war settles, when Israel and the Palestinian Authority elect new political leadership with vision and a willingness to create a path to peace and some kind of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the help of a wise and strong American President, perhaps there will emerge the will between Israelis and Palestinians actually to make peace.

Listen here and share this blog and YouTube with those you believe will be moved by Yoseph Haddad and his clear moral compass in these difficult and painful times.
https://youtu.be/S1aOao4BNXE?si=sGcP03GEdPyZu63d

Why Do So Many Millions Continue to Support Donald Trump?

13 Friday Sep 2024

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I’ve been baffled for years about why millions of Americans continue to support Donald Trump after his disastrous handling of the Covid epidemic, his 34 felony convictions, his 54 remaining indictments, his massive grift, his pathological lying, his central role in the only insurrection led by an American president against the United States government in our nation’s history, his 2 impeachments, his craven disrespect for soldiers and gold star families, his utter lack of virtue, his dark, dystopic, cynical, and pessimistic attitude about America, and his racism, misogyny and hatred against immigrants of color and anyone who critiques him.

Political thinkers, psychologists, constitutional scholars and lawyers, podcast and cable news commentators, and print journalists have offered all kinds of reasons for the fealty of so many millions of Americans who show ongoing support for arguably “the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”  (General John Kelly – a 4-star general and one of Trump’s former Chiefs-of-staff).

Many of the reasons offered make some logical sense: he’s entertaining; his need for vengeance resonates with the life-experience of many of his fans who are angry like him and feel they’ve not benefited in the American dream; his role as a cult leader offers a sense of belonging for people on the margins of society; his tough-guy persona gives many a super-hero with whom to identify; the perception that he was good for the economy; the expansive reach of a myopic right-wing media bubble that reinforces his brand; the persuasive power of ‘don’t believe your eyes – believe me’ that enables people to stop thinking; the racism, misogyny and fear of the “other” many of his followers also feel; the support of evangelical Christians who like his right-wing judicial nominations and reversal of Roe v Wade; and the fact that there are so many life-long Republicans who just can’t imagine leaving their political and cultural “tribe” and supporting a Democrat.

All those reasons are compelling and likely true – but what else might be attracting some of Trump’s followers?

The renowned Swiss-Polish psychoanalyst and philosopher Alice Miller (1923-2010) may offer a measure of insight not only into Trump’s character, but the character of many of his followers. She wrote at length about why people and nations follow evil leaders in her two books: For Your Own Good – Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence and The Drama of the Gifted Child – The Search for the True Self.

In the Preface to For Your Own Good she explained:

“Since the end of World War II, I have been haunted by the question of what could make a person conceive the plan of gassing millions of human beings to death and of how it could then be possible for millions of others to acclaim him and assist in carrying out this plan.”

Donald Trump is NOT Adolph Hitler and the MAGA right is not the Nazi party. However, Trump fits the profile of the leader that Dr. Miller described in her books.

She concluded that every act of cruelty, no matter how brutal and shocking, has traceable antecedents in its perpetrator’s past – most often from childhood. She cited and quoted from a mid-18th century German book on child-rearing by Johann Georg Sulzer who, in 1748, wrote in “An Essay on the Education and Instruction of Children”:

“Obedience is so important that all education is actually nothing other than learning how to obey…. It is not very easy, however, to implant obedience in children. It is quite natural for the child’s soul to want to have a will of its own, and things that are not done correctly in the first two years will be difficult to rectify thereafter. One of the advantages of these early years is that then force and compulsion can be used. Over the years, children forget everything that happened to them in early childhood. If their wills can be broken at this time, they will never remember afterwards that they had a will, and for this very reason the severity that is required will not have any serious consequences.”

Sulzer continued:

“I advise all those whose concern is the education of children to make it their main occupation to drive out willfulness and wickedness [in the child] and to persist until they have reached their goal… by scolding and the rod [for the purpose of creating] obedient, docile and good children [from as early as] the child’s first year.”

Dr. Miller opines:

“Neuroses and psychoses are not direct consequences of actual frustrations but the expression of repressed traumata…” [the child] “…will experience feelings of anxiety, shame, insecurity, and helplessness, which may soon be forgotten, especially when the child finds a victim of his/her own… A child’s ever-growing discomfort at the loss of the pleasure he/she would have had if the child’s wishes had been granted, eventually find satisfaction only in revenge, i.e. in the comforting knowledge that one’s peers have been subjected to the same feeling of discomfort or pain. The more often the child experiences the comforting feeling of revenge, the more this becomes a need, which seeks satisfaction at every idle moment. In this stage, the child uses unruly behavior to inflict every possible unpleasantness, every conceivable annoyance on others only for the sake of alleviating the pain the child feels because his/her wishes are not fulfilled. This fault leads with logical consistency to the next; his/her fear of punishment awakens the need to tell lies, to be devious and deceitful…”

Does this sound familiar when thinking of Trump?

Dr. Miller concludes:

“When still in diapers, the child learns to knock at the gates of love with ‘obedience,’ and unfortunately often does not unlearn this ever after… all the requirements will have been met to enable a citizen to live in a dictatorship without minding it; he or she will even be able to feel a euphoric identification with it… In a totalitarian state, which is a mirror of the child’s upbringing, this citizen can also carry out any form of torture or persecution without having a guilty conscience. His/her ‘will’ is completely identified with that of the government.”

The psychoanalytic principle of “identification with the aggressor” – a defense against an over-powering and threatening adversary – is helpful in understanding why many of those who identify with Trump find such comfort in their doing so. He presents himself as the ultimate alpha male aggressor. Trump’s niece, the psychologist Mary Trump, has written that when Donald was a child, he was a thin-skinned playground bully.

Trump loves dictators – Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Viktor Orbán – and calls them “strong” and “smart.” One of Trump’s ex-wives said that he kept Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf on his bed’s night stand. Marine Gen. John Kelly and Trump’s former Chief-of-Staff said that, as President, Trump complemented Hitler saying that “he did some good things” seeming to ignore the millions the Nazis murdered and the 400,000 Americans who died in WWII.

Was Trump beaten into submission by his hard-driving father? It is unclear. However, in a NYT’s article (July 28, 2020), Trump’s father Fred was described as

“…a disciplinarian who spent hundreds of millions of dollars financing his son’s career and taught him to either dominate or submit. In Fred Trump’s world, showing sadness or hurt was a sign of weakness. ‘The only thing that Trump ever cared about was ‘I’ve got to win. Teach me how to win,’ George White, a former classmate of Mr. Trump’s at the New York Military Academy who spent years around both father and son, said in an interview. Recalling Fred’s hard-driving influence, Mr. White said that Mr. Trump’s former school mentor, a World War II combat veteran named Theodore Dobias, once told him that ‘he had never seen a cadet whose father was harder on him than his father was on Donald Trump.’”

Mary Trump has written that Donald “suffered deprivations that would scar him for life.” Perhaps many of his followers also suffered childhood deprivations that drew them to the former president.

It remains to be seen how many of the millions of Trump’s followers will vote for him again on November 5th. It seems to me (anecdotally) that we are witnessing a significant enough abandonment of Trump by hundreds of former traditional Republican leaders from the Reagan, Bush Sr., Bush Jr. and Trump administrations who have come to the conclusion that Trump is corrupt and a significant security risk to the United States. As Kamala Harris has emerged as a strong, competent, experienced, and joyful Democratic standard bearer, the Cheney family and so many others recognize that she (despite their policy differences) will assure the continuation of American democracy, the rule of law and obeisance to the US Constitution.

How significant the number of Independent-leaning Republicans and Republicans will vote for Kamala is hard to say, but I’m optimistic not only because Trump represents the worst in the American spirit, but that Kamala Harris represents the best.

“Don’t Panic – We all have to understand the assignment” by Dan Rather

10 Tuesday Sep 2024

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I love Dan Rather. He has lived and been in the news business long enough to offer us wisdom and perspective. Here is today’s “Steady” newsletter in which he wisely counsels “Don’t Panic”:

“Waking up to The New York Times headline: ‘State of the Race: A Dead Heat With 8 Weeks to Go’ is at the very least sobering, but by no means conclusive. It may even be a good thing.

To my Steady friends, the name of our newsletter says it all. We need to stay steady. The 2024 presidential election was always going to be tick-tight. The Democrats were never going to ‘Walz’ into the White House (pun intended), though he helps. You know what else helps? Having motivated supporters. A close poll can do a lot to activate the bench sitters. There is no room for even an ounce of complacency between now and November 5.

Since Barack Obama’s huge victory in 2008, the American electorate has become more polarized and calcified than ever before. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 49% of registered voters are or lean Democrat, while 48% are or lean Republican. These numbers trend with what we have seen in the voting booth. In 2016, Donald Trump won by just 70,000 votes in the swing states that decided the election. In 2020, Joe Biden’s victory margin was even smaller. There is no reason to think 2024 will be any different in terms of winning margins.

Along with shrinking margins, the number of undecided voters making their choice during the last two weeks of the campaign has also decreased. Exit polls in 2016 put the number at 15%. In 2020, it was around 6%. At this point, with two months to go, about 15% are still undecided, of which three-quarters say they do have a preference. That leaves just 3% in the ‘don’t know’ category. In other words, a very small number of voters in swing states will decide this. If you truly “don’t know” at this point, we need to talk.

That is a lot of numbers to throw at you … but know that heading into the final stretch of the campaign, I’d rather be Kamala Harris than Donald Trump. She has more room to move the needle. He has barely any.

For one, an anti-MAGA majority exists, even in swing states. The 2022 midterm elections proved this. Traditionally, midterms break hard for the party not in power. There was every reason to believe that would be the case in November 2022, with inflation high and Biden’s popularity low. Ultimately, Republicans, who predicted a ‘red wave,’ made only modest gains and lost several key races. The reason: A majority of Americans were determined to stop MAGA. 

Two, love him or hate him, Trump is a known commodity. Need I remind you that he has been running for president for nine years? Harris is comparatively a blank slate. More than a quarter of voters told The New York Times they want to know more about her.Many in that block of voters are from groups Harris has made gains with: younger voters, voters of color, and independent votes. The poll showed these voters are more eager to hear about her plans for the future than they are to hear from Trump.

Three, the Harris/Walz campaign is better organized and more disciplined, and Harris is a better candidate — on paper and in real life. She has energy and is relatable. And her room for growth well outpaces his. Remember, it need only be a point or two. She has a plan that appeals to the center. Whereas Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have any plan at all. At Tuesday night’s debate, Harris will have the opportunity to continue to tell her story and expand on her ideas for the country. By being herself, she can be the “normal” candidate. More voters may be looking for change, but change within the bounds of what has been considered normal.

The other day, our friends at Pod Save America reminded me of an adage attributed to Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. In a play on an election truism, he said a ‘race is within the margin of effort.’ 

Effort.

Maximum effort is what it will take to keep Trump out of the White House and save democracy as we have known it. Every door knocked, every phone called, every text sent, every dollar given, every hour volunteered can make a difference. So will registering to vote and getting to the polls.

In a close race, good luck favors those who care the most and work the hardest.”

My Postscript:

I believe that VP Kamala Harris will do well tonight on the debate stage. Her clarity of thought, her ability to communicate her policies (see her website), her depth of knowledge of and understanding of what Americans want and need, her commitment to the law and the democratic order here and internationally, her compassion, upbeat and joyful countenance, her capacity to think on her feet and respond appropriately and with dignity to Trump’s misogyny, racism and low-life vulgarity, and her well-defined moral compass will persuade enough undecided voters across the political and demographic spectra to be persuasive that she can indeed be a good and competent President consistent with the constitutional history of the United States.

As Nancy Pelosi liked to say: “Don’t agonize – organize.”