[Hakeer]

That can always change, and it will depend a lot on how both parties treat Jewish voters.

That’s true. Kamala Harris will follow in the footsteps of Obama and Biden in giving military aid. Democrats understand who finances their campaigns and votes for their candidates. As I said, that literally hasn’t changed for 100 years.

[Hakeer]

Trump is not gonna debate with Harris. She will eat him alive obviously as a debater. Chicken pook pook pook...

I think it’s too soon to predict that 100%. If he’s still winning in swing state polls in September, he will skip the debate. If he’s well behind and needs a Hail Mary debate win to flip the momentum, he’ll debate her. If the swing state polls are a toss up, I believe Harris will harass him enough to drive his big ego into a debate. I could be wrong. This will he/won’t he will be uncertain for a bit longer.

[wat0n]

That’s true. Kamala Harris will follow in the footsteps of Obama and Biden in giving military aid. Democrats understand who finances their campaigns and votes for their candidates. As I said, that literally hasn’t changed for 100 years.

Israel is important but not the only interest of the American Jewish community. Why else do you think even during Trump the majority voted for Democrats?

[Hakeer]

There was a survey of Jewish voters after the 2022 midterm. They were asked to rank the issues that motivated their votes. They ranked “democracy” #1 and abortion rights #2.

[wat0n]

Yes, and I suspect antisemitism in the US is now up in that list. Israel is very important, but they - like most people - prioritize whatever happens at home.

[Hakeer]

True. “Jews will not replace us.” But then, let’s not forget “There are very good people on both sides.” Trump’s father would also agree.

[Skynet]

The democrats are a bunch of losers, they will lose because they are decent they are not ready to wage a dirty campaign.

[Istanbuller]

The democrats are a bunch of losers, they will lose because they are decent they are not ready to wage a dirty campaign.

It is actually quite the opposite. Leftists like lynching people who oppose them.

Democrats did everything to make a bad name for Trump. Now they fear that Trump takes revenge on them if he becomes president again. Democrats wouldn't fear if they were innocent but they all know what they triggered.

[ingliz]

@Istanbuller

He made a bad name for himself.

He didn't need the Democrats' help.

He is a convicted rapist and fraudster.

[Istanbuller]

@Istanbuller

He made a bad name for himself.

He didn't need the Democrats' help.

He is a convicted rapist and fraudster.

Can you cite me a source where he was prosecuted for raping and got jail time for it? You put a smiley in your post because you don't even believe what you wrote.

Leftists like lies. Thank you for proving it for me.

[Hakeer]

What he should have said is that Trump was fined $83 million for defamation in the rape case and $464 million in the fraud case.

[Deutschmania]

Funny you say that at a time that we have Democrats even on this board who are furious with Biden for continuing to supply military weapons to Israel to slaughter 40,000 people in Gaza. AIPAC donates more money to the Democrats than any other PAC. Besides, the Democrats can’t afford to lose the Jewish voters — 68% voted for Biden.

I just read these two articles . Both of which quotes from Lily Greenberg Call , whom notably had resigned from the Biden Administration , over its handling of the situation in Gaza . I feel hopeful , as both a registered Democratic voter , and as a conscienciously concerned part of Zera Yisrael , that Kamala Harris will act with a strong evenhanded approach to Israel / Palestine .

On a late summer day in 2019, I packed up my life into an old Nissan Altima and drove across the country from San Francisco to Waterloo, Iowa, to work to elect then senator Kamala Harris as president. After four years of a Trump presidency that stripped away the rights of the most marginalized in this country, I was driven by her vision that “justice is on the ballot” and that every individual should have their fundamental rights guaranteed and have the opportunity to thrive.

I would eventually join the Biden administration as a political appointee at the US Department of the Interior, eager to apply the values that so inspired me from the Harris campaign. Those very same values drove me to become the first Jewish American political appointee to resign from the Biden administration in May in protest of the president’s unconditional support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Now, Harris is poised to be the Democratic nominee to take on Donald Trump in November.

I resigned because of Joe Biden’s disastrous policy on Gaza, providing the financial and diplomatic support for the Israeli military to massacre, starve and forcibly expel countless Palestinians in Gaza. As a staffer in the administration, I heard reports that Harris and her staff pushed the US president to adopt a policy on Gaza that was both more humane and in alignment with international law, but were rebuffed. I saw the Harris I moved to Iowa for in her speech in Selma, becoming the first senior administration official calling for a ceasefire, even as I was disappointed that it was only for six weeks. This was reportedly an effort by Biden’s team to water down her speech. It is shameful that Biden refused to listen to Harris – or the majority of Americans for that matter. Now that Biden has stepped aside, she has the opportunity to chart her own path on Israel and Palestine. For months, the majority of Democrats and Americans, including American Jews, have supported a lasting ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. Harris must make clear that she supports using the US government’s leverage to end the bloodshed and reunite families. One clear way that she can do so is by supporting an arms embargo on offensive weapons for the Israeli military – a policy floated by Biden before he ultimately backtracked and greenlit Israel’s devastating ground invasion of Rafah. Once Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza ends, a President Harris could begin a new era in which the US government uses commonsense diplomatic and financial pressure to bring about a long-term political solution that would end Israel’s system of apartheid over Palestinians and guarantee equality, justice and safety for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

By setting herself apart from Biden’s failed policy, Harris has the opportunity to rebuild a coalition to defeat Trump that would include progressives, young people and Arab Americans among others.

More than 700,000 Democrats voted uncommitted during the primary in protest of Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza. They are a crucial part of the coalition needed for Democrats to win swing states like Michigan, Georgia and Minnesota. The policies these voters are demanding are broadly popular among Democrats and Americans writ large. Even a majority of my own community, American Jews, support conditioning arms shipments to Israel. Harris must initiate a new era in American policy towards Israel, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it is both the popular and the politically savvy popular thing to do. What better way to draw attention to the authoritarianism of Trump than for Harris to resoundly reject all authoritarianism abroad? Harris has at times fallen short of her promise to deliver justice. As a prosecutor, she put nonviolent drug users behind bars and she prosecuted parents for their children’s absence from school. She has also maintained close ties with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the rightwing lobby primarily funded by Republican donors that has endorsed election-deniers and anti-abortion extremists. If Harris is serious about “putting justice on the ballot”, she must commit to ending mass incarceration and overzealous prosecution in this country and reject Aipac’s rightwing agenda as president. If she does both, she has the opportunity to turn out record numbers of voters to enable her to defeat Trump in November.

On 20 January, I am hopeful we will inaugurate the first female president, one who was successful because she stopped playing to the allegedly movable center, and instead embraced the Democratic party’s full coalition, including progressives, young voters and Arab Americans. To win this fight, Harris must take a clear stance against unconditional support for the Israeli military. She must strive to serve the American people and listen to the majority of Americans who are pleading for an end to the status quo of violence and pave a path forward to genuine equality, justice and freedom for Palestinians and Israelis. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/23/kamala-harris-israel-palestine-policy-election

Coming down the stairs in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City in 2017, Kamala Harris saw the Western Wall and knew what she had to do.

Harris, then a California senator, reached into her pocket and pulled out a blue kippah and clips she had prepared for the occasion. She told her Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff, to bend down a bit and fastened the kippah to his head.

Halie Soifer, then Harris’ national security advisor, took a candid photo of the moment, which she says embodied Harris’ relationship with the Jewish community: The senator knew what to expect at a moment of Jewish significance.

“She prepared for it because she knew it would be meaningful for Doug,” said Soifer, who is now the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “Part of the reason that trip was so special for both of them was because it was his first time in Israel.” The trip was Harris’ third time in the country.



U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on the 59th commemoration of the ‘Bloody Sunday’ Selma bridge crossing in Selma, Alabama, March 3, 2024. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

Harris went on to become vice president and has now been catapulted to running for the country’s highest office after President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid and endorsed her.

Over the course of her life and career, she has been surrounded by Jews, from her schoolmates to her colleagues to her closest family members. That background has given Harris, 59, an easy familiarity with Jewish spaces, say those who have interacted with her. She has also encouraged Emhoff to embrace his Jewish identity as the second gentleman; for the first time, mezuzahs have been installed at the vice presidential residence, and Emhoff has taken a leading role in the administration’s efforts to fight antisemitism.

But Harris has also stirred concerns among some pro-Israel Jews. She has staked out positions on Israel’s war with Hamas, and the student protests against it, that are to Biden’s left and that are sympathetic to some of the war’s strongest critics.

Shmuel Rosner, an Israeli author and commentator, noted that Harris’ ascendance marks a generational departure from Biden — a man who has demonstrated a deep and abiding affection for Israel since the 1970s even amid criticism.

“The Americans have changed and we have changed,” he wrote on X on Monday. Referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his predecessor Menachem Begin, Rosner added, “Harris is not Biden, and Netanyahu is also not Begin. Her party is not Biden’s party.”

Harris’ Jewish supporters say her Jewish knowledge showed on the 2017 Israel trip. In her entry in the visitor’s book at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, she said she was “devastated by the silent testimonies of those who died in the Shoah,” the Hebrew word for the Holocaust not commonly used outside the Jewish community.

It showed, they said, in her references in a 2017 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to “those Jewish National Fund boxes that we would use to collect donations to plant trees for Israel,” when she was a child in the Bay Area. And it showed, they said, in the pitch-perfect impression she made of her Jewish New Jersey mother-in-law, Barb, in an appearance on “The Drew Barrymore Show” in April.

“She puts my face in her two hands and she looks at me and says, ‘Look at you! You’re prettier than you are on TV!’” Harris said, a story she has told multiple times.

More substantively, said Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a national Jewish community relations body, Harris is in lockstep with Emhoff in what has become his most prominent role, chairing a task force that developed the Biden administration’s strategy to counter antisemitism.

“It’s hard to draw a line between the vice president and the second gentleman when it comes to their engagement on some of these issues because they have been so deeply coordinated,” she said. “If you think about the Rosh Hashanah at their home, their remarks were so complementary, because they’re both so deeply engaged in this work.”

At the event last September that Spitalnick was referencing, Emhoff gave a speech outlining progress on implementing the plan to combat antisemitism, which had been launched in May 2023. Harris followed with remarks about why the work was critical.

“We are being presented with a wake up call, the blast of the shofar,” she said, referring to the ram’s horn blasted during the High Holidays. “We are dealing with very powerful forces that are attempting to wage what I think is a full-on attack against hard-won freedoms, liberty.”

In calling for attention to antisemitism and either biases, Harris has said that she often focused on hate crimes when she was a prosecutor and then state attorney general in California. She has also been the lead administration spokesperson on another issue that, polls show, animates Jewish voters: combating abortion restrictions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to repeal Roe v. Wade.

But when it comes to Israel, her detractors on the right see her as insufficiently supportive of the military campaign against Hamas and closer to the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, which has become increasingly critical of Israel. Perhaps ironically, critics of Israel on the left share that assessment of Harris — but see it as a positive.

Both have pointed to a speech Harris gave in March where she called for an “immediate ceasefire” in the conflict for at least six weeks to pave the way for a release of Israeli hostages. Biden had not used the same phrase to call for a truce.

“Biden made many mistakes regarding Israel, but he is miles ahead of Harris in terms of support for Israel,” David Friedman, who served as ambassador to Israel under the Trump administration, told The Jerusalem Post. “She is on the fringe of the progressive wing of the party, which sympathizes more with the Palestinian cause.”

Lily Greenberg Call, who was the first Jewish staffer to quit the Biden administration to protest its backing for Israel and who worked for Harris’ unsuccessful presidential run in 2020, said she was hopeful Harris would scale back Biden’s pro-Israel policy.

“She was the first person in the administration to use the word ceasefire,” Greenberg Call said in an interview. “I am hopeful, trying not to be too optimistic, because she does have ties to AIPAC, but she is in a better position to listen to a majority of Democratic voters who want a lasting ceasefire/hostage exchange. I also think she’s serious about fighting authoritarianism at home. She needs to fight it abroad. We can’t be funding it in Israel while trying to fight it here.”

Harris’ backers say she understands Israel’s security needs. On the 2017 visit to the country, Soifer recalled her viewing Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and its cybersecurity capabilities.

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, a Jewish Democratic donor and longtime pro-Israel advocate, said Harris had sustained relations established on that trip, especially with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who was then the parliamentary opposition leader. They share an interest in climate issues.

“I was with her” in 2023 “when she made an announcement of a $70 million deal between Israel and America to work on climate change,” Laszlo Mizrahi said. “I think she’s personally spoken with President Herzog more than a half dozen times.”

Laszlo Mizrahi noted Harris recently screened a documentary on the sexual violence that Hamas perpetrated on Oct. 7, when its terrorists raided Israel, launching the current war. “She came out very, very strongly” against some pro-Palestinian activists denying the rape accounts, Laszlo Mizrahi said. At the screening, Harris said, “We cannot look away.”

Just months after Harris joined the Senate in 2017, one of her first speeches was to AIPAC, where she said her first act as a senator was introducing a resolution that condemned a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel.

Her sponsorship separated her from the just-departed Obama administration, which had allowed the Security Council to pass the resolution. Another sign of her cultivating AIPAC was that she declined the endorsement of J Street, the liberal Israel lobby. (This year, J Street has endorsed Harris for president.)

“I believe that a resolution to this conflict cannot be imposed. It must be agreed upon by the parties themselves. Peace can only come through a reconciliation of differences and that can only happen at the negotiating table,” Harris told AIPAC. “I believe that when any organization delegitimizes Israel, we must stand up and speak out for Israel to be treated equally.”

Israeli officials worry that Harris has changed, pointing to her March speech, where she appeared to principally blame Israel for difficulties in delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians. The takeaway, Israeli insiders say, is that she is more susceptible than Biden to pressures from party progressives who are increasingly hostile to Israel.

“No excuses,” Harris said in the speech. “They must open new border crossings. They must not impose any unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid. They must ensure humanitarian personnel, sites, and convoys are not targeted.”

Harris’ critics also take issue with sympathy she’s evinced for the nationwide student protests against the Gaza war which, Jewish students said, created a hostile atmosphere for them and saw cases of antisemitic harassment.

“They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza,” Harris told The Nation earlier this month. “There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.”

On Monday, the right-leaning Zionist Organization of America condemned Harris for the remark. ZOA president Morton Klein said it was “unconscionable” that Harris would reject the statements but not any actions taken by protesters, which Jewish groups and students said had at times veered into violence and intimidation.

Discussing the recent protests in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Harris did condemn some campus protest activities, saying that when she was a prosecutor, she would tell police, “If there’s vandalism, I’m charging them. If there’s violence, I’m charging them, you can be sure.”

Harris’s backers say they are ready for the waves of opposition research that Republicans will deploy in trying to peel off the overwhelming Jewish majorities that have long voted for Democrats. Laszlo Mizrahi said the Jewish donors and fundraisers she knew were relieved at Harris’s elevation after weeks of anxiously wondering whether Biden would step down.

“We’ve moved from agonizing to organizing,” she said. https://www.jta.org/2024/07/22/politics/kamala-harris-backers-say-she-understands-jews-and-israel-her-critics-fear-her-stance-on-gaza

[Istanbuller]

What he should have said is that Trump was fined $83 million for defamation in the rape case and $464 million in the fraud case.

It says otherwise:

In November 2022, Carroll filed a suit against Trump for battery under the Adult Survivors Act. On May 9, 2023, a New York jury in a civil case found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation against Carroll, but found him not liable for rape. They awarded Carroll US$5 million in damages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Tr ... %20damages.

And fraud case against Trump is set in partisan Democratic state of New York.

New York AG Letitia James is known for his bias and hatred toward Donald Trump. This case is also one of reasons why Democrats fear he can take revenge on them if he becomes president.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/eli ... rump-case/

[Hakeer]

The problem for Trump is that he kept lying even after he lost the first judgment, and it ended up costing $83 million. The judge was not sympathetic to his defense. Forcible penetration with fingers constitutes rape in some states, but not New York until recently.

The evidence in the fraud case was so strong that Trump would have lost in any jurisdiction except maybe judge Cannon’s.

[Rich]

Harris has not been good at getting people to like her. Even many of her VP staff have deserted her But she's played this brilliantly. I think her plan was to win the Presidency in Biden's name and then get him to resign two years into his second term allowing her the possibility of being the de Jure President for 10 years and the de-facto President for 12. This plan required Biden to campaign for reelection and for Biden or at least his handlers to keep running the Presidency until November. If any hint got out that Harris had taken over before November it would have been a disaster.

Anyway once it became clear that Biden wouldn't make it to November, the goal then became to keep him in the race as long as possible. This was for two reasons. One was to minimise the chances of any sort of contest or challenge to Harris, to try and make sure that her inheriting the nomination was a fait accompli. The second is to minimise the campaign time. We know the longer people have to look at Harris the less they seem to like her. Her taking over from Biden, who had become a joke candidate has inevitably released a bout of euphoria for Harris amongst Democrats who are getting a Black Woman, even if she was near the last Black woman that they would have chosen given the choice but also amongst independents who want a better choice of options.

I would note that this 100 days Trump Harris election campaign could be further divided up by Biden resigning and Harris becoming President, possibly giving her another euphoria bump to carry her over the line in November.

[JohnRawls]

Its painful to watch Trump campaign trying to switch from Biden to Harris. Apparently there is really nothing to critisize her for if Trumps only idea is evil and dumb. What does that even mean? Same goes for Trumps JD Vance pick which he is apparently interested in changing due to Harris being a more threatening opponent in his opinion and Vance being not very popular.

[Rancid]

Its painful to watch Trump campaign trying to switch from Biden to Harris. Apparently there is really nothing to critisize her for if Trumps only idea is evil and dumb. What does that even mean? Same goes for Trumps JD Vance pick which he is apparently interested in changing due to Harris being a more threatening opponent in his opinion and Vance being not very popular.

Flip flop Trump.

Vance was a bad pick even before Biden dropped out. Vance is just more MAGA. Pence was a better pick because he could draw in a different group from the typically MAGA dipships. In effect, if your goal is to win an election your VP pick should be someone that expands the pool of people that would vote for your ticket. That is historically how VPs are picked. We should vote based on if the VP is right for the job, but it's often more about politcal optics.

If she swapped Vance out, I think ti would mostly work for him. Trump is somehow luckily immune to the typical rules of politics.

The reality is, Trump is a bad politician. However, the cult of personality, the (fraudulent) image he has created for himself, has managed to capture a lot of weak minded, weak willed people.... In short, simpletons. All of that, has compensated for his bad political maneuvering (like the Vance pick).

People forget that his administration was a revolving door. Like constant turnover. At any organization, when you have turnover at those levels, who gets the blamed? The Boss. Who was the boss during that Admin? Trump. However, these simpletons just don't fucking get it. This is the problem with defunding education as it has been in the US.

Democracies don't work with such a dumb population. Hence, why the Republican party and especially MAGA are a threat to democracy. It's that fucking simple, but... not simple enough for simpleton Trump supporters.

MAGA supporters are either stupid, or they actually know better, but don't care for personal reasons/gain. In which case, if they are not dumb, they are terrible humans. We see this at play right here on pofo as well.

[Rich]

So some people are saying there's nothing to criticise about Harris, that she's an excellent leader and communicator

Um interesting!

[Rugoz]

Its painful to watch Trump campaign trying to switch from Biden to Harris.

The MAGA morons on Pofo are trying hard too.

[Istanbuller]

Democrats were calling Mitt Romney a white nationalist too. The problem isn't Donald Trump. The problem is American left's dirty tactics. Accusing people being a white nationalist is Democrat's blame game.

Leftists has a problem with democracy. They want to get rid of all other voices other than theirs.