(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Will the U.S. response to what's happening in Israel and Gaza hurt Biden's 2024 election chances? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-29 Political polling is trickier than ever these days, and often seemingly counter-factual. Despite reports that inflation is going down, employment is at record levels, and the economy is growing, polls seem to keep showing that Biden and Democrats are not getting credit for it. People seem determined to believe what they want to believe. (Not to discount the media framing that has it that “It’s always bad news for Democrats.”) So, following the horrific atrocities perpetrated by Hamas in Israel, the Israeli counter-response is something that risks taking the ancient formula “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” to extremes. It’s not made any easier given that the policies the Israeli government has been carrying out for years under Netanyahu facilitated the Hamas assault — or given the longer history of the region. What will this mean for Biden in 2024? There are so many sides to this. Support for Israel in U.S. politics has always been problematic. The country is a democracy, which makes it exceptional in the region. The history of the Jewish people including the holocaust, makes the idea of a homeland where they can be secure pretty much an existential question with no simple answers. Israel is a U.S. ally and dependent on U.S. Support — but only to the point that it serves Israeli priorities. The U.S.S. Liberty incident has been suggested by some as Israel’s choice to sink the ship because it was it was intercepting Israeli radio transmissions about an impending attack by Israel that would expand the war at the time. Israel will not put U.S. interests above what it sees as its own best interests. Although a bipartisan vote to support Israel passed in Congress, there are a couple of contradictory elements at play. One is growing concern, anger even, on the Left at Israeli actions against Palestinians that threaten to approach genocide. That Hamas is using its own people as human shields is intended to create that response. There’s no easy way to target Hamas and no one else — but that’s the way things seem to be playing out. There’s also the response on the Right. The GOP embrace of white Christian nationalism manifests in part as growing anti-semitism. It’s also complicated by the hold Evangelicals have on the party. Their support for Israel is contingent on the belief that the second coming of Christ requires Jews and Israel in order to bring about Armageddon. Ultimately the Jews either all accept Christ or suffer eternal damnation. (Someone should ask Mike Johnson what his position is on that.) It’s not just happening in the U.S. either; The NY Times reports China’s efforts to make diplomatic inroads in settling the conflict are accompanied by rising anti-semitism in Chinese social media. Iran’s support for Hamas and other militant groups in the region is further complicated by Russia. Although the two countries have always had a certain amount of tension in their relations, Russia’s dependence on Iran to evade sanctions and supply arms for its war in Ukraine make them allies of a sort. Both of them also have common interests as petro-states. A Couple of Observations The Middle East has long been a minefield for political hopes, and not just in the U.S. Will Biden be able to chart a course between Israelis and Palestinians, between the Left and the Right, that will not cost him critical support in 2024? David French at The NY Times is a rare thing — a conservative columnist who gives the President his due with Joe Biden Knows What He Is Doing: ...In 2012, when I was a partisan supporter of Mitt Romney, there was one message from President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that I thought made the most succinct and persuasive case for his second term. It was delivered most memorably by then-Vice President Biden, of all people, at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. He said that Obama had “courage in his soul, compassion in his heart and a spine of steel,” and then Biden delivered the key line: “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.” While I believed that Romney would do a better job as president than Obama, that sentence affected me so much — not just because it happened to be true but also because it resonated with two of a president’s most vital tasks: preserving prosperity at home and security abroad. A war-weary nation longed for a clear win, and a people still recovering from the Great Recession needed economic stability. The killing of bin Laden was the greatest victory of the war on terrorism, and the preservation of General Motors, an iconic American company, resonated as a national symbol as important as or more important than the number of jobs saved. French gives Biden credit for avoiding the temptation to respond moment by moment to the news cycle. He’s faced with challenges greater than anything Obama or Trump faced. He’s had to deal with the pandemic, steering the economy to recovery, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the threat of China, and now the conflict in Israel. French is giving Biden high marks, and concludes with this: If Biden can persevere in the face of the chaos and confusion of war abroad and polarization at home, all while preserving a level of economic growth that is astonishing in contrast with the rest of the world, he’ll have his own story to tell in Chicago, one that should trump the adversity of any given moment or the concern generated by any given poll. If Biden can do his job, then he can take the stage in Chicago with his own simple pitch for re-election: In the face of disease, war, inflation and division, the economy thrives — and democracy is alive. Let’s not neglect considering the alternative either. Digby warns that protest votes against Biden for whatever reason have an unavoidable consequence: electing Donald Trump. She’s put together a compilation of Trump video clips talking about the conflict. Here’s just the captions on them: Trump: All the resident aliens that joined in the pro jihadist protests this month.. Come 2025, we will find you and deport you. Trump on the Israel-Hamas war: "Every single life that is lost in this conflict is on the shoulders of Hamas and Hamas alone. And I think you have to really add in the word Iran."He then rails against Biden giving humanitarian aid to Palestinians. Trump on murdered Israels: "They'll be avenged even beyond what you're thinking about" some audible laughter from the Republican Jewish Coalition crowd when Trump claims he would've had a deal with Iran a week after the election had it not been rigged Trump brags about cutting off all aid to Palestinians while he was president Trump brags about his Muslim ban and promises to restore it, saying "we didn't want people coming into our country who really love the idea of blowing our country up." Trump promises to cancel student visas of Hamas sympathizers That’s the alternative to Biden; no one is even close to taking the nomination away from Trump at this point — and even if there was someone on the GOP side, there’s pretty much zero probability that they’d be an improvement on Trump. The selection of Mike Johnson to be Speaker of the House says all anyone needs to know about the Republican Party these days. Granted, the November election is just over a year away. Do I really need to acknowledge much can happen between now and then? Digby closes with this: [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/10/29/2202359/-Will-the-U-S-response-to-what-s-happening-in-Israel-and-Gaza-hurt-Biden-s-2024-election-chances Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/