Why Does Anyone Want To Be Mayor of New York?

As a public Max Rose fan, I was happy to see he's apparently bouncing back from his 2020 re-election defeat and pursuing a run for mayor of New York City. The re-election defeat was disappointing, but it should not be a career-ender -- along with Joe Cunningham (SC) and maybe Kendra Horn (OK), Rose's 2018 win was probably among the biggest upsets of the last midterm and was always going to be difficult turf to hold onto once the blue wave inevitably receded. So I'm glad he's getting back on the horse, though I suspect it will be a crowded field and (to the extent anybody cares what I, a non-New York, thinks) I'd want to give everyone a chance to make their case.

But really, my main reaction when I read Rose's announcement was to wonder why anyone would want the job of New York City mayor? From my vantage point, the mayor of New York appears to the official home base of political no-win situations. There are a million-and-one interest groups, a barely functioning bureaucracy, all the challenges facing any urban center (but bigger, because New York), all with just enough influence to be blamed but not enough to actually hold responsibility.

I mean, look at de Blasio. I remember when he first ran for the post, he had a progressive-populist left (remember when the NYPD literally turned their backs on him? That'd be progressive gold if it happened in 2019 instead!). Now, six years into his term, everybody hates him. He almost impresses in the degree to which he's forged a cross-city, cross-ideology, cross-everything coalition united around the core conceit of despising Bill de Blasio (the pandemic isn't helping things, but this dynamic predates that). De Blasio's predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, was rich enough that essentially nothing mattered about his tenure, but it certainly didn't end up helping him one whit when he ran for President this year. And before that we have of course Rudy Giuliani, who managed to take a gift-wrapped political present as "America's mayor" and parlay it into perhaps the most embarrassing presidential campaign of my lifetime (and following that ... well, we all know where that story goes). Who on earth looks at that history and thinks "me next!"?

To be clear: I'm glad that there still are talented figures who want the job. It'd be far worse if they didn't; a place like New York needs and deserves smart, ambitious politicians who are willing to tackle the myriad problems it faces as the biggest city in America. And there's an alternate universe where mayor of New York is considered a real prize.

But boy oh boy, count me as glad I'm not one of the candidates for the job. Whoever ends up emerging out the other side as the next mayor of the Big Apple, wish them luck, because I'll bet they need it.

Assorted Super Tuesday Thoughts

As Super Tuesday slides into regular Wednesday, the race looks quite a bit different than it did just a week ago. Joe Biden won at least nine of fourteen states in play today -- Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Texas, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Minnesota (and is ahead in Maine, though it's still too close to call). Sanders won his home state of Vermont as well as Utah, California, and Colorado.

Oh, and Michael Bloomberg won American Samoa.

So where are we now? Is this a Biden coronation? Wherefore my beloved Elizabeth Warren? And did anything interesting happen downballot?

• Obviously this was a really good night for Biden. Early in the evening I thought people might be overstating just how good it was by over-weighting the absolute whupping Biden handed out in Virginia. But no: this was a really good night for Biden. It wasn't a complete knockout blow, but he basically ran the table on "surprises". He won all the states that were even close to "toss-ups", and at least a few which were though to be strong Sanders locales. And while Sanders had the misfortune of having his better states be further west (and thus reporting later), Biden winning Texas takes the wind out of the sails of Sanders' emphatic victory in California.
• The Black community is not a monolith. But overall, Biden is creaming Sanders among Black voters. That's just the truth. Sanders has improved on his numbers in the Black community since 2016, but not by a lot, and in states like Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia ... that's going to leave a mark.
• So is Sanders dead in the water? I don't think so. First, remember last week when everyone was thinking Sanders had it basically sewn up? Things change quickly. And to the extent the race consolidates down to Biden versus Sanders -- well, I think Biden might start with an edge in support, but I think Sanders can clean his clock in a debate context. There's still a lot of room for movement here.
• That said, I do think Sanders' theory of the case has been severely damaged today. Yes, he's crushing it among young voters margin-wise -- but he doesn't seem to actually driving greater turnout. Indeed, surprisingly enough, we're seeing big turnout increases in places where Biden cleaned up. Virginia voter turnout nearly doubled from 2016 to 2020. South Carolina surged too. The thesis of Broockman/Kalla paper (go Bears!) -- that Sanders' path to victory in November relies on not just winning big among the youth but getting them to actually show up to the polling place, and that's a dodgy bet -- seems more and more plausible.
• It's a particular mood where, anytime a particular Democratic candidate seems to be getting traction, I feel a wave of despair and pessimism about their chance of winning the general election. When Sanders was winning, I was gloomy about his November prospects. Then the race opened back up, and I felt a brief sense of relief -- until I thought about Biden as the nominee and immediately was re-enveloped in a feeling of doom. And lest you think this is just a partisan plea for Warren, on the rare occasions I felt any possibility that she might win the nomination, I immediately started despairing about the general.
• Quite a few Sanders partisans who last week were loudly insistent that raw plurality vote wins were the only thing that matter and if you disagree you hate democracy are oddly quiet this evening. Just kidding: they're not quiet -- they're just now loudly saying things about how moderate consolidation around Biden is its own form of cheating, without even a nod at the obvious change in position.
• What were the biggest upsets of the night? Biden winning Massachusetts wasn't on anyone's radar. But I might say that -- even with Klobuchar's endorsement -- Biden picking up Minnesota might be a bigger surprise. Sanders did really well here in 2016, and right up until Klobuchar dropped out the line from the Sanders camp was "she's only staying in the race to block Sanders!"
• With all due respect to American Samoa, Bloomberg basically made no impact on the race today. He's apparently going to "reassess" his campaign tomorrow. I will say his team is good at making ads, so I hope Bloomberg continues to dump money into blitzing Trump over the airways.
• Elizabeth Warren comes in third in her home state, and is only going to cross the 15% viability threshold in Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, and maybe Minnesota. She'll pick up a few more delegates here and there in congressional districts where she overperformed, but overall, she's pretty well toast. And even the "contested convention" strategy seems difficult to pull off credibly when your best performances during the race are a big stretch into third place.
• I predict Warren drops out by the end of the week and endorses Sanders. I also predict that the Sanders Twitterati will respond by saying basically "too late, snake". Then they'll wonder why her endorsement didn't really move the needle (they will finally conclude that it's Warren's fault).
• What's going on downballot? The race I was watching most closely was the Democratic primary in the Texas 28th congressional district, where Rep. Henry Cuellar -- easily one of the worst Democrats in the House -- was facing a stiff primary challenge from Jessica Cisneros. Right now, with about 33% reporting, Cuellar is leading by 5 points. I tend to have a pretty high bar for supporting anti-incumbent challenges, and this was one I backed whole-heartedly, so I'm very disappointed.
• In the California special election to fill ex-Rep. Katie Hill's seat (CA-35), the big question is who will face Democrat Christy Smith in a run-off. Smith has 33% in a highly fractured all-party primary, leading the pack. Ex-Rep. Steve Knight, whom Hill defeated last cycle, is down eight points to fellow Republican Mike Garcia in the race for the second spot. Unfortunately, combined with the various lesser Republicans, the total GOP vote in the primary is well over 50%, signaling a tough general election fight for Smith. On the other hand, Cenk Uygur right now has less than 5% of the vote, and it is frankly sinful how much pleasure that gives me.
• Speaking of Uygur, there are a couple of other true sociopaths running (I mean, there are many, especially on the GOP side, but I'm focusing on Democratic primaries here). 

• Maria Estrada -- the virulent antisemite who was last seen camping out in front of the houses of Nevada Democratic Party officials screaming about rigged elections -- is running in a rematch against California Assembly speaker Anthony Rendon (Estrada got an "Our Revolution" endorsement in 2018, but I haven't seen any indicator they're backing her this time around). Rendon's currently beating her by a 2:1 margin, but since they're the only two candidates both automatically advance to the general. 

• Back in Texas, DSA member Justin Lecea decided wishing cancer upon Barack Obama and actually (((triple parenthesesing))) Jewish critics were the keys to victory in a primary challenge against incumbent Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro. Well, only the early vote is in right now it seems, but Castro is thrashing Lecea 93-4.

Who Will/Should Be the Democratic VP Nominee?

With Joe Biden's resounding victory in South Carolina, political observers can spend a few more days pretending like this primary field is anybody's ballgame before Super Tuesday re-confirms that Bernie Sanders will be the Democratic nominee. So in this narrow window of faux-potentiality, why not ask the question: Who will each Democratic contender nominate as their VP? And who should be their nominee?

Bernie Sanders
Who it will be: Elizabeth Warren.
Who it should be: Tammy Baldwin.

The first big point of potential conflict between Sanders and his base will come when he picks a VP nominee, as he'll be under immense pressure to select a "unifying" figure and they'll be on sharp watch for a centrist fifth column. Sanders' uneasy, at best, relationship with the Democratic establishment limits his options -- there are only so many high profile Democrats he trusts, and most of them are simply double-downs on his own electoral profile.

Elizabeth Warren will seem like an appealing option as a "unity" pick -- she's long been floated as a bridge between the establishment and the insurgents anyway, and she's by far the highest-profile party member whose at least arguably ideologically in his corner. Plus, I think Sanders knows that he needs a woman as VP. But as an outreach gesture towards the center of the party Warren (and I say this as someone who voted for her) is about as stingy as Sanders could get. And depending on how long she stays in the race his base is unlikely to forgive her perssssstance. Instead of being a unity candidate, Warren might again be caught in the middle as the worst-of-all-worlds choice.

By contrast, Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin has sufficient gravitas to be a viable VP pick and has solid progressive bona fides while not being alienating to the center. Most importantly, she's kept a relatively low profile this primary campaign, so nobody on either wing of the party is conditioned to hate her. And the fact that she's from a midwestern swing state that Sanders will target hard is a not-insubstantial bonus.

Joe Biden
Who it will be: Stacey Abrams
Who it should be: Stacey Abrams

Biden announced early on that he wanted Abrams as his VP, and its easy to see why: she's a young, energetic Black woman who has unifying appeal across party constituencies and strong appeal in the areas Democrats are looking to grow in. Abrams herself has largely stayed out of the primary fray, and it's far from clear that Biden is her first choice, but I don't think she would turn him down if he was the nominee.

Mike Bloomberg
Who it will be: Kamala Harris
Who it should be: Lucy McBath

Having been hammered on his record on race, Bloomberg might think that lining up with the most prominent African-American woman in elected office right now might help assuage skittish Black voters going into the general. But Harris never really caught on with the Black community, and if your weakness is on race generally and racial injustice in law enforcement specifically, Kamala "IS A COP" Harris may do less for you than you'd think.

Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) would be a stronger choice. Gun control is Bloomberg's signature issue, and since there's no way for him to run away from it come November, he may as well lean into it, and McBath's personal story (her son died after being shot in an incident of gun violence) is a natural fit. McBath herself already endorsed Bloomberg, and while she's taken flak for allegedly having her endorsement "bought", if Bloomberg's the nominee frankly anyone who he chooses is going to face that accusation -- so it might as well be someone that endorsed him early.

Elizabeth Warren
Who it will be: Julián Castro
Who it should be: Julián Castro

If my Twitter feed reflected real-life, Warren would be the nominee in a landslide, but if my Twitter account reflected real life Castro would have at some point risen above 2% in the polls. In any event, Castro quickly endorsed Warren after he dropped out and they clearly have a good relationship with one another and a mutually-congenial approach to politics. Castro's youthful dynamism pairs well with Warren's wonkishness, and he also benefits from having dropped out early enough to avoid being hated by large numbers of people.

Pete Buttigieg/Amy Klobuchar

To be honest, even for purpose of this exercise I can't imagine them winning, so it's hard to imagine who they'd pick. Cory Booker could be a solid choice for either one -- Klobuchar could use someone to round off her sharper edges and Buttigieg cannot pick a White guy. Booker is a bucket of positive energy and a good team player, and while he doesn't do a ton to appease the Sanders Sib crowd, I can't think of any VP pick that either Klobuchar or (especially) Buttigieg could make that could mend that rift.

I have heard folks suggest, only half-joking, that Klobuchar and Buttigieg jointly would make a decent all-in-on-the-midwest ticket. There's no way that Klobuchar would serve under Mayor Pete, but I can imagine she might be fine with him being her subordinate. Just think of how many opportunities she'd have to throw a stapler at him!

Post-New Hampshire Thoughts

New Hampshire is in the bag, and it's a win for Bernie Sanders. That makes him one for two, or two for two, depending on how you count. Let's go with 1.5 for two. And second place goes to none other than South Mayor Pete Buttigieg -- the Iowa Caucus winner (or "winner" -- again, I'm just not going to go into it). Third place, in a huge late surge, was Amy Klobuchar, who rounds out the pledged delegates winners. Fourth and fifth were Warren and Biden, respecitvely.

So where is the race now? My assorted thoughts:

• The biggest story is, of course, the Klobucharge. Namely, that people have finally settled on "Klobucharge" being the correct term. Indeed, as Eric Muller observes, this is just the tip of the iceberg: there's laying on the Klobucharm, flying off the Klobucharts, watching opponents get Klobucharred....

• We're so starved for hot takes that "the winner of the evening was the guy who won the evening" never satisfies. After all, Bernie beat Pete Buttigieg by less than two points in a state where he obliterated Hillary Clinton four years ago, and they actually earned the same number of delegates. Is that really good news? Answer: yes, because the moderates are still fractured and it's really hard to see Buttigieg consolidating the vote while there's time for it to make an impact. Sanders is now the definite -- though not overwhelming -- favorite.

• That said, the other big winner definitely is Klobuchar, who I think probably has positioned herself as the moderate candidate to beat. But does she have the resources and time to really launch in other states? Does she have any significant basis of appeal in communities of color? I'm doubtful -- which is another reason why this was a good night for Bernie.

• On the one hand: It's strange how we make all this noise about how unfair it is that the Democratic primary begins with two states that have virtually no POC voters, then write campaign obituaries after just two states with virtually no POC voters hit the polls. On the other hand: Joe Biden looks like toast, and his last stab at relevancy may be to play kingmaker among the remaining moderates. My guess is if he passes the torch to anyone, it will be Klobuchar.

• Tough night for my candidate, Elizabeth Warren. Getting the Castro endorsement may well have been prescient in the worst way: just like with Castro, my entire Twitter feed loves her, and just like with Castro, that love sadly is not translating to significant real world impact. She's not yet DOA, but she's in a tough spot. Sad.

• Two drop-outs: Yang and Bennet. I think a lot of Yang's supporters go to Sanders. As for Bennet's voters, well, you'd have to ask Michael Bennet because I'm pretty sure he's the only one.

• There were also reports -- quickly retracted -- that Tom Steyer was dropping out as well. This was the only time anyone has thought about Tom Steyer in the past month.

• While everyone else has been distracted, Michael Bloomberg is quietly rising in the polls based on the irresistible grassroots force of having literally infinity money to spend on advertising. But what happens when that force hits the immovable object of "Bloomberg is a sexual harasser whose signature political program was police harassment of Black people"? I imagine Bernie will start lighting him up on this sooner rather than later -- but until we actually see it, it's hard to know what will happen.

• Every year, political commentators breathlessly ask "could we have a brokered convention?" And every year, actual knowledgeable observers roll our eyes and say "there will never be a brokered convention." And yet ... could we have a brokered convention? Most of the "Sanders is the front-runner" case right now is based on the moderates dividing up the vote and allowing  Sanders to continue skating to narrow plurality wins based on his high floor/low ceiling. But Democrats don't have any winner-takes-all states, so even if Sanders keeps "winning" pluralities he's not amassing a delegate majority or anything close to it (the New Hampshire delegate tallies right now are Sanders 9/Buttigieg 9/Klobuchar 6).

• A brokered convention would be a disaster. Dis-as-ter. It's almost impossible to imagine Sanders winning it -- with the possible exception of Warren, none of the remaining heavies seem likely to have delegates itching to back him. But can you imagine how Sanders Sibs will react if they have a plurality of delegates going in, won the most states, and still lose the nomination? Hell, they barely accept it as legitimate when they lose the normal way. It will be Dems in disarray on steroids, except this time it will actually be true. A brokered convention might well rip the party apart.

• The only way Sanders wins the nomination in a brokered scenario is if his delegates credibly threaten to shoot the hostage (in this metaphor, the hostage is America, and shooting it means sitting back and letting Trump win), and they just might do it, which means threatening to do it just might work. Either way, it's a nightmare.

David's 2020 Endorsement: Elizabeth Warren! (Plus: Likes and Dislikes!)

I've been keeping quiet about who I'm backing in the 2020 Democratic primary. I mean, I guess I came out for Booker earlier on, but that was with the self-conscious knowledge that I was just delaying my actual decision until he inevitably dropped out. It actually worked pretty well, since one of my key motivators is "not getting so invested in one person that I get mad if they don't win", and being on team Booker meant avoiding a lot of drama for the first infinity months of this never-ending primary season.

However, the time has come to plant my flag. And so the coveted David Schraub endorsement goes to: Elizabeth Warren!

In a field with many great candidates, I think she aligns closest to both my ideological values and my practical considerations for what a good President needs. To wit: she's a smart, New Deal liberal technocrat with good ideas and good instincts for finding and managing talent. I think she has the smarts to inspire good policy innovations and the savvy to actually move the ball forward in implementing them.

But when it comes right down to it, there are things I like and dislike (or at least am concerned about) for all the candidates. So if you want to follow my logic in making your decision, here's my current appraisal of the major remaining players in the Democratic field (with the important caveat that my main commitment is to vote for the Democratic candidate, no matter who it is, and be happy about it).

Elizabeth Warren
Likes: I already mentioned it above: smart, wonkish New Deal-style liberal with technocratic instincts. That's my jam. She has experience both as a thought leader coming up with ideas and a practical leader implementing policies on the ground -- a good President has to have a good handle on both. I also think that, of all the candidates, she's best positioned to unite the "progressive" and "establishment" wing of the party after the primary is over.

Dislikes: Many of the things I liked about Warren are the same things that attracted me to Hillary Clinton. And I'm obviously feeling a bit burned about how that turned out. She's going to face a boatload of misogyny (e.g., the assumption -- ludicrous if you listen to her -- that she's "shrill"), and that's on top of the easy "Massachusetts liberal" attack line.

Bernie Sanders
Likes: I actually do think a lot of his policy proposals are realistic -- at least in concept (getting them through the Senate, on the other hand....). He wrote a pretty darn good essay on Jewish issues in Jewish Currents. And I think he has more general election viability than a lot of other pundits believe -- his brand of anti-establishment fire is definitely on trend right now, and it is a myth that "independent" and "centrist" are coterminous categories.

Dislikes: All candidates have bad actors among their supporters, but Sanders definitely stands out here and not in a good way. A Sanders victory will embolden a cadre of actors who've embraced a leftist iteration of the paranoid style in American politics, a development I think would be outright dangerous for the future of American progressivism. And while Sanders can't be held fully responsible for the actions of his supporters, he's also shown shaky judgment on the people who he, personally, has decided to surround himself with. That's actually a big voting issue for me, since a large part of what a President does is picking other people to elevate to positions of power.

Amy Klobuchar
Likes: There's something to be said for a purpling-state Democrat who has utterly annihilated her Republican opposition every election she's faced. My lean-Republican midwestern in-laws love her, for what that's worth. I think she's smart and competent -- and if those sound like backhanded compliments, I don't mean them to be.

Dislikes: I may chuckle at some of the abusive boss stories, but it really is inappropriate and raises questions about how she'll attract good talent as President. The fact that she's been bragging on the campaign trail about a conviction of a kid who may well be innocent is not the best look. Plus, I think we can push in a more progressive direction than what she's offering.

Joe Biden
Likes: The ultimate "return to normalcy" candidate. 95% of his campaign pitch is "don't you miss the Obama years?", and I won't lie -- that sings to me a bit. He's also another person who I think will do well on the "staff positions with good people" metric.

Dislikes: He's just a bad campaigner. I'm sorry, but it's true. Any time he's run a national race he's imploded, and I think he'll do it again. His Iowa strategy of "repeatedly tell people they should vote for someone else" was a predictable disaster. Biden just feels like someone whose time has passed.

Pete Buttigieg
Likes: Another entry in the "basically smart guy" camp. Twitter notwithstanding, a lot of people seem to find him quite likable, and a fresh face. Fresh faces can be good.

Dislikes: Call me crazy, but I think politics is a job and I don't think one should jump from "Mayor of South Bend" to "President of the United States." Also, as a coastal-born American, I cannot stand this whole "real American heartland guy" shtick. Utter lack of support in non-White communities also is a turn-off -- though it'll be interesting to see if that changes after Iowa.

Mike Bloomberg
Likes: He seems to scare Trump, and genuinely get under his skin. I don't know if infinite money = unstoppable election campaign, but Bloomberg certainly could test the hypothesis. He's shown leadership on a couple of issues that matter to me -- guns and the environment, mostly. And again, I think he's someone who would pick competent people to surround him.

Dislikes: Not really interested in backing a random billionaire. And -- as one would expect from a recent Republican -- he's got a lot of problems on the issues. Stop and frisk is the obvious one, but he hasn't been good on trans rights either. Oh, and he has a history of harassing women, which the country may not care about but I do.

Tom Steyer
Likes: Of the billionaires, he seems to be better on the issues. So as against Bloomberg, he's a more progressive way of having "infinite money" to spend on the race.

Dislikes: More so than any other candidate running -- even Bloomberg -- Steyer is clearly just buying his way into political viability, and that makes me feel he's a bit of dilettante. For example, unlike Bloomberg, he has no actual political experience. Again, politics is a job, and I want a candidate who has experience holding office.

The Socialist Revolution Will Be Led By the Billionaire Financiers

One of the nice things about antisemitic conspiracy theories encompassing everything (even mutually contradictory things) is that one can blame the Jews for anything.

One of the weirder things about antisemitic conspiracy theories encompassing everything, even mutually contradictory things is that one can somehow manage to knit them all together in a single person.

So it is that NRA chieftain Wayne LaPierre informs a pulsing CPAC crowd that socialism is coming on the backs of ... George Soros. And Michael Bloomberg. And Tom Steyer. (Also, they're all backed by the ghost of Saul Alinsky -- because let's throw in another Jew for good measure).

Soros, as you may recall, grew up under Communist oppression and has devoted a substantial portion of his life to bringing market values to former Eastern bloc states. Bloomberg is perhaps America's most prominent independent political figure, apparently holding down the "Democrats are too liberal but socialism sounds great!" political bloc. Steyer is a run-of-the-mill Democratic Party donor. Each of them made their wealth in ways that are, shall we say, not typically part of the socialist revolutionary gameplan. And none of them have shown the slightest interest in anything but bog-standard liberal (or in Bloomberg's case, Wall Street centrist) political engagement.

No matter. It makes perfect sense to say the billionaires are the heralds of the socialist revolution ... if said billionaires are Jews. That's the logic here. One doesn't need a dogwhistle if one has a bullhorn.

Atzmon-esque Islamophobia

Gilad Atzmon is a fringe anti-Semitic thinker, who spends much of his time savaging Jews for alleged schemes of world-domination and racist parochialism. For the most part, he owns this identity (calling himself, among other things, a "proud self-hating Jew"), but occasionally he tries to kick up some dust around it. One way he does this is by saying that when he attacks "Jewishness", he isn't referring to all Jews per se but rather a style of thinking or behavior that is wrong or immoral, which may be done by Jews or non-Jews (so, for example, he might say George W. Bush is behaving Jewishly). It's not a good faith argument (Atzmon's argument is more or less far-right hyper-colorblindness and his definition of "Jewishness" is anyone who maintains any sort of group identity. But he doesn't apply this "standard" universally, only to persons he dislikes), but even taken on its face it'd still be anti-Semitic -- using "Jew" as a pejorative is inherently hostile to that group "even if" one means to encompass non-Jews under its ambit (compare calling someone a "Jew" because they're allegedly cheap).

It's no shock to anyone that Robert Spencer is a racist bigot against Muslims. But his latest column might as well be taken from the Gilad Atzmon playbook, asking whether New York mayor Michael Bloomberg "is secretly a Muslim". Now, Spencer agrees that obviously Bloomberg isn't literally a Muslim. But, he says, by taking authoritarian actions (Spencer is referring to the big soda ban, rather than something like, I don't know, barring minority religious practices), he's basically "acting" Muslim. "Muslim" is a referent not to Muslims, necessarily, but to a class of behavior that Spencer finds distasteful (which he imputes to the vast majority of all Muslims but also to basically anyone else he disagrees with). That behavior is then transmuted into a sort of totalitarian impulse that desires to squelch liberty and dominate the world. So it's basically Gilad Atzmon with a new label. He can't even distinguish himself based on target profile -- after all, Spencer's targeting Jews too (who -- though probably not supporting soda bans -- tend towards the sort of liberalism that Spencer has painted a target over).

This isn't really all that surprising -- bromides about haters being haters aside, polling indicates that the best predictor of anti-Muslim sentiment is anti-Jewish sentiment. Spencer is just another practitioner of far-right hatred that, while casting itself as Islamophobic, really has its sights on essentially any minority group.

Today in Mosquedom

A ton of news cropped up regarding the WTC mosque/community center. This post will be about half-substantive, half-roundup.

First, I can't think of a better place to start than Mayor Bloomberg's stellar speech on the subject. It really hits home that the question here is one of our deepest commitments to religious liberty.

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.

“For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetimes, as important a test. And it is critically important that we get it right.

“On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ (Bloomberg’s voice cracks here a little as he gets choked up.) ‘What beliefs do you hold?’

“The attack was an act of war, and our first responders defended not only our city, but our country and our constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.

Damn the fuck straight.

Meanwhile, I wish I could give a cookie to the AJC for not opposing the building of the mosque, but you know what? I can't. This is such an open and shut case that the mealy-mouthed, ham-handed decision by which the AJC -- after agonizing deliberation -- deigned to give its approval is worth nothing to me. This passive-aggressive "questions have been raised" formulation, wherein any Muslim in the public sphere must carry a punch card indicating the last time they condemned Osama bin Laden, is incredibly pernicious and must be countered at all costs. I bow to no one in opposing radical extremists of all stripes and denominations -- Islamic ones included -- but Muslims don't have an a priori obligation to show themselves to be peace-loving. Like all other persons, we ought to assume they fully buy into the panoply of human rights protections and human values until they, personally, show themselves otherwise. The burden is on those making the allegation that this group is aligned with Islamic radicals. It is a burden they cannot meet.

Of course, that pales in comparison to the contempt I feel for Abe Foxman right now, and the tragic little tears he's crying about how everyone is ganging up on the poor ADL and not recognizing for its "nuance" ... ugh. Gag me. That was decidedly not the lesson Foxman needed to learn. The lesson he needed to learn is that pissing away decades of credibility opposing religious bigotry is going to meet with backlash. As it should.

That being said, I'm not sure the ADL's position on this is fairly traceable to its position on Israel. In fact, I think Beinart misunderstands the proper role the ADL should take with regards to Israel, for the ADL is not a domestic Israeli human rights organization. To be sure, it should oppose religious discrimination anywhere and everywhere, including in Israel. But the ADL, as an international organization, is properly concerned with the way that anti-Israel animus in the global community both inspires and is inspired by anti-Jewish sentiment. I reject the notion that the fact that Israel is a place where Jews have power completely obviates any and all discussion of anti-Semitism in the context of Israel.

The far-right ACLJ has announced it is filing a legal challenge seeking to reverse the decision of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission declining to designate the site a "landmark", thus allowing the mosque to proceed. The suit must be for show, because I can't imagine even the ACLJ believes it will win an "abuse of discretion" argument, and effectively their suit can be summarized as haling the NYCLPC into court for not deciding to violate the Constitution (Cf. Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993)).

Finally, the backers of the have publicly thanked their Jewish backers. You're welcome, but honestly? Just doing my duty as an American.