The state of the unions

The New Neo Posted on by

Most people are of the opinion that the Democrats would dearly love to replace Joe Biden as a candidate for 2024. But there are various stumbling blocks and it might not be possible. One of those stumbling blocks is: what to do about Kamala?

Harris isn’t a stronger candidate than Biden and therefore can’t take his place; in fact, she’s probably an even weaker one than he is. Plus, if she’s kicked off the ticket, quite a few people are going to be angry. That may be especially true of women voters and black voters, two of the Democrats’ core constituencies.

One of the things the Democrats need is an excuse to get rid of Kamala. So far it’s been difficult to find one. But there are rumors and rumblings that one might be emerging from an unlikely source.

You may recall that, back in early February of 2023 on the evening of Biden’s State of the Union speech to Congress and the nation, there was a startling encounter between Jill Biden and Kamala Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff. In case you missed it at the time, here it is, with contemporaneous commentary:

Very odd indeed, but people explained it away. Although the presidential and vice presidential couple don’t ordinarily travel on the same plane for security reasons, it’s not as though Jill Biden and Douglas Emhoff are strangers, either. Au contraire. For example, see this article from the summer before the 2020 election, when the campaign was ongoing:

“Dr. Jill Biden & Kamala Harris’ Husband Doug Already ‘Have a Real Bond'”: “I think that their bond is about that they can genuinely like each other and have that friendship and can do it together,” Harris told PEOPLE.

Maybe the only people who know what it’s like to be on the presidential campaign trail, other than the candidates themselves, are their spouses — which helps explain how Joe Biden’s wife and Kamala Harris’ husband “already were buddies” even before joining the Democratic ticket.

“They have a real bond and that’s also very special,” Harris told PEOPLE recently, in her first joint interview with Biden since being named his running mate.

In that conversation, via Zoom only days after the former vice president chose the California senator, the pair discussed the shared values that bond them and how they’ll work together in the Oval Office even when they may disagree.

The day after the Aug. 11 Zoom call where Biden offered her a history-making spot on the ticket, Harris and Emhoff drove up to Wilmington, Delaware.

“One of the first stops was to visit with the vice president and Jill at their home, and we just hung out [with] homemade chocolate-chip cookies and just caught up,” Harris said. (Family photos were pulled out, she says, adding: “Then Joe called my in-laws, Barb and Mike, and we surprised them.”)

Speaking with PEOPLE, Biden and Harris also talked about the quick ways in which the new foursome — Biden and wife Dr. Jill Biden, a community-college professor and the former second lady; and Harris and attorney Doug Emhoff, whom she married in 2014 after being set up by her best friend — had already clicked.

… Dr. Biden and Emhoff have also been trading supportive social media messages — the de rigueur show of easy camaraderie.

…Harris said. “They were on the trail together. So what ends up happening is that the candidate spouses, they take to the road on their own and go to various places that we can’t be. So Doug and Jill did the gay pride parade together in Las Vegas. They’ve done presentations together, and they sit next to each other at debates.”

There’s more in that vein at the link. One can only imagine that the bond may have gotten stronger since then, and another part of the bond is that – because Joe Biden had been Obama’s VP for eight years – Jill could appreciate what Emhoff fells like as the spouse of a veep.

But now rumors are circulating that there’s something more going on between the two, and that their respective spouses aren’t happy about it. I think these rumors are false, but my guess is that the goal is to use this as an excuse to dump Kamala from the ticket. Emhoff will be made the bad guy, of course, rather than Jill.

It’s not the greatest of solutions to this knotty problem. But it’s rather late in the game, and there aren’t many alternative approaches in sight. It’s already April 1, after all, and there are only seven more months till the 2024 election.

Airstrike in Syria kills Iranian officials;

The New Neo Posted on by

A precision attack in Damascus hit a building located between the Iranian and Canadian embassies. It apparently killed six senior Iranian military/terrorist leaders and is widely believed to have been launched by Israel:

I am always surprised to hear that such people are having actual physical meetings, although I suppose they feel safe in a place like Damascus. I also often wonder how Israel gets word of such get-togethers; I can think of several possibilities, though.

More:

Israel would apparently like to inform Iran that it will pay a price for its attacks on Israel, despite Iran’s using surrogates to execute those attacks.

The wife of slain NYPD Jonathan Diller officer gives a stirring eulogy at his funeral

The New Neo Posted on by

Jonathan Diller of the NYPD was shot by a career criminal with 21 arrests to his name:

Diller, who left behind a wife and infant son, was shot to death by a recidivist; that is, a repeat criminal.

But this was no ordinary recidivist. In the old days, that might have meant someone who had, at the very least, spent some time in prison. Under the new rules, though, Diller’s killer, whom I will not give the dignity of naming, had an endless history of previous arrests…21 in total at last word. Nor were these inconsequential arrests for things such as jaywalking or graffiti. Instead, the killer, who was arrested with a gun in his hand and shiv carefully stowed in his rectum, was arrested for violent crimes.

In a sane society, the killer would have been in prison until he was dead or too old to commit crimes. But thanks to the demons unleashed on society by the BLM movement, the killer—a black man with a Hispanic name—was out on the streets and armed. For leftists, his race meant he was society’s victim, no matter the carnage he deliberately rained down upon those caught in his path.

Meanwhile, Trump attended ceremonies for Diller on the same day that a trio of Democrat presidential luminaries – Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama – held a fancy fundraiser in New York that raised twenty-six million dollars for Biden’s re-election:

The mood at Radio City Music Hall was electric as Obama praised Biden’s willingness to look for common ground and said, “That’s the kind of president I want.” Clinton said simply of the choices facing voters in 2024: “Stay with what works.”

Biden himself went straight at Donald Trump, saying his expected GOP rival’s ideas were “a little old and out of shape.”

Har de har har har.

And way way down towards the end of the article it mentions:

Trump was in the New York area on Thursday, attending the Long Island wake of a New York City police officer who was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Queens.

Here is the eulogy for Diller delivered by his young widow. It is an eloquent and heartrending tribute to a man who sounds as though he was a wonderful person to know and an even more wonderful person to have as a husband and father. Tragically, his one-year-old son will never know him, although he no doubt will hear about him.

It puts me in mind of other assassinations of police officers throughout my lifetime, in particular the cold-blooded killings of NYPD officers Gregory Foster and Rocco Laurie back in January of 1972. The article is long; here are some excerpts:

For someone who came of age during the height of youth culture, Greg [Foster] didn’t spend much time being young. When he turned 22, that November, he was married, with two kids, and he’d served a tour in Vietnam with the Marines. No matter how many intimidating labels stuck to him—black kid from the South Bronx, cop in the ghetto, battle-scarred jarhead—anyone who knew Greg would have described him as low-key and genial, earnest and modest, maybe a little softhearted, maybe a little square. You wouldn’t have looked at his babyish round face and sleepy eyes and guessed his resume. His wife could have told you that he was too shy to dance. She couldn’t press his uniform shirts to his satisfaction, so he ironed them himself. The squalor of the projects appalled him. He’d grown up poor, too, but his mother would never have let him run the streets dirty and half-dressed, the way kids did there.

To see [Greg Foster] with his partner, Rocco Laurie, was to be put in mind of other contrasts. Greg was short for a cop then, with a spreading waistline, and Rocco was 6’1, just over 200 pounds, a weightlifter and weekend athlete. With his strong, straight features and by-the-book attitude, Rocco must have seemed exotically all-American to people on Avenue B, someone from a picket-fenced village in the heartlands, like Clark Kent. As an Italian from Staten Island, with its old world customs and post-war affluence—a place with color TVs and unlocked doors—Rocco was from far away. He also didn’t spend much time being young. At 23, he was also married, also a Marine, also a combat veteran, also new at the 9th. Rocco and Greg were more alike than not, in temperament and perspective. Neither man’s wife was crazy about their career choices, but Greg had wanted to be a cop since before he knew when, and Rocco took the test after he decided that college wasn’t for him. Still, the now-familiar movie trope of black and white cop buddies hadn’t been seen much then, on screen or off, and the partners were eye-catching, even in a neighborhood where the street life was a carnival that never left town.

They were shot in the back while walking the beat one evening; the perps were members of something called the Black Liberation Army. But they weren’t just shot in the back:

Three Black males walked toward them. One of them wore a long black coat and another a green fatigue jacket and black Australian-style bush hat, according to an insert from “Days of Rage,” a 2015 book authored by Bryan Burrough.

After passing Laurie and Foster, the men turned and unloaded multiple rounds into their backs.

Laurie was shot a total of six times in the limbs, neck and groin. Foster was hit eight times, including three direct shots to his eyes. One of the killers — apparently caught up in the moment — danced over the bodies while firing shots into the air. Two of the perpetrators removed the officers’ guns, one of which would later be recovered after a shootout with police in St. Louis.

Foster left a young wife and two children. Laurie left a pregnant wife who later miscarried and has never remarried in all the long years since. She is still a beautiful woman. You can see her in this photo (I can’t embed and copy it, so you’ll have to follow the link), taken in 2022 at a 50th-anniversary remembrance when by my calculations she would have been in her early 70s.

RIP Jonathan Diller, Gregory Foster, Rocco Laurie, and all the other officers murdered in the line of duty.

The statue and me

The New Neo Posted on by

As most readers here are well aware, I’m a person who likes privacy. So I suppose it’s odd that I’ve put myself out there as a blogger. Of course, I’ve hidden behind that apple.

Every now and then I’ve posted a photo of myself, but always when young – either as a child or young woman. So don’t imagine that I look like that today. Time and tide …

But despite my need for privacy I couldn’t resist posting these comparison photos. The first is of a nineteenth-century sculpture at the Met called “Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii“:

“Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii” was the most popular American sculpture of the nineteenth century. According to Rogers, it was replicated 167 times in two sizes. The subject was drawn from “The Last Days of Pompeii” (1834), a widely read novel by Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton, which ends with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in a.d. 79. Rogers’s evocative portrayal of Nydia highlights her heroic attempt to lead two companions out of the burning, ash-covered city. Her closed eyes and staff allude to her blindness, while the hand raised to her ear refers to her acute sense of hearing. The destruction of Pompeii is symbolized by the broken Corinthian capital beside her right foot.

I’d never heard of the sculpture before, but I saw the following photo of it recently. The profile reminds me somewhat of ancient Greek statues. It caught my eye for a reason I think you’ll see:

The statue looked familiar although I’d never seen it before. But this is why. Here I am in my mid-twenties, dressed for the wedding of a friend:

Biden’s war against the Jews and Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

Julie Strauss Levin writes in Tablet magazine:

For some American Jews, the months since Oct. 7 have felt like a horror movie, as they watch, with increasing alarm, as our president—for whom many voted, and in whom many placed inviolable trust—seemed to, moment after crucial moment, throw Israel under the bus.

I will add that the entire Biden administration and virtually every single one of its policies and actions has seemed like a horror movie to those – both Jewish and non-Jewish – who didn’t vote for Biden. Among the non-Biden voters were one-third of the Jews in America.

However, Levin is correct that this general perception of the Biden administration as awful has gotten even stronger since October 7, due to its attitude towards the Gazan War.

The following was news to me:

… Joe Biden’s State Department chose to level the charge of sexual abuse—at Israel. Recently, IDF Brig.-Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi recounted his meeting with a senior State Department official—since identified as Jill Hutchings, director of the Office of Israeli and Palestinian Affairs—who proceeded to accuse Israel of “systematically sexually abusing Palestinian women.” The State Department’s claim was based on information from Hamas pushed by Al Jazeera—which ended up deleting the story after it proved to be fabricated.

Falling for Hamas lies again – or pretending to do so.

More:

Indeed, Biden briefly expressed empathy with Israel after the heinous attack. But since then, along with his Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden has been working at breakneck speed to undermine, if not fully impede, Israel in its existential battle against the Iran-funded Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists—a campaign that has now extended to official blood libels about deliberate Israeli campaigns of genocide, famine and starvation, killing babies, and sexual abuse—culminating in the administration’s betrayal of Israel and siding with Hamas at the Security Council on Monday. In the blink of an eye, Biden has gone from framing Hamas as “pure, unadulterated evil” to putting immense pressure on Israel to stand down.

But Levin points out that this is an old story rather than a new one:

More than 40 years ago, Joe Biden prompted one of the most famous phrases ever uttered by an Israeli prime minister. In a private session with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1982, Sen. Biden threatened Prime Minister Menachem Begin with cutting off U.S. aid if Israel did not stop its “settlements” in Judea and Samaria.

Begin replied: “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.” …

Biden has made downgrading Israel and elevating the Palestinians, while also using them as a pressure tool against Israel, central to his policy in the region. Upon taking office and despite the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits the U.S. from sending certain taxpayer dollars to the PA until it stops funding terrorism, Biden rewarded Palestinian terrorism with U.S. taxpayer monies ultimately amounting to almost a billion dollars. …

Biden knows that payments to the PA incentivize and reward terrorists and the PA’s terrorist operations; his actions reveal he doesn’t care. The same applies to Secretary of State Blinken.

Much much more at the link.

I will add that Obama was very much in this mold, and Biden was Obama’s VP back when Biden had full possession of whatever amounted to his faculties. Whether Biden is in charge now or not, these policies are entrenched in the Democratic Party. October 7 and its aftermath have only made this more obvious, because adhering to such a policy after the horror of that day reveals in sharp relief how extreme the position is.

It is also true that a few – although all too few – Democrats have broken with this policy. John Fetterman is a prominent example.

Fetterman has been a surprise on this – a pleasant one. Biden and the rest of the Democrats are not a surprise to anyone who’s been paying close attention.

Illinois crime and punishment

The New Neo Posted on by

The murder of 11-year-old Jayden Perkins has made me wonder about the punishment for murder in the state of Illinois, where the crime occurred.

In Illinois, capital punishment was outlawed in 2011 under these circumstances:

Democratic Governor Pat Quinn signed legislation on March 9, 2011, to abolish the death penalty in Illinois to go into effect July 1, 2011, and commuted the death sentences of the fifteen inmates on Illinois’ death row to life imprisonment. Quinn was criticized for signing the bill after saying that he supported the death penalty during the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, after which he defeated the Republican candidate with 46.8% of the vote.

In 2018, then Republican Governor Bruce Rauner called for the reintroduction of the death penalty for those convicted of killing police officers. This was opposed by state lawmakers and Rauner was subsequently defeated by Democrat J. B. Pritzker.

So the political angle is that a Democrat ran for governor as a death-penalty supporter in 2010, won the election, and then went on in very short order to sign legislation banning it. In the 2018 campaign a Republican governor ran for re-election advocating the reinstatement of the death penalty in the case of the killing of police, but he was defeated and Pritzker – one of the most “progressive” governors in the US – took the post and is the present-day governor.

Which brings us to this news from about a year ago:

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a new law on Friday that extends parole eligibility for people convicted of offenses when they were under 21, making Illinois the 26th state to abolish life-without-parole sentences for children.

Illinois provided parole review for most young people in 2019, but that Youthful Parole Law did not apply to people sentenced to natural life imprisonment, people convicted of first degree murder of a law enforcement officer, or people convicted of predatory criminal sexual assault.

The new law, Public Act 102-1128, eliminates the first two exceptions and, because people under 18 cannot be sentenced to natural life for predatory criminal sexual assault, it finally abolishes all life-without-parole sentences for children under 18.

It also means that most people sentenced after June 1, 2019, for offenses when they were under 21 will now become eligible for parole after 10 years for most offenses, 20 years for first degree murder and aggravated sexual assault, and 40 years for natural life sentences.

Rep. Rita Mayfield (D-Waukegan) co-sponsored the bill in the House. “Even when a crime is particularly severe, it should be recognized that a legal minor with their whole life still ahead has the potential to be reformed,” she said.

That’s actually true. It’s also true that people of any age have the potential to be reformed. But in addition, it’s true that it can be difficult to ascertain who is really reformed and who is not, and reform is neither inevitable nor common.

There is also the question of deterrence; if the penalties are weakened (such as, for example, “20 years for first degree murder and aggravated sexual assault”), the deterrent effect is weakened.

Demonstrations for Jayden Perkins? Compare and contrast to George Floyd

The New Neo Posted on by

Jayden Perkins was the 11-year-old Chicago boy murdered trying to protect his pregnant mother from a violent ex-boyfriend who’d been let out on parole. Jayden was an innocent boy attempting a heroic deed against a bigger, stronger, armed assailant.

And yet I doubt Jayden’s name will be remembered in a few months. I’m not even sure that all that many people outside of Chicago have heard of him at this point. I very much doubt millions of people around the world will be demonstrating on his behalf against domestic abuse or against early release of dangerous criminals. I doubt billions of dollars will be raised in his name by “trained Marxists” who practice grifter capitalism on the side. I doubt he’ll be buried in a gold-plated casket.

Those are of course references to George Floyd and in particular the reaction to his death. Floyd almost certainly died of natural causes related to serious heart disease and the ingestion of a high dose of drugs rather than the restraints the police used on him. But George Floyd, criminal (who by the way had been guilty years earlier of home invasion and threatening a pregnant woman with a gun, which made him more akin to the man who killed Jayden Perkins than to Jayden himself), has been lauded and elevated to near-sainted and a cause, and why? Because there were cops to blame, and in particular because there was a black/white angle.

Never mind that actual killings by police of black suspects who are not armed and threatening or otherwise trying to kill police (for example, with a motor vehicle) are vanishingly low. It is a cause that can be made to suit political purposes. The death of Jayden Perkins cannot. All the people involved – the victim and his family as well as the perpetrator – are black. As such, it is much more typical of violent crime, which is disproportionately black on black. That means it is of little political use.

How much money has been raised to help Jayden’s family? There’s this, although that information is from March 18. But I doubt there’s been a whole lot in comparison to the astounding amount of money donated in Floyd’s name.

Here’s a description of Jayden:

Organizers from Peirce Elementary School, the Friends of Peirce group, the Smith & Turner Family and Gus Giordano Dance School have started a fundraiser to honor Perkins’ memory and to support his family during this difficult time.

“Jayden was an exceptional young man, respected by his peers and admired by his teachers. He excelled academically, earning straight A’s and consistently making the honor roll. He was also deeply involved in extracurricular activities, participating in cross country, football, and the arts. Jayden had a passion for performing and theater, and he had the lead role in several school plays, including “Finding Nemo” at Peirce Elementary,” the fundraiser reads.

RIP.

[NOTE: A fairly irrelevant personal note is that I lived in the Chicago area for a while and took dance lessons at the Gus Giordano studio, from Gus himself. I recall him as a nice guy.]

Canadian law infringing on Jewish ritual slaughter is challenged

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the situation:

Jewish organizations are taking the federal government to court to challenge new rules they fear spell the end of kosher animal production in Canada.

In a statement of claim filed earlier this week in Federal Court, the applicants seek to strike down new Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) rules requiring that non-stunned animals be subjected to cognitive tests to ensure they’re irreversibly unconscious before being processed.

Kosher killing does not involve stunning animals first, whereas non-kosher commercial killing does.

[Jewish groups] say the effect of the rules will eventually end kosher slaughter in Canada because the CFIA’s rules have drastically slowed down the practice, which they say is already humane. Some slaughterhouses in Canada have already stopped producing kosher meat because it has become uneconomical under the CFIA’s new requirements.

In typical non-kosher abattoirs, cattle are usually rendered unconscious via a powerful blow to the head from a bolt gun, then are hung up and have their necks slit, and are drained of blood until dead.

In kosher slaughter, or shechita, animals are killed by trained shochetim who use smooth, razor-sharp knives to sever the animal’s throat in a single, uninterrupted motion before letting the animal bleed out. It is commonly believed that the method is painless and at least as humane as the stunning technique, although Jews believe it is the more humane method because the animal is rendered almost immediately unconscious.

“It is applicants’ position that with shechita the massive bleeding and rapid drop in arterial pressure caused by the complete severing of the trachea, oesophagus, carotid arteries and jugular veins leads to near instantaneous unconsciousness,” the plaintiffs argue in the statement of claim.

Rabbi Saul Emanuel, director of the MK Kosher Certification Agency, which is also a plaintiff in the suit, said that stunning animals violates Jewish dietary laws, as they need to be alive, healthy and alert before being slaughtered.

While the CFIA permits licensed abattoirs to slaughter non-stunned animals, the new rules require processors to subject each animal to cognitive tests, particularly by tests on their eyes or checks for arhythmic breathing, before being hung and drained.

Bolt-stunned animals, the suit alleges, are not subjected to the same scrutiny as non-stunned animals, and the stunning process results in some animals surviving and suffering as they are skinned alive. The plaintiffs argue that shechitah’s hands-on method ensures animals are irreversibly unconscious before being processed.

A joint statement from The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA,) MK and COR maintains that kosher slaughter is humane, and they have the scientific studies to prove it.

That part about what sometimes happens to stunned animals conjures up a James Agee story I read when young, “A Mother’s Tale.” It terrified me. You can find it here. It almost made me into a vegetarian – almost, but not quite. But it seems to me that kosher slaughter is at least as humane as non-kosher slaughter.

This article sheds further light on what’s going on, and includes a historical note that one of the first acts of the Nazis when they came to power in Germany was to ban kosher slaughter:

The process is well underway and already one-third of abattoirs in Canada have stopped producing kosher meat. The kosher certifiers and their representatives had been working with the Canadian government to find a solution, including a recent meeting in Ottawa, but according to the application, “…those efforts have proven fruitless.” …

Speaking of blows, seal clubbing remains legal in Canada. The new regulations ending shechitah are, ostensibly, being put forward as a measure protecting animal welfare, however, selectively singling out Jewish slaughter as an odious treatment of animals has a long and ugly history, intimately intermingled with international antisemitism. …

Modern European antisemitism was, and continues to be, associated with bans on shechitah. As reported in the Times of Israel, last month the European Court of Human Rights upheld a ban on shechitah in Belgium. …

The Canadian shechitah issue is also different in practice from European iterations in that it does not affect Muslims. In Europe, a ban on shechitah is almost always accompanied by a concomitant ban on Halal, which uses a similar technique in ending an animal’s life. This dual ban has allowed Europe to claim that its various proscriptions of shechitah are not anti-Jewish. … [T]he Muslim community has been a bulwark whenever there have been threats to end shechitah [in Europe]. The Canadian regulations, however, offer an additional loophole in that they mandate methods that make shechitah impossible, but allow Muslim ritual slaughter to continue unabated.

The greatest disconnect in the war against shechitah is that the methodology of Jewish halachic slaughter is precisely designed to prevent pain and suffering to the animals involved in the process.

Whatever the motives behind the move to hamper kosher slaughter, the effect may be to drive away many Orthodox Jews from Canada. Or, I suppose, cause them to become vegetarians.

Political change: straws breaking camels’ backs

The New Neo Posted on by

In my recent post about Dershowitz saying that he really might stop voting for Democrats because of the Biden administration’s stance on Israel in the Gaza war (in particular the US’s abstention in the UN), a number of people in the comments wrote that they saw him as caring more about Israel than about all the other things Democrats are doing to destroy our country.

I think they might have had a point if the interests of Israel and of the US were at odds here. They are not, however. Dershowitz also made that plain when he wrote that it’s a “terrible decision both for us and for Israel.” He might even have added, “and for the Western world.” Because that is also true. And also, “for humanity.”

That’s what has caused such a powerful reaction for Dershowitz and so many others, including many non-Jews who previously had been moderate Democrats.

What’s more, Dershowitz has written extensively and strongly in recent years against what Democrats and Biden have been doing on a host of other topics. He also defended Trump in his impeachment trial in Congress, at great personal cost.

The “dual loyalty” or “higher loyalty” charge is an old one against Jews. In this case it is especially inappropriate.

Dershowitz has opined on a myriad of questions and issues over the years that support conservative positions. I’ve written about many but certainly not all of them; you can see the list here. No, he’s not a conservative or even a Republican and doesn’t support the position of the right down the line. But he’s been more courageous in defending positions that are essentially conservative than a lot of Republicans have, and the majority of those positions have had nothing to do with Israel. He is strongest on anything that has to do with liberty and law.

One glaring exception, however, is when Dershowitz defended a cause that was anti-liberty: his statement that vaccine mandates are okay in certain circumstances. Dershowtiz said that there is no inherent legal right to refuse a vaccine if the government required it in order to protect others in situations of grave danger, but he later said he was not in favor of such mandates for the COVID vaccine, especially once it was proven that it didn’t protect against transmission.

Dershowitz has been one of the most prolific and thoughtful writers in the US for many decades on a host of issues. But until now he’s also been a Democrat, something that puzzles a great many people on the right and seems contradictory. However, I’ve noticed for many years that he’s been edging closer and closer to repudiating his Democrat affiliation and making a clean break. He hasn’t done it quite yet, though – not even over the UN abstention concerning a ceasefire – although he’s been tantalizingly close. What holds him back from making the full break? I believe it is mostly what I discussed in this post, and is summarized by my oft-stated observation that “A mind is a difficult thing to change” – particular in terms of long-term political affiliation.

I assume you’re familiar with the saying “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” When I was very young, I misunderstood it and thought it refered to the sort of “straw” with which I was most familiar: a drinking straw made of paper. I pictured such a straw on a camel, and why it would break the beast’s back was completely puzzling to me. A few years later I learned it was about a straw of the haylike variety, which made even less sense rather than more.

And then I finally learned what the saying really meant, which was that a huge pile of straws can be placed on that camel’s back and then at a certain point a single straw more will be too much. It will be the last straw, the final straw. For Dershowitz, there obviously has been a long line of disillusionments, disappointments, and disagreements with Democrats, and at some point he might actually say “enough!” and his Democrat affiliation will be broken

Dershowitz lives in a state where his defection from the Democrats wouldn’t really matter in terms of the vote: Massachusetts is thoroughly blue. That’s not the issue, of course. It’s more a question of conscience. I recall hearing him say some years ago (can’t find it now) that he stays in the Democratic Party in order to try to reform it from within. I think that may have been true for a while, but I believe part of what he’s wrestling with now is that he’s given up on having much effect on a party that’s been spinning ever leftward and more and more distant from the principles Dershowitz holds dear.

Here is what Dershowitz said a while back about voting for Obama’s second term. Note that back then the alternative to Obama was Romney and not Trump. Romney was an easier alternative for Dershowitz to contemplate:

Why am I focusing on Dershowitz so much? I do so because I think he’s emblematic of the struggle many people go through in wrestling with political change. His struggle is just more public. I don’t think most people are politically all one thing or another. There are hundreds (or maybe thousands) of elements that combine to make up a political position, and how we vote ends up being a result of which side weighs heavier in the balance scale. But early and habitual political affiliation, as well as the environments in which we live, also play a role.