Opinion
The hoopla surrounding Kamela Harris needs a cold dose of grassroots/election protection reality. Amidst a prevailing aura of certain victory, Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election by 3 million votes. But we still wound up with Donald Trump in the White House.
If that history repeats itself, we will never, as Trump promises, “need to vote again.”
So whatever her policy shortcomings---and there are many---Kamala Harris cannot win a 2024 election that is not conducted primarily with hand-marked and digitally scanned paper ballots…many millions of which must be sent out and back by a United States Postal Service that desperately needs a new boss.
A Trump defeat also can’t happen without a massive grassroots campaign whose progressive donations will fund tens of thousands of dedicated organizers working at the local level, with community democracy centers and door-to-door relational campaigning. To win, this kind of campaigning must divert much of the money the Democrats would otherwise squander on media buys.
Does anyone in Israel in a position of power truly understand what the expressions “human rights” and “rule of law” really mean? Developments over the past ten months in Gaza would suggest “No,” that Israel’s government, its legal system, and its constitution exist solely to empower the state to do whatever it wishes, which in the current version includes the genocidal elimination of the Palestinian people and the theft of their land and property to be incorporated into a Greater Israel that plausibly will include the already annexed Syrian Golan Heights as well as all of historic Palestine running from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
But even given the fundamental dishonesty over the Jewish state and what it represents, there is something truly frightening about some recent developments which suggest that the long running United States government pander to Israel and its presumed interests have poisoned the chalice, making Americans absolutely complicit in the Israeli war crimes and other assorted crimes against humanity. And the level of control over Washington by Israel virtually guarantees that it will only get worse.
Great orators in history would not have been recognized as such if their words carried no value. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is neither a great orator, nor did his speech before a joint Congressional session on July 24 have actual worth. It was an expression of his desperation, if not defeat, on all fronts.
This is not new. For years, Netanyahu has served the role of a social media meme. During his United Nations General Assembly speech in September 2012, the Israeli leader displayed a bomb diagram to fan the flames for another Middle East war.
Soon after the Gaza war began 10 months ago, a prominent newspaper columnist denounced Congresswoman Cori Bush under a headline declaring that “anti-Israel comments make her unfit for reelection.” The piece appeared in the newspaper with the second-largest readership in Missouri, the Kansas City Star. Multimillion-dollar attacks on Bush followed.
Bush’s opponent, county prosecutor Wesley Bell, “is now the number-one recipient of AIPAC cash this election cycle,” according to Justice Democrats. “Almost two-thirds of all his donations came from the anti-Palestinian, far-right megadonor-funded lobby group.” The Intercept reports that “AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has gone on to spend a total of $7 million so far to oust Bush” in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary in her St. Louis area district.
The right-wing Republicans . . . the Christian nationalists . . . have hoisted their flag: Project 2025, a.k.a., Project Hell on Earth, and it’s coming to a future near you. Or so they believe (and hope).
Chinese diplomacy has done it again.
By hosting a historic signing of a unity agreement between 14 Palestinian political parties in Beijing on July 23, China has, once more, shown its ability to play a global role as a peace broker.
For years, China has attempted to play a role in Middle East politics, particularly in the region's most enduring crisis, the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
A coalition of civil rights groups including the Ohio NAACP, the Ohio Unity Coalition, the Ohio State Conference of the NAACP and the Ohio Organizing Collaborative today responded to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s statements on the Citizens Not Politicians ballot measure. They released the following statement:
"This amendment is incredibly important because Ohio is still one of the 10 most gerrymandered states in our nation,” said Petee Talley, executive director of the Ohio Unity Coalition. “In 2022, residents in several communities were gerrymandered into districts to dilute their voting power. One such gerrymandered in Toledo, Ohio, resulted in roughly 38,000 black citizens in SD11 in Lucas County being disenfranchised. The best way to make the districting process fairer is to get politicians out of it, so they can’t stack the deck in their favor just to gain and keep power.”