Ideas and Impressions: Trump will stop at nothing to win

Jason Moscovitz

By Jason Moscovitz

While the world watched the impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, you had to wonder if Mad magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman had it right when he’d say, through that sizable gap in his front teeth, “What, me worry?”

I can imagine Trump’s face on Mad having the same impact as Alfred E. Neuman. The look is the same. A satirical idiot is still an idiot and, guess what, Trump has graced the front cover of recent editions of Mad. Actually I had no idea Mad was still around until I Googled it.

How could baby boomers know one day that someone just like Alfred E. Neuman would be occupying the Oval Office? For me, that’s the tragedy. I grew up never believing it possible that such a flawed individual would be the most powerful person in the world.

There are those who like Trump’s “America first” politics, his support of Israel, and there is no denying how employment and American stock exchange numbers have improved since he became president. But, as Shakespeare wrote, it still smells “rotten in the state of Denmark,” no matter how you cut it.

Trump’s behaviour led to the impeachment process – even though the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate would never vote to remove Trump from office. While Democrats argued impeachment was about protecting the constitution, Republicans maintained it was about protecting the presidency from unhinged partisanship, and so went the straight-laced politics.

While experts and pollsters will sway back and forth on who won the impeachment bunfight, the impeachment cannons on both sides are loaded and ready to fire with the primaries, the nominating conventions, and the presidential election now just days, weeks and months away.

The key question for many is whether Trump can win again. For many outsiders around the world, like us looking in, it is hard to imagine Trump winning again. However, hold on, anything is possible in America.

The Democratic candidates for president who are still standing represent a political party in disarray as the Democrats seem to sorely lack the necessary policy cohesion and discipline to move forward. The candidates offering to go to war against Trump in November appear weak, or at least, no one has yet been able to stand up and lead from a position of strength.

I’ve nothing against old people – I’m one of them – but former vice-president Joe Biden is past his best-before date. Senator Elizabeth Warren may have had it, but then blew it when she couldn’t gravitate to the centre. Mayor Pete Buttigieg is an intelligent, interesting newcomer, but the question remains, is a gay president even possible in today’s United States of America? Senator Bernie Sanders is further left than Warren. Senator Amy Klobuchar shines in that crowd, but can she shine throughout the country in sufficient numbers to win the presidency?

Democratic Party candidates are just not impressive and it makes you wonder how Hillary Clinton must feel about that. What a story it would be, if, because they couldn’t do better, Democrats drafted Hillary Clinton or dragged her into another battle with the same Trump she was once friends with until he savagely nicknamed her “Crooked Hillary” and then went on to beat her in the states that counted the most in the 2016 election.

What a rematch that would be, another battle of titans Trump and Clinton. It would be electrifying entertainment, but it would also do something positive and concrete. Somehow it would be good to know if Trump was a fluke in 2016 because a whole bunch of bad things happened to poor Clinton – when bad luck, bad judgement, and a bad campaign cost her the presidency.

Trump beat her in the Electoral College. He did it by belittling his opponent. When Trump threw dirt all over Clinton, he proved how far his killer instinct could bring him in politics. History will remember that Trump bullied his way to the presidency in 2016.

Post-impeachment, Trump appears to be ready to bully some other Democrat this year. We now know this man, this president, stops at nothing. There is a scary side to Trump that goes beyond him.

And what is actually scarier than Trump are the thousands of crazed, angry Americans who egg him on at his rallies.

A View from the Bleachers: Election campaign was short on substance

Rabbi Steven Garten

By Rabbi Steven Garten

The recent federal election offered something for everyone. The left-leaning voter was offered affirmation that Canada was a progressive country as the total seats accrued by the progressive parties totalled 216, a clear majority in Parliament. In addition, the progressive parties could take pride in accumulating the majority of votes cast. Those citizens who consider themselves Conservatives could take comfort in knowing that the Liberal Party was denied a majority in the House of Commons and that the Conservative Party accumulated the most votes of any single party. Every voter had something to kvell about or kvetch about. A perfect Canadian election.

While the results may have brought comfort to many, the campaign did not. It was a campaign short on substance and long on polemics and hubris. In the end, only those motivated enough to read party platforms were offered a glimpse into the policies which might serve as the underpinnings of a governing party. One of the most notable absences among the public discourse was almost any conversation about the State of Israel or the Middle East in general. Though each party might have offered some glimpse at their approach in private meetings with the leadership of the Canadian Jewish community, publicly the topic was virtually absent from the discourse. One could hypothesize about why a Canadian federal election was silent on a fairly significant foreign policy issue, but the reality was the campaign also ignored our country’s relationship with China, Russia and even the United States. How a 40 day campaign could ignore the “bully” to the south is incomprehensible.

While our political leaders were mute on the subject of Israel those individuals running for the Democratic U.S. presidential nomination were not. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who at this writing is among the leaders in the polls to be the nominee, recently declared, “Everything is on the table.” She was answering a question about the United States response to the Israeli government’s stated policy of increasing settlements on the West Bank and annexation into Israel of the West Bank settlements.

“Right now, Netanyahu says he’s going to take Israel in a direction which is counter to U.S. policy,” said Warren. “The policy of the United States is to support a two-state solution. If Israel continues in this direction then everything is on the table regarding our response, including military and foreign aid.”

Warren joins Senator Bernie Sanders and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg as candidates questioning the long standing U.S. policy of large amounts military and foreign aid to Israel. There’s obviously a sizable possibility that this is all hollow rhetoric from the candidates, but it is part of a notable shift nonetheless. In addition to public opinion moving away from unanimous support for Israel, there have been recent legislative attempts to hold Israel accountable for its human rights abuses.

These are worrisome trends. Many of the reasons for American support have not disappeared. Israel is still the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is still the only committed ally of the United States. Israel has been a model of economic development and innovation that could offer developing countries models for self-development. It has, until recently, been a country devoted to the rule of law and justice above all.

The bipartisan support for Israel has weakened ever since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to publicly embarrass president Barack Obama by not only opposing the Iran nuclear treaty, which was his right to do, but by speaking in the U.S. Congress against it. By choosing to side with the Republican Party over and against the president of the United States, Netanyahu made the State of Israel a partisan issue. However, now we have a glimpse into what the ever-changing reality of American politics and the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East could mean for those who have unquestioned support for Israel. One should not forget that the current U.S. president raised the notion of dual loyalty, even if it was contained in a typical Trump tweet.

While we might have been happy or disappointed that only one our federal leaders spoke about moving the Canadian Embassy to Jerusalem, we might have wished that some political leader condemned the expanding settlements, or the blockade of Gaza, or rallied against the ongoing terrorism from Gaza and the expanding power of Hezbollah and Hamas. However, if we look southward to see what happens when Israel becomes part of the game of politics, we might be glad – for both Israel and our own personal security – that boring Canadian political campaigns remain boring.