This fantasy joke from NY Times reporter Thomas Friedman in a Op-Ed……
And?
Vice President Kamala Harris just got no respect……
And?
Rep. Liz Cheney is NOT a sympatic Republican for Democratic politics…..
She just seems to hate Donald Trump….
Freidman is trying to emulate Israeli push/pull national unity politics….
This is NOT the way American politics works ….
As I’ve noted before, one reason I pay very close attention to the Israeli-Palestinian arena is that a lot of trends get perfected there first and then go global — airline hijacking, suicide bombing, building a wall, the challenges of pluralism and lots more. It’s Off Broadway to Broadway, so what’s playing there these days that might be a harbinger for politics in the U.S.?
Answer: It’s the most diverse national unity government in Israel’s history, one that stretches from Jewish settlers on the right all the way to an Israeli-Arab Islamist party and super-liberals on the left. Most important, it’s holding together, getting stuff done and muting the hyperpolarization that was making Israel ungovernable.
Is that what America needs in 2024 — a ticket of Joe Biden and Liz Cheney? Or Joe Biden and Lisa Murkowski, or Kamala Harris and Mitt Romney, or Stacey Abrams and Liz Cheney, or Amy Klobuchar and Liz Cheney? Or any other such combination. Before you leap into the comments section, hear me out.
In June, after an utterly wild period in which Israel held four national elections over two years and kept failing to produce a stable governing majority, the lambs there actually lay down with the lions.
Key Israeli politicians swallowed their pride, softened policy edges and came together for a four-year national unity government — led by rightist Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and left-of-center Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid. (They are to switch places after two years.) And for the first time, an Israeli Arab party, the Islamist organization Raam, played a vital role in cementing an Israeli coalition.
What forced everyone’s hand? A broad agreement that Israeli politics was being held hostage by then-Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who resisted putting together any government that he would not lead, apparently because, if he didn’t lead, he could lose his chance at some kind of immunity from prosecution on multiple corruption charges that could lead to prison.
Sound familiar?….
No, this won’t happen (for one thing Biden is probably not running), but if he wants a comparison to parliamentary politics and power-sharing deals, perhaps a scenario could unfold where Democrats and some Republicans combine to make Liz Cheney Speaker of the House?
Still unlikely of course, but things like that have happened several times in various state legislatures.
Friedman should also realize that according to the words Joe Biden spoke yesterday, that anybody who does not agree with him on everything is on the side of George Wallace, Bull Connor, and Jefferson Davis.
So, today’s Democrats are not too much about national unity.
Plenty of Republicans you vote for call us Democrats Commies for daring to want slightly higher taxes on billionaires.
So please spare us with your pearl clutching in regards to the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
Please name one Republican I have ever voted for who has called a Democrat a “commie.”
Please provide a name and a link of them saying it.
and the direct comparison would have to be a Republican President that I voted for (there’s been one…though I voted for three Republican Presidential nominees that lost)
It sounds like you are trying to stay that Biden is on the same level as an Alan Keyes, and I am not at all sure Keyes ever called Democrats a Commie. I never supported Keyes in his Presidential campaigns.
This IS a fantasy piece…..
But good for a smile…..
Harris can’t be too happy with this
He also presented scenarios with her at the top of the ticket.
But always the Democrat at the top of the ticket.
I never called Republicans fascist (fashie?), nor do I remember anyone else doing so (except for David Duke) — not until Donald Trump, Steve Bannon & co. came into state power…
Kids sometimes teased me in school by saying I was a “commie.” I responded that I was not even a Democrat.
Funny thing, CG:
A rock-solid Republican language teacher at my prep school, who also coached track and is now the school’s archivist/historian, would rib me by muttering “Commie” sotto voce.