Don't Sacrifice Our Democracy on the Altar of Religious Differences or Middle Eastern Policy

American Elections Should Be About Making America More Just and Equitable

Democrats should campaign on and vote for policies that benefit Americans, and that means focusing on reducing the outlandish disparities in wealth and income that plague our society. We will have an opportunity to make progress in that direction in 2026, but we will be able to take advantage of that opportunity only if we maintain a razor-sharp focus on the issues that really matter. Our president is a master at finding issues that divide American liberals, and we must beware of falling into his traps, which have the potential to destroy American democracy and set back the cause of social justice for decades.

One of Trump's traps is his promoting of division over antisemitism and Israel's war in Gaza. Democrats are deeply split over the war. At one extreme, we have people who treat any criticism of Israel's policies as unacceptable antisemitism, and at the other extreme, we have people who deny the right of the State of Israel to exist at all. In between, we have a wide range of views. Trump is exacerbating the division among Democrats by his attack on antisemitism on university campuses. His hope is that we will be too divided among ourselves to mount effective congressional campaigns in 2026. If we fail to do so, we run a real risk that Trump will succeed in destroying American democracy and the rule of law.

Democrats Must Stick Together To Win

We must not be taken in. We must stick together.  Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are on the verge of destroying both democracy and the rule of law in the United States, but Democrats may prevent that from happening by winning the midterm elections next year. To do that, we will have to unite around a progressive program that benefits all working people in our country. Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Zohran Mamdani are pointing the way. We can unite around the domestic policies that they and others have proposed.

Take a Leaf From Obama's Campaign Strategy

The victory of Mamdani in the mayoral primary election highlights both the possibilities and the dangers. He has proposed concrete policies to tackle real problems in New York City. I may not agree with all of his proposals, and in any case, policies that work in New York may not work in the rest of the country. However, Mamdani's ideas can form a basis for discussion among liberals. 

On the other hand, Mamdani is Muslim and takes a pro-Palestinian position on the war in Gaza, and he risks splitting the party. To avoid that, he should take a leaf from Obama's campaign strategy. Obama did not stress his blackness in his presidential campaigns. He ran as a president for all the people, and that strategy turned out to be a winning one.  Similarly, a Democratic candidate for national office in 2026 or 2028 should run as a candidate for all of us.

We Have a Lot To Do

We have much to do in our country. We must adopt environmental policies to minimize the effects of climate change. We must save Social Security and Medicare. We must find a way to fund post-secondary education in a way that does not saddle young people with crushing debts. We must find a way to provide affordable childcare. And we must find ways of mitigating the huge disparity in the distributions of wealth and income is destroying our democracy.

If we lose in 2026, we will lose what may be our last opportunity to make progress on these issues, and we may lose our democracy as well. So, we need to get together to win. We know that we will never agree on every issue, but we should not sacrifice the well-being of our own people on the altar of the Gaza War or the bombing of Iran. We should fight this election on the grounds of domestic policy.

ICE: Our First Government-Sponsored Criminal Gang

What is a Law-Enforcement Agency?

ICE is a criminal gang, not a law-enforcement agency. We Americans are very familiar with law-enforcement agencies. We have local and state police forces, and we have the FBI. So, we know what a real, American law-enforcement agency looks like, and we know how American law-enforcement agents behave. 

A law enforment agency follows well established procedures. When a law-enforcement agent approaches citizens on the street, in an office or at their homes, the agent can be recognized easily. Typically, the agent is wearing a uniform. He/she wears or carries a badge or other identification and shows it to the citizens. The agent is never masked. The agent immediately explains why he/she is approaching the citizens, and if they are being arrested, they are informed of the reason why, and they are informed of their rights. Law-enforcement agents do not kidnap people.

What is a Criminal Gang?

In contrast, members of criminal gangs display none of those characteristics. They don’t present identification. They are often masked. They rarely wear uniforms. They do not explain why they are approaching the citizens, and they do not inform citizens of their rights. Criminal gangsters do not make arrests using established procedures. Instead, they kidnap people.

ICE Acts Like a Criminal Gang

The agents of ICE do not behave like law-enforcement agents. They behave like criminal gangsters. We know that because we have all seen numerous reports of ICE raids in the streets, in homes, in factories and on farms. ICE does not follow the established procedures for arresting people. Instead, the people are simply kidnapped.

We often say that if a creature looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, we should treat it as a duck, and we should apply this saying to our understanding of ICE. It looks like a criminal gang, talks like a criminal gang and acts like a criminal gang. So, it most likely is a criminal gang, and the fact that it is sponsored by our government means only that for the first time in our history, our government is sponsoring a criminal gang.

Plenty of Insanity to Go Around

The war between Israel and Iran has grown out of the insanity that affects both sides. By “insanity,” I mean “persisting in acting in ways that are based on false ideas or that are detrimental to the actor.”

Iran's Insanity

Iran's insanity is its investment of huge resources in a project that cannot be completed and that is detrimental to its people. The government of Iran has made it clear for decades that at the core of its foreign policy is the complete destruction of the State of Israel, and in the service of that policy, it has invested billions of dollars in the development of nuclear weapons and in the support and training of groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen.

The money that has been invested in that way might have been invested in the development of the country and the improvement of the lives of its people. Iran is a big country with lots of fertile land and other natural resources including oil. Iran’s government might have chosen to use its oil revenue to increase the country’s industrial capacity and diversify its economy, but it has not done so. Instead, it has chosen to spend the money to destabilize Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen and to put pressure on Israel. That policy has brought on the international sanctions that have impoverished the Iran and its people. The policy has also made enemies of the Sunni Muslims of the Middle East led by Saudi Arabia.

Iran’s government has not destroyed the State of Israel and is very unlikely to achieve that goal, but it has impoverished the country and given strength to antigovernment movements within Iran.

Israel's Insanity

Irael’s insanity is its government’s insistence on clinging to an unachievable goal and an incorrect view of the nature of the Palestinians’ struggle. The unachievable goal is the goal of recreating the ancient Kingdom of Israel by integrating Gaza and the West Bank into the State of Israel without making the territories’ people into full citizens of the State of Israel and without damaging Israel’s democracy.

That goal cannot be achieved. If the occupied territories were integrated into Israel in a way that preserved Israel’s democracy, the Palestinian residents of the territories would have to be made into full citizens of the State of Israel, and that would mean that state would cease to be a Jewish state and would become a binational state. If the occupied territories were integrated into Israel in a way that did not make the Palestinians full citizens of a binational state, it would become an apartheid state, and Israel’s democracy would be destroyed

The incorrect view is the view that Palestinian attacks on the State of Israel are nothing but expressions of old-fashioned antisemitism. It is the view that Palestinians want to kill Jews just because they are Jews. This view refuses to accept that the Palestinians have their own national aspirations. The Palestinians don’t just want to kill Jews. They want to have their own country or at least to be full citizens of a binational state.

Ignoring the national aspirations of the Palestinians is convenient for Israel’s government in the short run, but it has led to a disastrous and unending struggle, which has damaged Israel’s democracy and its standing in the world. It has also prevented Israel from making peace with its neighbors and given Iran the excuse it needs to continue to support Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Israel's attempt to eliminate Iran's nuclear weapons program is certainly justifiable in the light of Iran's clear commitment to the destruction of Israel. Nevertheless, Israel's government's commitment to the unachievable goal and the incorrect view have created a context in which other countries can support Iran and condemn Israel. Moreover, Israel's inability to deal sanely with the Palestinians guarantees that the attack on Iran can provide the country with only a temporary increase in security

So, there you have it. There is plenty of insanity to go around. The two countries are killing each other's citizens, although doing so is not in the long-term interest of either country.

How Can Democrats Win?

In last week’s post, said that to win the elections of 2026, take back control of Congress and regain our working class support, Democrats should focus on kitchen table issues rather than on issues of racial equity or gender equity. In this post, I want to expand on that idea and explain what I mean.

What is the Problem?

We live in a very inequitable society in which an outlandish share of the national income goes to a tiny group of wealthy people. Making the distribution of income more equitable is the most important political task of our time, and in order to do that, we need to understand the real nature of the problem. To put it bluntly, the problem is that a few rich people have most of the wealth, while millions of hard-working people own practically nothing. Note that I did not say “a few white people” or “a few white men.” I said “a few rich people.” It is true that most of the rich people are white men, but it is also true that most white men are not rich. It is true that working-class women of all races are among the most oppressed members of our society, but it is also true that there is a substantial number of women who are billionaires. Likewise, it is true that black people earn less than white people on average, but it is also true that that we have a substantial number of black billionaires. So, the problem is not the redistribution of income from male workers to female workers or from white workers to black workers. The problem is the redistribution of income from the owners of capital to the working class. 

Defining the problem in terms of race or gender serves the interest of the rich because that definition sets the workers to fighting with each other instead of getting together to work for their shared interests. That is why, for example, our current president has made a big deal out of dismantling DEI programs. He wants working-class Americans to think that by doing that, he is helping them, and he hopes that they will not notice that he is also dismantling programs like Medicaid on which those supporters depend. 

We Democrats must focus on improving the lives of working-class people of all races. We must fight against the idea that improving the lives of black people means transferring income from white workers to black workers or that improving the lives of women means transferring income from men to women. Instead, we must focus on doing things that improve the lives of all working people. Here are a couple of examples. There are many others.

Policy Proposals

Affordable Childcare

One way to improve the lives of all working people would be to provide tax-supported, affordable childcare. Today, many families are or could be two-income families, and many women are single parents. Childcare takes a huge bite out of the incomes of those who can afford childcare, and those who cannot afford it are condemned to poverty because they cannot get decent jobs. Affordable childcare would immediately put a substantial amount of money into the pockets of millions of working-class people.

In addition, affordable childcare would help to reduce the income gap between white people and black people because black people are more likely than white people to be in the working class. Black people have on average a small fraction of the household wealth that white people have, and black people earn less than white people at every level of education. So, black people would benefit disproportionately from a program of affordable childcare. It would give them a leg up in their struggle to improve their economic situation.

Baby Bonds

Baby bonds are another possibility. The idea is that each baby born in the United States would receive at birth a treasury bond that would be held in trust for the child until he or she reaches adulthood. The amount of the bond would depend on the wealth of the child’s family. Children born into wealthy families would receive smaller bonds than children born into poor families. Darity and Hamilton, who originally proposed the idea in 2010, suggested that children in the lowest wealth quartile might receive bonds worth at least $50,000, while children in the highest wealth quartile would receive a much smaller amount.

Each bond would be held in trust for the child until it reached adulthood, and the interest earned would be reinvested. When the child became an adult, the money would then become available to pay for education, to purchase a house or for any other approved purpose. While the bond was held in trust, it would appreciate considerably in value. A $50,000 bond earning 4% interest would be worth a little over $109,000 when the child reached the age of 21.

The point of giving children baby bonds would be make equality of opportunity more real in the United States by making it possible for a working-class child to obtain professional training without incurring crippling debts. A person without crippling debts can use her income to accumulate wealth that can be passed on to her children thus allowing her to join the patrimonial middle class.

Respect

However, no policy positions will help us to regain our majority unless we start to show respect for working-class people and rural people. The Democratic Party has become the party of the patrimonial middle class, and that comes with cultural baggage. First, we Democrats are by and large well educated, and we look down on people who are less educated. Second, we are mainly urban people (because the jobs for educated professionals are in cities), and we look down on rural people and on rural ways of living.  

Our attitudes are visible to everyone. They shine through in places like Hillary Clinton's description of Trump's supporters as "a basket of deplorables" or Barack Obama's remark about people clinging to guns or religion or racism. People hate and resent being looked down on, and they vote their feelings. We will never regain our majority until we come to understand that our obvious sense of superiority bears a large share of the responsibility for the rise of Trump. If we want to win, we will have to deal with our own prejudices, and we will have to nominate a candidate who can talk with working-class and rural people as equals. 

Let's get busy! We have a lot to do

Trump's Coalition is Collapsing

The Budget Bill is Causing the Collapse of the Republican Coalition

The coalition that defines the modern, Republican Party and that brought Pres. Trump to power is collapsing because of internal contradictions that cannot be resolved. This collapse presents an opportunity for the Democrats, and we must recognize it and seize it. Trump came to power by harnessing populist rhetoric to a business-friendly political program. He claimed to be the voice of working Americans who had been oppressed by “elites,” but his real, political program has always been to lower taxes and reduce regulation in the service of those very elites. He used racism and xenophobia to appeal to a segment of the American people, but he never intended to deport the entire agricultural work force on which many of his Party's financial supporters depend. Thus, he created the coalition of billionaires and workers that elected him.

The contradictions inherent in this coalition could be ignored or concealed during the campaign for the presidency. As a candidate, Trump could say anything, and his supporters heard what they wanted to hear. However, his “big beautiful” budget bill has brought the contradictions into the open. He cannot pass the tax cuts that his billionaire supporters want without either cutting services that his working-class voters depend on or greatly increasing the deficit. The deficit hawks in Congress are forcing the Republican Party to make a choice, and individual Republican senators are choosing sides.

On the one hand, we have Sen. Josh Hawley, a populist conservative supporter of Pres. Trump saying, that cutting Medicaid is “morally incorrect and politically suicidal.” On the other hand, we have the business conservative Sen. Ron Johnson who thinks that the proposed cuts are insufficient. He wants to cut even more. These two views cannot be reconciled, and many voters are worried that important benefits would be cut if the bill passed.

Other Policies Are Causing Pain To Voters

In the meantime, Trump’s signature tariff policy is is causing pain in rural communities. Farmers are furious because they have lost their export markets because of other countries’ retaliation against the tariffs. Rural areas are deeply divided over Trump's policies. Urban communities are also suffering. Several major American companies including General Motors, Ford, General Electric, John Deere and Coca Cola have announced that they will move production away from the United States. Tens of thousands of jobs are at risk along with the survival of communities that voted for Trump in 2024.

Trump's deportations of immigrant workers are also causing heartache among his supporters. As one business owner in Florida said after his workers were arrested in a raid, "Lost a lot of good men today. I like Trump, but this isn't what I voted for." His feelings were echoed by the people of Kennett, Missouri when they learned that a well-liked member of their community had been arrested.  One member of the community said,

We don’t feel what’s happened to her is right.... She’s a very upstanding citizen in our community. Her kids are into the sports, she’s in the church, and she’s a very upstanding citizen as far as I’m concerned. I think she deserves to be free with her kids.”

Republicans Are Worried About the Coming Elections

Republicans in Congress are worried about the 2026 elections. How can they assure their reelection? Should they side with Hawley to preserve the Medicaid on which their voters depend, or should they side with Johnson? If they do either of those things, will Trump take revenge in the election? 

Their decisions will affect the Republicas' control of Congress, which rests on very thin margins in both houses. A couple of wins in swing districts would hand control back to the Democrats and doom the president’s legislative program. Those who support the “big, beautiful bill” have only a few months to pass it before the 2026 election season begins, but they do not have the votes to pass it in its present form.

Each senator or congressperson must decide how to respond to this situation. The political climate of each state or congressional district is unique, and each candidate must pay attention to the climate in his/her district. So, we should expect that the party will split deeply, and the alliance that has defined Trump’s party will collapse. Some will stick with Trump. Some will follow the path of Johnson. And some will follow the path of Hawley.

Principled Legal Conservatives Are Anti-Trump

An article appearing in the New York Times describes a friend of the court brief filed by a national group of conservative legal scholars opposing Trump's tariffs on constitutional grounds.  These scholars believe that Trump's actions do violence to the Constitution, and their brief says,

The powers to tax, to regulate commerce and to shape the nation’s economic course must remain with Congress,” the brief said. “They cannot drift silently into the hands of the president through inertia, inattention or creative readings of statutes never meant to grant such authority. That conviction is not partisan. It is constitutional. And it strikes at the heart of this case.

 A prominent legal scholar is quoted in the article:

You have to understand that the conservative movement is now, as an intellectual movement, consistently anti-Trump on most issues....

How Can Democrats Profit From the Republican Split?

Democrats can profit from the split by focusing on winning back our working-class voters. To do so, we must focus voters' attention on kitchen table issues. I don't pretend to know what the winning combination of issues may be, but here are a couple of suggestions. First, affordable childcare. Working families are mainly two-income families, and reducing the cost of childcare would put money directly in their hands. Second, stability of health insurance coverage. Most working people get their health insurance from their jobs, which means that the coverage is lost when the jobs are lost. The federal government should pick up a worker's share of the cost of his/her health insurance when he/she loses a job. That would greatly increase the financial security of every working American.

We should pay special attention to rural areas. Polls indicate that rural people still generally support Trump and the Republican Party, but rural communities will suffer deeply from Trump's policies. We should remember that votes are not cast by statistical aggregates. They are cast by individuals, and an aggregate may conceal deep differences among its members. We should go after every vote that we can get.

We should campaign on pocket book issues rather than issues of racial equity or gender equity. Those issues are important, and Democratic office holders should continue to promote equity. However, a political campaign is too short to change the way people feel about the issues surrounding equity. No one is going to decide to vote for a Democrat for the first time in his/her life solely as a result of listening to campaign speeches. On the other hand, while we cannot change voters' minds, we can shift the focus of their attention. We can get them to see other issues as more important. We can get them to see that the oppression of all working people by a system that is rigged against them is wrong, and we can show them that they do not have to accept being oppressed.  As I argued in an earlier post on this blog, progressive policies that benefit all working Americans will also increase equity and opportunity in our society,

Let's get busy!

A Dangerous Fake: Trump's Fight Against Antisemitism

It's a Fake

Trump’s fight against antisemitism at American universities is fake. It is also dangerous to all Americans but above all to Jews and to members of other minorities. The fight against antisemitism is fake because Trump’s Republican coalition includes some of our country’s most virulent antisemites. NPR has reported that several Trump officials have ties to antisemitic extremists. Trump’s dependence on antisemitic allies has been clear at least since his refusal to reject the views of the marchers in Charlottesville who chanted “Jews will not replace us.”

Trump can appear to oppose antisemitism only by conflating Jews with Israelis and claiming that opposition to Israel’s policies in Gaza is antisemitism, which it is not necessarily. It is true that anti-Israel speech often shades over into antisemitic speech, and some supporters of the Palestinian cause are undoubtedly antisemitic. It is also true that many Jewish students have been subjected to antisemitic harassment at various universities. Only a few days ago, a Jewish couple were shot to death as they were leaving a Jewish event in Washington, D.C. Life for American Jews has indeed become dangerous. Nevertheless, opposing Israel's policies in Gaza does not necessarily make you an antisemite, but claiming that it does gives Trump an excuse for limiting freedom of speech, for attacking faculty members and for deporting foreign students. (He needs to deport foreign students to maintain the credibility of another of his fakes.)

Trump rails against supporters of the Palestinian cause, but he never rails against the danger of home-grown, American antisemitism. He works to suppress pro-Palestinian speech at Columbia and Harvard, and he deports foreign students who express pro-Palestinian views. He even promotes the firing of Jewish professors or students who support the Palestinian cause. On the other hand, he never proposes suppressing the antisemitic screeds on social media that encouraged a man to kill Jews in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and he uses antisemitic tropes himself in his own speeches. Trump’s fight is really against freedom of speech and of the press. It is aimed at suppressing any expression of opinions that are opposed to his ideas or policies. The defense of Jews is only an excuse.

It's Dangerous

This fake fight against antisemitism is dangerous for Jews because, as The Guardian has reported, many of those targeted by Trump are in fact Jewish students or professors and because, as an opinion piece in POLITICO has said,

We need to be very vigilant about the erosion of the rule of law and our civil liberties … because that is the best defense against antisemitism, not the protection of the strongmen.

Or as Michael Roth says in the NY Times,

Abductions by government agents; unexplained, indefinite detentions; the targeting of allegedly dangerous ideas; lists of those under government scrutiny; official proclamations full of bluster and bile — Jews have been here before, many times, and it does not end well for us. The rule of law and the right to freedom of thought and expression are essential safeguards for everyone, but especially so for members of groups whose ideas or practices don’t always align with the mainstream. As M. Gessen recently wrote in these pages, “A country that has pushed one group out of its political community will eventually push out others.” What our government is doing now is wrong in itself, but beyond that, it poses a bigger threat to Jewish people’s safety than all the campus protests ever could.

Focus on Maintaining and Improving Our Democracy

Trump hopes that we Jews will not notice that his claim for be against antisemitism masks his support for home-grown antisemitism and his suppression of civil liberties, but we should keep our focus on maintaining and improving American democracy. We should not support an authoritarian politician who represents a clear and present danger to American Jews along with other minority groups in our country.

Glory, Glory Hallelujah: Reclaiming Our Progressive Religious Heritage

Religion's Progressive Tradition is Being Lost

In the United States today, religious arguments and commitments are mostly identified with the political right. They are rarely heard on the left. There are "faith-based" organizations that work for social justice or for human rights, but even they rarely invoke their religious heritages to justify their political positions. Anti-religious views have become widespread on the left with the result that the deep roots of religious commitment to social justice in Western Civilization are being lost.

The Fight For Social Justice is Not a Fight For Theocracy

We can reclaim our progressive, religious heritage in support of our fight for social justice, but we must avoid promoting theocracy. Religion in America is a private matter. We are NOT a Christian nation, and we should NOT base our laws on biblical sources. We do NOT believe that the Bible is the word of God. We know that it was written by many people over a very long period of time, and it expresses their beliefs about what they saw as the will of God. The people who wrote the Bible lived in societies that were very different from ours. They accepted practices like slavery that are abhorrent to us.

We also recognize that religious institutions have always been divided over questions of social justice. On one hand, religious people have been at the forefront of movements like the antislavery movement. On the other hand, religious authorities have generally taken conservative, political positions. This division appears clearly in the contrast between two bits of English verse. The first expresses the view of religious institutions by claiming that social inequity has been ordained by God.

The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate,

God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate.

The second expresses an opposing view.,

When Adam delved and Eve span

Who was then the gentleman?

In spite of the conservatism of religious institutions, religious progressives have found strong support for their views in their religious traditions. They have argued their positions in ways that ultimately could not be refuted because of their deep roots in a shared religious tradition. We can reclaim that tradition.

The American Religious Tradition is Central in the Struggle For Social Justice

The centrality of our religious tradition in the drive for social justice in American society has one of its most moving expressions in the words of the Civil War song “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I suggest that before reading the rest of this blog, you follow this link. Read the words of the song and think about what they mean. Most of us today do not believe as the song's author believed, and we would not write as she did in 1861, but there is no missing her sense that her cause flowed directly from her religious tradition.

A more recent example may be found in the sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. Here is one example.

Christians are always to begin with a bias in favor of a movement which protests against unfair treatment of the poor, but surely Christianity itself is such a protest. The Communist Manifesto might express a concern for the poor and the oppressed, but it expresses no greater concern than the manifesto of Jesus, which opens with the words, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, recovering the sight of the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Another example may be found in the liberation theology of Latin American Catholics in the late twentieth century. Liberation Theology has played a major role in the development of contemporary, liberal Catholicism.

We Must Reclaim the Progressive Religious Position

We progressives in the United States need to reclaim the heritage of religious support for social justice because by doing so, we can show that our cause has very deep roots in our culture. We need to remember the words of the prophet Isaiah, Chapter 58,

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free

and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe them,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn,

and your healing will quickly appear.