One of my wife’s cousins, a guy who has spent his life on a kibbutz in northern Israel, telephoned last week to ask what I thought of Sen. Bernie Sanders and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.
I have strong reservations about both men, I responded.
But that’s beside the point, which is: What could I tell him about the two Jews vying for the Democratic presidential nomination (following Super Tuesday it’s now down to one, with Bloomberg having wiped out). Being Israeli, what he really meant was, what did this mean for the Jewish state?
I’ve had permutations of that conversation — on the telephone, via Facebook and in person — with a number of Jews, both American and Israeli, of varying political persuasions. Both the American Jewish press and Israeli news media binged on the Sanders-Bloomberg intra-tribal political slugfest, and I gorged on that as well.
My takeaways?
Sanders scares the #@*% out of most Israeli Jews and more than a few American Jews. But the latter will likely vote for him anyway should he grab the nomination.
Why? Because priority No. 1 is defeating President Donald Trump in November. (More on this below.)
In this regard, the situation is akin to when many traditional Christians, for whom blocking abortion was the deciding issue, held their collective nose and voted for Trump because they could not abide voting for pro-choice Hillary Clinton. How ironic is that? (And no, I’m not saying Sanders is as bad to my mind as is Trump. Not even close.)
Bloomberg, on the other hand, scared no one, except for Bernie Bros.