Post US-Election Debrief

just some random thoughts

Doubtless, I will be writing more about all these issues in the next several months, now that the US election cycle has begun in real, but I want to post a few brief thoughts in response to last night’s NYC elections.

First, a note of congratulations to my newly elected congressional representative. I voted for Brad Lander, as those of you who read me here know. I have known Brad for decades—since before he was in elected office. I knew Brad in the eaerly 2000s when I was Director of Communications for US Programs the Open Society Foundation (OSI back then) and Brad was running the 5th Avenue Committee, a ground-breaking NGO that helped formerly incarcerated people create and recreate their lives after prison. His organization was one of the foundation’s grantees. I followed his career and was delighted to vote for him as my city councillor in Park Slope when he first ran and thereafter for elected office. His politics on Israel are compatible with mine. Love of Israel, not of its policies or its government—same as the US these days.

I also want to congratulate Micah Lasher, whom I don’t know—but his predecessor, Jerry Nadler, I know well. I worked for Jerry on his staff when I was a grad student in philosophy and he was a state assemblyman. I have nothing but the highest regard for Jerry, for his politics in their entirety , and I think that Micah Lasher will be a worthy follow-up on the issue of Israel and democracy for Israelis and Palestinians, as well as many other issues.

Israel needs a complete turnaround toward its own professed values in its Declaration of Independence and I hope that its upcoming elections will bring about change. For sure, that will give some lift up to those of us who care deeply about Israel here in the US as we navigate an increasingly difficult political climate. I look forward to the day when Israel/Palestine is no longer the core issue around which the Democratic Party voters either vote or squabble or worse, but until then, we all need to figure out how to ensure that the US doesn’t continue to live under the rule of a madman authoritarian.

My own politics today are pretty divergent from the current DSA (I resigned from DSA in the 1990s. I was a founder of DSA, former vice chair, and once upon a time , I headed up DSA’s Democratic Party work as the director of a project called “Democratic Agenda.” At the risk of aging me, this was indeed decades ago. Times change. For sure, this organization has changed. It is DSA pretty much in name only, not the organization founded by Michael Harrington. (though I would love to be proven wrong). We had a slogan back then that I think would probably not be welcomed in today’s DSA—it was “the left wing of the possible.” Possibility for us meant real change in people’s lives. Real change means the economy, community, schools, domestic human and civil rights as well as international issues.

I still believe in creating the broadest possible coalition of liberals with a left flank, not a pure coalition of the left. Call me a social democrat—I’ve been called worse (this is perhaps a bit of insider joke …) . But my goal as a political being is to have a government that protects and enhances everyone. Symbolic gestures, and completely out of sync ideas like no nationalisms, no borders, no police—I mean , come on….

So so so much is at stake this fall. More to come. If you want to engage in this conversation, I encourage you to subscribe to my substack.

(as a curtain raiser-I leave for Israel next week, so will be writing from there for much of the summer). Stay tuned.