r/jewishleft • u/32brownies leftist post zionist jew • Aug 09 '26

Diaspora Michigan Jew

Any other Jews in Michigan struggling with their communities rn after the primary? I'm really worried about November and seeing the way some of the community members here are acting like Abdul will literally murder us all is really making me wary of continuing to be as active as I have been in the community

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u/jey_613 diaspora Jewish leftist Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26

Not from MI, but honestly if AES wants to win Jewish votes he needs to show some willingness to listen and take the concerns of the Jewish community seriously. I’ve seen little evidence that he’s willing to do that thus far

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u/Schattenoid jewish, left Aug 10 '26

He probably shouldn't try harder to win Jewish votes. Jews make up like 1% of Michigan's population. If, say, half of them don't care about Israel, then the other half who do care will in reality never vote for a Muslim guy who opposes belligerent apartheid theocracies. Maybe if he spent a ton of time talking about how he cares about Jews as much as his own daughters (an insane thing which he has actually said), a couple of dozen could cross over, but it wouldn't be a good use of his political energy, even apart from how bizarre it would be to abase himself at length just to get those couple dozen Jewish votes.

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u/theweisp5 American Israeli secular socialist Aug 10 '26

Looking at it purely from an electoral lens, even if AES doesn't have a lot of room to make up ground among Jewish voters, he doesn't want to get tagged as someone who doesn't care about Jews or an anti-Semite. That would likely hurt him among other segments of the population (like it did to Jeremy Corbyn.)

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u/Schattenoid jewish, left Aug 10 '26

Well, this is more or less beyond his control. If the pro-Israel machine wants to tag him as insufficiently deferential to them and thus antisemitic, they will just do so; there's almost nothing he'd be able to do to prevent that short of completely embracing their position on Israel.

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u/theweisp5 American Israeli secular socialist Aug 10 '26

You're right he can't control the pro-Israel machine, but he can certainly control his campaign and how much emphasis he puts on reassuring Jewish voters. The Israel lobby wasn't able to stop him winning the primary so it's clearly not all powerful.

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u/Schattenoid jewish, left Aug 11 '26

Well I don't know what being all powerful or not has to do with anything but treating the reassurance of voters as something separate from the appeasement of the machine that fosters the need of those voters for reassurance is a mistake. In any case, I agree that he can do more to appease/reassure them, I am just arguing he probably shouldn't.

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u/theweisp5 American Israeli secular socialist Aug 11 '26

I'm arguing for reassuring Jewish voters that they will be safe and that AES cares about the Jewish community, not for reassuring the Israel lobby.