Ian Reifowitz

Republicans—even before The Man Who Lost An Election And Tried To Steal It crawled out of the muck of birtherism to take over the party—have been engaged in a multi-front assault on public education. They’ve sought to weaken K-12 schools through all kinds of measures—for example, vouchers that often end up with taxpayer dollars supporting private, even religious institutions—and they’ve attacked higher education funding as well.

Oh, no, not another “Democrats are doomed” post! We are all sick of seeing predictions of disaster looming this fall for Team Blue. I don’t believe in scaring people into getting involved, or always pretending we’re 10 points down, but when data points out areas of weakness, campaigns must act on them.

The single most important prayer in Judaism is the Shema. At least that’s what most of us believe—although, since we’re talking about Jews, you know there’s gotta be at least some debate. One section commands Jews to remember God’s words, teach them to their children, and to place them “on the doorposts of thy house.

President Biden’s new hard infrastructure bill—passed with a level of bipartisan support in both houses of Congress that’s almost unheard of these days for a spending package—is quite a major accomplishment. (What, you thought I was going to make a joke involving Biden’s prior use of an off-color exuberance?) One important measure of its success is the degree to which it increases racial equity.

“I’ve got something I’d like to say.” That’s what I usually offer up as a preamble, as I try to get the attention of my kids and other family members gathered around the Thanksgiving table. It usually takes a couple of attempts, but once we’re all on the same page, I offer words of thanks for my ancestors.

Have you ever heard of “Forever Chemicals”? These chemicals—their technical name is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS—have earned that name because, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explained, they “do not break down in the environment.” In other words, they last forever.

On the last day of September, the antisemitic terrorist who in 2019 shot and killed Lori Gilbert Kaye and wounded three others in a Poway, California, synagogue was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. One of the wounded was Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, whose life Gilbert Kaye saved when she jumped in front of him and took the fatal bullet. After that, the terrorist turned his fire on the congregation, and 8-year-old Noya Dahan was also wounded.

Remember the 1980s commercial for Polly-O string cheese? The kid orders a pizza—hold the sauce, hold the bread. The guy taking the order cries out: “Gimme a cheese with nuttin’.

The running joke of the Trump presidency—okay, one of the running jokes—was the constant pronouncements of an upcoming “infrastructure week” or that some kind of infrastructure deal was in the offing. Nothing. Ever. Happened.

On the streets of American cities, Jews are being attacked simply for being Jewish. In my hometown of New York City—home to over 1 million Jews—a man named Joseph Borgen was set upon by a group who “punched, kicked and pepper-sprayed him while shouting antisemitic slurs.” One man was arrested and faces charges for having committed second-degree assault as a hate crime, along with first-degree gang assault.

Perhaps the single most consistently held policy position in American politics over the past century is this: The Republican Party wants the rich to pay as little in taxes as possible. Currently, the Party of Trump is going to the mattresses against President Joe Biden’s plan to pay for major investment packages.

Donald Trump really likes Andrew Jackson. “I’m a fan. I’m a big fan,” he declared about the seventh president at a 2017 event commemorating Jackson’s 250th birthday. Trump added that Jackson’s portrait “hangs proudly” up on the wall in the Oval Office—a place it had not been seen for quite some time until he put it there.

(Not) breaking news: Republicans are lying. I know, I know, if it’s a day that ends with “y,” the Party of Trump is spouting falsehoods—hell, that was true of the twice impeached former president personally (the Washington Post came up with a final count of 30,573 “false or misleading claims” during his time in office, an average of almost 21 per day, with just about half coming in the final twelve months).

The most important result of the 2020 elections is that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump. Second-most important is that Democrats took back the Senate. These were tremendous victories that, along with keeping the House, have given our party a chance to make real, lasting change that will improve the lives of every American.

But (you knew a “but” was coming) we didn’t do as well as we thought we might.

The most important result of the 2020 elections is that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump. Second-most important is that Democrats took back the Senate. These were tremendous victories that, along with keeping the House, have given our party a chance to make real, lasting change that will improve the lives of every American.

But (you knew a “but” was coming) we didn’t do as well as we thought we might.

“We’re proud to be Americans again,” Norma Luna told a New York Times reporter on Inauguration Day. For some progressives—in particular but not only those who are Americans of color—it’s easier to feel proud of being American and feel a connection to the country than it has been for the last four years. Having President Joe Biden instead of President Charlottesville sitting in the Oval Office makes a big difference.

Late on the afternoon of Jan. 6, the Associated Press called the Georgia Senate race for documentary filmmaker Jon Ossoff. Just a few hours earlier, Donald Trump had incited an insurrection that saw his followers—a number of whom openly and proudly displayed vile anti-Semitic signs and language—violently take over the Capitol in an attempted coup that would have spelled the end of our democracy.

The COVID-19 vaccination rollout in the U.S. is not going well in the majority of states. On Dec. 14 in New York City, Sandra Lindsay became the first American to receive the coronavirus vaccine, ostensibly just one of 20 million scheduled to do so by the end of 2020. Instead, only 3 million Americans had gotten the shot by then, and that number was only up to 4.6 million by Jan. 4.

Is America the country that twice elected an African American president with strong majorities of the vote? Or is it the country where a race-baiting, bigoted birther could earn just enough support from voters to get himself inaugurated as president? Of course, the answer is both, and nothing that happens in this year’s election will change that.

I sure have missed Barack Obama. As much as I’ve come to appreciate the talents and charms of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, it is great to see the 44th president out there again talking to voters, and even having some fun, for example, slamming Trump’s heretofore unknown Chinese bank account. The “Beijing Barry” line was epic.

With the election barely a week away—and the fate of our democracy hanging in the balance—it’s time for closing arguments. Turning out the base is vitally important, and it’s right that most progressive attention is focused there. But I would like to take a different tack, and make sure we collectively leave no stone unturned.

So Trump thinks Jews should vote for him, huh? That’s what he has said on multiple occasions, including on August 20, 2019, when, as part of a comment about Israel, he smeared Jews with the old canard of dual loyalty: “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty [to Israel].” Riiiiight.

Female voters really don’t like the impeached president. According to CNN, the five most recently conducted live interview polls found Joe Biden leading Trump among women by an average of a whopping 25 points—with the gap sitting at an even whoppinger 34 points in CNN’s own poll.

The Supreme Court didn’t always have nine justices, and that number is not set in the Constitution. The number of justices has been changed on multiple occasions throughout our nation’s history, each time for a similarly partisan reason—namely to give one party more influence over the court’s membership. And the first back and forth over the number of justices was a struggle between two of our most prominent Founding Father presidents.

More than any other single individual, Daryl Johnson can speak to the failure of the Republican Party to keep America safe from right-wing and white supremacist terrorism over the past few years. Most recently, he has spoken out to condemn the Trump administration’s stubborn rejection of facts and data on the danger that type of extremism poses.

On Wednesday, during a call ostensibly about the upcoming Jewish High Holidays with leading members of the American Jewish community, President Charlottesville said this: “We love your country.” He wasn’t talking about the United States.

This is not the first time Donald Trump has assumed that Israel, not America, is the place where American Jews assign their primary loyalty.

As you may have heard, Sen. Kamala Harris would be a historic vice president. Most attention has rightly been focused on the barriers she’ll break as the first woman, the first African American, and the first Indian American to hold that office. There is, however, another barrier of importance—one that before the Civil Rights era would have been just as unthinkable—relating to Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, who is the potential first Second Gentleman.

The impeached president does and says so many absurdly horrific, devastatingly harmful things that even just addressing one each day feels impossible. But taking a step back and looking at the big picture every once in a while can help. Comparing the Trump campaign’s tactics to those of Joe Biden, one overarching difference stands out in the way each addresses the other.

It’s no surprise that the current occupant of the White House is running for reelection on racism. Given his track record, it would be a surprise if he weren’t. Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric has always centered on fearmongering around crime, going back not just to the start of his presidential campaign in 2015, but back to the 1980s.

We must “study and learn the lessons of history.” That’s what the late Rep. John Lewis ordered us to do in the final published remarks of his truly heroic career. President Barack Obama, in his final words to his longtime friend, honored that command.