What Mattered This Week?

Last time here before the big move...

I'm certainly on board with Greg Sargent's comments this week that the spin over the first few days of ACA exchange plans kicking in doesn't matter.

As far as what does matter on this holiday week...I'm sort of thinking that Kerry's continuing press on Israel/Palestine might matter. How, I'm not sure. And perhaps it doesn't really...very hard to tell. But I'll go with that one.

What do you have? What do you think mattered this week?

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Amanda Pays, 54.

Just a little good stuff:

1. Jeremy Pressman on the anniversary of war in the Middle East.

2. Excellent Josh Barro post about the Affordable Care Act.

3. And Americans talk funny; Walter Hickey has maps from Joshua Katz.

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to James Caan, 73.

Yes, good stuff:

1. How political science should lobby, by Jennifer Victor.

2. Wait -- you mean goofy-sounding research may actually be useful? Carl Zimmer.

3. Gershom Gorenberg on Obama's speech in Jerusalem.

4. Irin Carmon on Justice Ginsburg, abortion, and marriage.

5. And E.J. Graff on marriage.

What Mattered This Week?

A quiet week in domestic politics, so I suppose I'll go with the ceasefire in Gaza. No, it almost certainly didn't mean that a real solution to the underlying situation is at hand, but anytime people avoid a disastrous escalation it's probably a good thing, no?

I don't really have much for the didn't matter side of things, but I suppose I can mention the idea of eliminating the Ames Straw Poll, which I wrote about yesterday over at Greg's place.

But I was traveling, and so I may have missed all sorts of things. What do you have? What do you think mattered this week?

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Diane Wiest, 64. "Don't Speak." Actually, everyone is terrific in "Bullets." I'm not sure whether or not it's in my top-5 Woody Allens, but surely it's in the top five of the post-Mia Farrow. Although I'm behind; I've seen just about everything though (of all things) Jade Scorpion, but I've missed almost everything since then. Ah well.

The good stuff:


1. I should link to Heather Hurlburt more often. Here, she has some fun with Foreign Policy Team Romney and their expertise on second terms.

2. Jeffrey Lax follows up on an earlier John Sides post about SCOTUS oral arguments.

3. Gershom Gorenberg looks at maps.

4. Ezra Klein: lawyers seeing differences that economists can't see.

5. Crowdsourcing democracy, the 2012 version. Lots of fun! A project from Xavier Marquez.

6. And Adam Serwer tweets sarcastically: "What I've learned from SCOTUS arguments this week is that both parties are identical and so voting isn't important." Not a dime's worth of difference.

Catch of the Day

David Freelander of the New York Observer, who talked to big Jewish Democratic fundraisers and found that -- shock and alarm! -- they're not abandoning Barack Obama after all. I think the key here is that the quotes sound as if they were scripted by the DNC, which in this case is very good evidence that Obama isn't in any danger of losing these folks. It's a fun article, and I recommend reading the whole thing...best bit?

[S]o far, only Haim Saban, the billionaire entertainment executive, has publicly declared that he was finished donating to the president. There was just one problem, though: Mr. Saban was a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton and had never given money to Mr. Obama. Furthermore, Mr. Saban pledged to keep supporting down-ticket Democrats.

Via Greg Sargent, who adds:

I get that the campaign to paint Obama as anti-Israel is also about feeding a larger storyline, in which the Kenyan Muslim Marxist in the White House is hostile to a fellow western-style democracy struggling to survive against existential threats from Arab and Muslim foes.

Excellent point. I do think there's a bit more to it...as Freelander reports, there's probably an ever-widening gap between "professional Jews" and the rest of the politically active Jewish community, and the possibility that some of the reason that the press buys GOP spin on this is that a subset of Jews who think of themselves as mainstream and nonpartisan really have become part of the Republican party network. But I also think Greg's point is a good one.

And, great catch!

Catch of the Day

Andrew Sullivan finds Barack Obama's "new" wording on 1967 borders -- you know, the wording that throws Israel under a bus or some other such nonsense -- in a six month old joint statement from Secretary Clinton and....Prime Minister Netanyahu.

I do think that there's something real at stake in the latest flap; I'm not sure that Matt Yglesias is completely correct that Netanyahu and other Israelis simply want to keep all the land they seized in 1967, but I do think that there are real differences in what the Israeli government wants and what the United States wants, and that those are reflected in bickering over meaningless words. But, yeah, the specifics of this latest business is just a typical Fox News phony scandal (with Bibi showing that if nothing else, he knows how to play that game).

Nice catch.

By the way, I haven't had an item that gives me a chance to link to an excellent point Jonathan Chait made last week about Israel's security and the 1967 borders: that the old idea of "defensible" borders is basically obsolete in the present context. I hadn't heard that before, and it's very smart. I'd add that prospect here is only of a demilitarized Palestine, which makes the "columns of troops" idea even less likely to happen (and, unlike the Brits and French of the 1930s, the Israelis would surely move quickly, and with considerable muscle, if Palestine obtained even a single tank). Now, under the Yglesias way of looking at things, that's irrelevant; the old rhetoric about defensible borders is essentially a cover for Israel keeping what it considers its own territory. Could be! However, I think it's just as likely, at least for many involved in this debate, that they're just trapped within the old way of thinking -- since the defensible borders thing really was a major issue for twenty years (and, while I don't remember pre-1967, I certainly do remember honest concern about a conventional military defeat for Israel in the 1970s, and the perceived value of the 1967 victory as providing a very useful buffer against that).

Is It Good for the Jews?

I'll join everyone in linking to Peter Beinart's excellent essay on American Jews and Zionism. 

I knew that the American Jewish establishment was in bad shape -- by which I mean, cut off from the reality of American Jewish politics -- when they put Elliott Abrams on the road as a featured speaker at fundraising events.  But to find out that they're hiring Frank Luntz to conduct focus groups...well, that's just pathetic (especially since what they get for their trouble is typical Luntz garbage about jettisoning the word "Palestinian" for the word "Arab"). 

The elephant in the room that Beinart doesn't discuss is that Israeli leaders may feel that they don't need Jewish support in the United States, because they can substitute Christian evangelical support, with the latter less likely (or at least perceived to be less likely) to produce any sorts of constraints on the Israeli government. Personally, I think shifting from a American base of American Jews to a coalition of Orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians, and ideological neo-cons would be a tragic mistake for Israel...but I can certainly understand the appeal for Likud politicians.