Vice President Kamala Harris has made it clear that she will bend the knee to antisemitic progressives on U.S. policy toward Israel. Will she do the same when it comes to her running mate?
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) is clearly the best running mate Harris could pick. He is a popular, centrist-sounding governor in a crucial swing state, and he doesn’t have near the level of liabilities as other options — Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-AZ) business ties to China, Gov. Tim Walz’s (D-MN) socialism apologia and handling of Black Lives Matter riots, and Gov. Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) elitism as the governor son of a former governor.
But Shapiro has one big liability, at least among Democrats: He is Jewish. As NBC News reported, Shapiro “has faced deeper skepticism over Israel than other leading contenders who have espoused similar views,” simply because he is Jewish. Shapiro’s stance on Israel and on “pro-Palestinian” protests seems completely normal and reasonable to most people, condemning antisemitic protests and the University of Pennsylvania’s weak handling of antisemitism, but even that is considered out of bounds for the loud activists in the Democratic base who blame Israel for being attacked by terrorists.
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As a result, there is a pressure campaign among liberal activists and pundits trying to push Harris away from selecting Shapiro. He has been branded “Genocide Josh Shapiro” by these terrorist sympathizers among the Democratic base. These are the same activists to whom President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats have been pandering since Hamas’s massacre of 1,200 Israeli civilians. Harris has similarly pandered to those activists but to a greater extent than Biden.
The fact that this pressure campaign even exists is an indictment of the toleration of antisemitism in the Democratic Party, both because these activists think they have the pull for this and because they think Harris is susceptible to their pressure. The opposition to Shapiro, whether he is chosen or not, proves that the Democratic Party is falling further into the hands of the loud antisemitic activists in its base. We surely can expect Harris to pander to them throughout her presidency if she happens to win.