My Advice to Hillary Clinton: Don’t try to out-Jew a Jew | #DemPrimary on Blog#42

The Jewish Daily Forward ran a piece on Hillary Clinton, Israel and American Jews immediately after her loss in New Hampshire. It includes the following quote from one of her surrogates:

“Hillary Clinton has been a very strong friend of Israel and that is something that should not be lost on the American Jewish community,” said Paul Hodes, a former New Hampshire congressman who came to rally for Clinton at her post-primary event. Hodes, who is Jewish and from New Hampshire, told the Forward: “Senator Sanders hasn’t showed himself to be the kind of friend of Israel that Secretary Clinton is.”

America’s Jews are as diverse as any tight community and to play the Israel card will only work with one or two segments, but not the rest. While you might get half the Jewish vote, you will turn the other half against you while creating great resentment in all of us for attempting to divide and conquer.

While Bernie Sanders stands a short distance to your left on Israel, he will always be more of a Jew than you. Any attempt by you or people working for you to paint him as a traitor, the way you and President Clinton attempted with President Obama in 2008, will go over about as well. If this was a trial balloon, consider it popped.

In an update, the following plausible deniability was exercised by the Clinton campaign:

“UPDATE: The Clinton campaign denied that it was considering this strategy. “We have no idea what this report is referring to. The notion that we’re planning to start attacking Sanders’ record on Israel is simply false,” Laura Rosenberger, foreign policy adviser, told the Forward.”

I will accept this denial at face value, but will not give any benefit of the doubt next time. Your history, in previous campaigns, has demonstrated that you exercise selectively lax control over those who work on your behalf.

You’ve been warned.

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