By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — With California’s June 7th primary drawing closer, as editor of San Diego Jewish World and as a registered independent voter, I have come to some non-partisan conclusions about which candidates in the Democratic and Republican primaries are the best choices for our community.
On the Republican side, I favor the underdog, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, because he is a man of moderate views, who has a record of being able to reach across the aisle and develop bipartisan consensus. That’s the kind of man who would serve us well in politically gridlocked Washignton D.C. I sincerely hope he will not bow to pressure to get out of the race in which he is currently running third.
I am offended by some of the things that his opponents Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have to say about Muslims and about Mexicans. Although both men have been friendly to our Jewish community, I know that people who presume to judge other people on the basis of their faith or their nationality could turn around at any time that we displease them and decide that we Jews, as a class of people, are enemies too.
On the Democratic side, I support Hillary Clinton for the nomination because she has the foreign policy knowledge that Bernie Sanders lacks. I like the fact that if Hillary is elected, the nation also will be bringing back to the White House — albeit as First Spouse — her husband, Bill Clinton, who ignited the hope of the world by convincing such diverse leaders as Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Yasser Arafat to come together to the White House lawn in a step toward peace. He also helped craft the permanent peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. Wouldn’t it be nice if Bill could serve as Hillary’s special Middle East envoy!
It pains me that I can’t support Sanders, a fellow Jew, but by his actions — boycotting Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s speech to a joint Session of Congress, boycotting the AIPAC conference at which all the other major candidates for President spoke, and by recently inflating the numbers of Gazan deaths during Operation Protection Edge– Sanders has shown that he is willing to shunt aside Israel, an American ally and the only true democracy in the Middle East, in order to court his Radical Left core constituency. That simply is not good policy for America, and notwithstanding the fact that he is a co-religionist, I can’t support his candidacy.
Believing in political moderation and opposing prejudice of all kinds, I believe Hillary Clinton, Democrat, and John Kasich, Republican, are their respective parties’ best candidates for President.
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Harrison is editor and publisher of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com. Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)
J.J. Surbeck made a near perfect response to your article. I would only add Hillary’s handling of classified material was not only dishonest, it was illegal. Further, she and Bill were paid exorbitant amounts of money for relatively short speeches, in addition, large donations were made to their fund, and both of these were followed up by favorable ruling to these payees by the State Department while Hillary was its secretary. I find that passing strange. The only place Hillary belongs is in prison. If that leaves the Democrats short on a candidate, they have no one to blame but themselves. If they have any decent candidates to run, they were never encourages by their party leadership.
Jerome C Liner, Cincinnati, OH
Don, I beg to differ on several of your points. Kasich may be indeed the kind of moderate that could heal the nation from the sharp divisions made worse by Obama, but he objectively doesn’t stand a chance and will only be the spoiler to Cruz’s chances of beating Trump for the Republican nomination. With that accomplished, the road to the White House will be wide open to Hillary since a majority of Americans will recoil at the notion of choosing Trump as our next president. Will that be a good thing? I don’t think so. Bill was indeed instrumental in bringing together Ehud Barack and Arafat at Camp David in 2000, but where did that end up? Like all the others, he insisted on putting beleaguered Israel on the same footing as a vile Palestinian thug who never intended to honor his promises, and not surprisingly never did. Hillary’s blatant dishonesty regarding her e-mails is an unforgiveable disqualifier and she really should end up in jail, lest we accept the notion that official candidates can flaunt the laws of this nation with complete impunity, as dictators are known to do all over the third world. As for Sanders, he is a tragic joke, a relic from a discredited past and a discredited political doctrine, communism. He is clownish and funny to watch, What is less funny is that so many ignorant young Americans who have no idea of how much of a failure socialism and communism have been historically buy into his old rhetoric promising pipe dreams that will never come to pass any more than they have anywhere else. No, if one gives a hard look to this sorry landscape, the only candidate who stands out as half-way decent is Cruz. He is not perfect, but who is among this lot anyway? He is the best of a poor collection of choices.
On this note, I’d also like to conclude by taking issue with your comment that anyone speaking ill of Muslims in general could turn on a dime against the Jews is a very inadequate and unlikely proposition, for the simple reason that Jews don’t go around stabbing people in the streets, blowing up buses, firing rockets on civilian populations and trying in every possible way to impose their ways on everybody else. The only people who do that today are… Muslims. Denying this reality for an idealistic kumbaya is not what this country needs at this time. Anove all, it needs a president who will call a spade a spade, in contrast to the terminally biased Obama who refuses to even pronounce the words “Islamic terrorism”, thereby giving it a pass. If Hillary is elected, there will be no change on that front and the result will be a lot of American lives lost to Islamic terrorists allowed to operate unimpeded here because of an absurd fear of “offending” some of them. This needs to be stopped now, and urgently so, and Cruz will do the job far better than Hillary, or Kasich for that matter, and he really needs to step down and vacate the room to give Cruz a better shot at beating Trump.
–J.J. Surbeck, San Diego