Bruce Ticker

The Jewish stars aligned, politically speaking, on Nov. 3 and Jan. 5. A case can be made that the Jewish vote swung six statewide races to elect Joe Biden as president, hand Democrats control of the Senate and elevate Chuck Schumer as the first Jewish majority leader of the Senate. Strangely enough, the margins in these elections corresponded with the likely size of the Jewish vote in three states –  Biden’s race against President Trump in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania and three Senate elections in Arizona and Georgia. [Bruce S. Ticker]

The legal hook to snag Donald J. Trump: “Stay peaceful!” Ironic words to meld a criminal case against our soon-to-be ex-president for his role in the siege of Capitol Hill. I could not figure out how Trump is culpable for his pep talk to the thugs who went on to murder a police officer, injure other officers, terrify hundreds of powerful figures and trash the halls of Congress. At first. [Bruce S. Ticker]

As he experiences his first week in Congress, Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) will start on a path to do everything he suggests that former Rep. Eliot L. Engel failed to do and perhaps even obstructed. To blame Engel for destructive social conditions in the Bronx or elsewhere in America, even by implication, exposes how clueless Bowman is about the obstacles that Engel faced and now Bowman himself will face in the next two years. [ Bruce S. Ticker]

Pat Toomey could not get elected as a senator for Illinois, our sixth most populous state, but since 2010 he was narrowly elected to two terms in Pennsylvania amid low turnout in Philadelphia for each election. One can draw a straight line between his re-election in 2016, possibly on Donald Trump’s coattails and his late December proposal to shut off a safety valve to salvage state and municipal budgets such as those in his home state. And mine. [Bruce S. Ticker]

Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock must navigate an obstacle course to convert voting figures so they can join the U.S. Senate on Jan. 5  and Jewish Georgians wary of “apartheid” phrasing could help swing their elections.

It is safe to speculate that the Squad’s rantings cost Biden Jewish and Cuban votes in the three counties, two House seats in Miami-Dade and in large part a winning margin of Florida’s total vote, not to mention disappointing election results elsewhere in the country. [Bruce S. Ticker]