I prefer the original version with the Rupert Murdoch allusion.

The first thing to understand is that Israel’s parliamentary system of government is quite different from the US’. Instead of two main parties dominating the political landscape, i.e. Republicans vs Democrats, Israel has around a dozen main parties which work together to form coalition governments where more than one party is in power at one time. Under this fragmented landscape, if you have a religious or ethnic minority who all tend to vote for the same party, that can lead to a situation where one group in society may hold sway over others politically even though they are not as as large a population numerically.

And yes, you’re quite right - a lot has changed since 2016, and some Haredi (especially the young) have been increasingly drifting towards the far-right nationalist parties like Likud (Netanyahu’s party) and the Religious Nationalists. However, as this AP article suggests, these recent converts moving away from the traditional Haredi parties are still a minority.

While the majority of Haredim living outside Israel still do not identify as Zionists (as per this recent, post-Oct 7th survey), I admit I don’t have any hard polling data for the current situation in Israel itself. If anyone else does, I would appreciate the info.

The vast majority of Hareidi Jews are Zionist.

According to a recent survey, less than half of Haredi Jews outside of Israel identify as Zionists, post October 7th.

In 2016, the percentage of Israeli Haredim who identified as Zionist was just 33%.

Do you have any recent figures for within Israel itself that confirms a “vast majority”?

I didn’t say they weren’t politically powerful. The two main Haredi (Ultra-orthodox) parties are significant part of Netanyahu’s coalition, and they have always had a disproportionate power compared to the Haredi population because almost all Haredi voters vote for them.

Within the Haredi community there is still a wide range of opinions, of course. However, even within Israel most have not traditionally described themselves as Zionists (only 33% percent, according to a 2016 survey).

Most ultra-orthodox Jews are actually anti-zionists. It’s not uncommon to see them joining pro-palestine peace protests.

Within Israel they are a minority, and their broadly anti-war stance combined with their dependence on the state for financial support (most of the men are unemployed) have made them quite unpopular in the eyes of the general population.

How so? I think it’s quite an accurate summary. The German economy has been stagnating for a while, mainly due to its poorly handled transition towards an economy based on renewable energy. Their reliance on cheap Russian gas was shattered by the onset of the war in Ukraine, and their economic and political influence within the EU has been in steep decline ever since.

Or the EMF generators they carry around with them in their pockets, A.K.A their phones.

Yeah, that was the single biggest Biden blunder of the evening, IMO. I was dumbfounded.

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Biden has been conspicuously avoiding speaking at unscripted public encounters for quite a while now, though, and reading from an autocue at SotU is a far cry from having to react on the fly and put together coherent arguments in response to moderator questions and Trump’s lies during a debate. I have the feeling Biden’s staff knew full well that the debate was going to be rough going into it.

What happened is that Biden and his team completely screwed up. They called for this debate and agreed to its terms, which included the fact that the moderator team would not be fact checking Trump in order to avoid accusations of bias.

These terms shifted the onus of calling Trump out on his biggest lies to Biden himself, who would have known that Trump would try to gish-gallop his way through the debate and avoid discussing policy because that’s precisely what he did in 2020. The fact that Biden failed spectacularly to counter Trump in any meaningful way is the reason why he lost the debate.

From the article:

A 2022 study found that of the 57 justices who have sat on the court over the past century, the six justices with the most pro-business voting records are the six members of today’s 6-3, rightwing super-majority, all appointed by Republican presidents

That’s the point - they closed ranks and kept riding the Biden train whilst quietly hoping that no one would notice it was in danger of coming off the rails.

https://theintercept.com/2024/06/28/biden-debate-dnc/

Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves. They stayed mum for three and half years and now they’re reaping the whirlwind.

☝️

Being a narcissistic, bloviating despot is exactly what everyone expected of Trump. In fact, he came off rather well from the time constraints, muted mics, and the total lack of fact-checking because the format of the debate didn’t expose his weaknesses like it did for Biden.

I’d say a good-sized part of it is simply the American preference for watching beautiful, weathly people doing beautiful, wealthy people things. Hollywood rom-coms and US TV shows in general clearly skew towards upper middle class settings when compared to the equivalents from, say, the UK.

In other words, I reckon US media prefer their fictional characters to be aspirational whereas other cultures prefer theirs to be relatable.

hasn’t Biden had a stutter from a very young age and struggled with it most of his life?

It hasn’t apparently impacted his public speaking for most of his political career up until recently:

https://youtu.be/86Nrv5izaTs?si=bZ9WNXIEZNOaBV3T

And even when not speaking during tonight’s debate, he often looked totally bewildered.

People have been saying this for quite a while now despite the excuses from the Democrat establishment, but tonight there was no hiding the fact that the dude just looks unable to last another four years as president.

The whole thing was the strongest argument against American exceptionalism I’ve ever witnessed.

Calling Biden articulate is being incredibly generous. I mean, what on earth was he trying to communicate here?

Overall, Biden put in a very lackluster, unconvincing performance while Trump did his usual schtick of rambling off topic, lying through his teeth, and refusing to answer any questions on policy. The whole thing was a shambles.

I think Tlaib did a decent job at giving some kind of pushback, but it was particularly galling to see Moskowitz stand up and repeat Israeli propaganda without anyone calling him out on it.

In his speech, he alluded to misinformation that was debunked over a month ago: that the numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry were allegedly unreliable and that the numbers of dead civilians had recently been halved by the UN. Neither of these things were true, and so therefore he was either lying on Israel’s behalf or he didn’t care enough to do the appropriate research.