The Washington Post - 03.03.2020

TUESDAy, MARCH 3 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST ez re K A21

TUESDAY Opinion

B

ernie Sanders was right to skip

AIPAC.

The current front-runner for the

Democratic presidential nomination

would be the first Jewish president. He o nce

lived in Israel. But he refused to address the

American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s

annual conference this week because, he

said, the pro-Israel lobby has become a plat-

form for those who “express bigotry and op-

pose basic Palestinian rights.” He added that

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

is a “reactionary racist.”

AIPAC, and Netanyahu, seemed intent on

proving Sanders’s point.

As t he conference opened in Washington

on Sunday, Netanyahu, speaking to the

group via satellite on the eve of Israel’s e lec-

tions, derided the Palestinians as “the pam-

pered children of the international commu-

nity.” T he AIPAC a udience applauded.

In h is Sunday remarks, Netanyahu told

AIPAC h e was moving forward with plans to

annex Palestinian territory — a move that

would make the long-sought two-state solu-

tion all but impossible.

Netanyahu previously championed a law

that demoted the Arabic language, promot-

ed Jewish settlements and declared that only

“the Jewish people” h ave “the right to exer-

cise national self-determination” i n Israel,

which Arabic members of Israel’s p arliament

called “apartheid.” Even AIPAC s colded Ne-

tanyahu last year for aligning with an ultra-

nationalist, racist party.

Some may dispute whether that’s “bigot-

ry,” b ut AIPAC i s increasingly becoming a

platform for the Republican Party — a nd a

platform against anyone critical of Netanya-

hu’s t reatment of Palestinians.

“We don’t w ant Sanders at A IPAC,” Israel’s

ambassador to the United Nations, Danny

Danon, said at t he conference Sunday. “ We

don’t w ant him in Israel. Anyone who calls

our prime minister a racist is either a liar, an

ignorant fool or both.”

Netanyahu, referring to Sanders and

those like him as “radicals who seek to weak-

en” U.S.-Israel ties, said “these libelous

charges are outrageous.”

AIPAC’s c hief executive, Howard Kohr, in

an another apparent Sanders reference, said

“the pro-Israel community w ill work to de-

feat those who try to harm our friends.”

Perhaps most shocking was Vice Presi-

dent Pence, who gave a nakedly partisan

speech Monday proclaiming that “the lead-

ing candidate for the presidential nomina-

tion of the party o f Harry Truman openly

and repeatedly attacks Israel as a racist

state.” ( Sanders had attached that label to

Netanyahu.)

“Even more troubling,” Pence continued,

“when Bernie Sanders smeared Israel at l ast

week’s debate, not a single candidate on that

stage stood up to challenge him.”

Pence went on to imply that these Demo-

crats were trying “to cloak their animus to-

ward Israel inside the phony mantle of

friendship” a nd that they “side with Israel’s

enemies” — a s if supporting Palestinian hu-

man rights means siding with Israel’s e ne-

mies. The AIPAC c rowd applauded both.

Among the Democrats “on that debate

stage” w hom Pence condemned: Mike

Bloomberg, who spoke to AIPAC s hortly be-

fore Pence. Bloomberg, who is Jewish,

spoke out against the boycott, divestment

and sanctions movement, said there

should be no conditions attached to mili-

tary aid for Israel and called Sanders’s

views on AIPAC “dead wrong.” B ut

Bloomberg also spoke about the impor-

tance of a two-state solution.

This is w hat Netanyahu, with AIPAC’s a c-

quiescence, a ppears to be walking away from.

(The Trump a dministration u rged Netanya-

hu to hold off on a nnexation, p art of Trump’s

“peace” p lan, until after t he Israeli e lection.)

With Netanyahu’s apparent v ictory in Mon-

day’s election, it seems likely a nnexation will

soon proceed — a nd Israel will f ind it increas-

ingly difficult t o remain a Jewish s tate u nless

it suppresses Palestinians’ r ights.

That’s n ot a good look for AIPAC, which

finds itself not only at o dds with Democrats

but also with most American Jews. Instead

of its tradition of representing strong,

broad support for Israel, AIPAC i s becom-

ing about as bipartisan as the National Ri-

fle Association.

Even Netanyahu reportedly regards

AIPAC a s just another right-wing American

interest group. “We don’t need A IPAC a ny-

more,” N etanyahu reportedly told one of his

advisers. “We have e nough support in the

United States from the evangelicals. I’d hap-

pily give up on AIPAC i f we didn’t n eed to

counteract J Street,” a l iberal pro-Israel

group.

It d oesn’t h ave to be this way. B efore

Pence’s c ampaign-style speech, Sen. Cory

Booker (D-N.J.) m ade an appeal to AIPAC

“to reaffirm the truth that America’s sup-

port for Israel is common ground. Ameri-

ca’s partnership with Israel has never been

and must never become a Republican issue

or Democratic issue, it must always be an

American issue.”

Sprinkling his speech with Hebrew words

and the names of Jews who died in the civil

rights movement, Booker said standing for

Palestinians’ human dignity and human

rights are “Jewish values.” He spoke moving-

ly of a time when “Muslim children and

Christian children and Jewish children will

finally join hands a nd sing in a chorus of love

that we are free at l ast.”

Unfortunately, Netanyahu i s heading i n a

different direction. And AIPAC i s following.

Twitter: @Milbank

DANA MILBANK

WAsHInGton sKetcH

AIPAC makes

Sanders’s

point for him

I

nstead of clarifying who will win the

Democratic presidential nomination,

each successive primary seems only to

further muddy the waters. The Five -

ThirtyEight forecast projected Monday

evening that the most likely winner of the

Democratic nomination is “no one”

(67 percent) followed by former vice presi-

dent J oe Biden (17 percent) and Sen. Bernie

Sanders of Vermont (16 percent). The first

brokered convention since 1952 is n ot only

possible but increasingly likely.

Why are the Democrats having so much

trouble settling on a nominee? Answer:

socialism. No, I don’t mean Sanders’s

toxic socialist agenda that is dividing the

party (though it is). I mean that the

Democrats’ nominating process is social-

ist compared with the Republicans’ more

capitalist a pproach.

Like good capitalists, the Republican

system favors winners over losers. Eight

states have winner-take-all primaries, in

which the winning candidate in the state-

wide vote gets all of the state’s delegates,

even if he or she has earned less than

50 percent of the vote. Another 10 states

are winner-take-more or winner-take-

most systems, while an additional

12 states are proportional with a winner-

take-all trigger. Only 18 states have a

completely proportional system, while

three more have conventions. This means

the weaker candidates get knocked out

sooner, making it easier for a clear winner

to emerge. After Super Tuesday in 2016,

Donald Trump had won about 35 percent

of all the votes cast but earned 43 percent

of the available delegates.

Contrast this with the Democrats’ so-

cialist approach, which seems to appor-

tion delegates on the principle of “from

each according to his abilities, to each

according to his needs.” There are zero

Democratic winner-take-all states. (Can-

didates who clear a 15 percent threshold

either statewide or at the local level are

awarded delegates.) Indeed, in the Iowa

caucuses the result was actually winner-

take- less ; Sanders won the popular vote,

but Pete Buttigieg emerged with more

delegates. This discourages consolidation

around a winner and encourages candi-

dates with little chance of winning (such

as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachu-

setts with a 0 percent chance in the

FiveThirty E ight projection and Mike

Bloomberg with 0.1 percent chance) to

stay in the race, collecting delegates and

hoping to make a play for the nomination

at a contested convention.

The Democratic nominating process is

also socialist when candidates get to the

convention. If no one wins on the first

ballot, then a group of 771 superdelegates

— the Politburo-style group of unelected

party insiders — can jump in on the

second ballot and help swing the nomina-

tion in favor of the candidate of their

choice.

Under current projections, Sanders

will win 1,542 delegates — a plurality but

not a majority — coming up short of the

1,991 needed to secure the nomination.

He would be followed by Biden with

1,520 and Bloomberg with 618 — enough

to win the nomination if Biden-

Bloomberg were a single candidate. Sand-

ers would fail to secure the nomination on

the first round, at which point all dele-

gates would be unpledged — and the

superdelegates would enter the fray.

If party insiders help take the nomina-

tion from Sanders — the candidate who

won the most primary votes and had the

most delegates — his supporters will cry

foul. How, they will ask, can the Demo-

cratic establishment reject the will of the

people and nominate someone who re-

ceived fewer votes than Sanders? Party

leaders will respond that the majority of

Democrats voted for a more moderate

candidate and that by picking a less

radical standard-bearer, they are in fact

responding to the will of the people.

This would be a disaster for Democrats.

The party would go into the general

election deeply and irreparably divided.

Many S anders supporters would refuse to

support the Democratic nominee — as

they did when Hillary Clinton was the

nominee. Some would stay home. Others

might even end up voting for Trump,

because he would be the only anti-

e stablishment candidate left in the race.

In 2016, that is precisely what hap-

pened, much to Trump’s benefit. Accord-

ing to the Cooperative Congressional

Election Study, about 12 percent of Sand-

ers primary voters supported Trump in

the 2016 general election, giving him the

margin of victory in the three key swing

states: In Pennsylvania, 16 percent of

Sanders supporters — 117,100 people —

voted for Trump; Trump won by just

44,292 votes. In Wisconsin, 9 percent of

Sanders supporters — 51,317 people —

voted for Trump; Trump won by just

22,748 votes. In M ichigan, about 8 percent

of Sanders voters — 47,915 people — cast

their ballots for Trump; Trump won by

just 10,704 votes.

That c ould happen again, thanks to the

Democrats’ socialist approach to the

nominating process. In other words, so-

cialism could sink the Democrats’ chanc-

es in November — whether Bernie Sand-

ers is the nominee or not.

Twitter: @marcthiessen

MARC A. THIESSEN

The surging

Democratic

candidate?

‘No one.’

BY SUZANNE SPAULDING

T

he November election is just

around the corner, and it’s

clear the Russian government

continues to wage an assault

on our electoral process. But this time,

it has had four years to practice and

enhance its tactics. Finger- pointing

about which candidate Vladimir Putin

prefers doesn’t help; instead, we

should try to better anticipate and

understand how Russian information

operations are intended to work

against democracy.

Inauthentic online activity never

stopped after Russia deployed its troll

farms, hackers and advertising cam-

paigns on social media in 2016. But the

Russians have grown more adept at

amplifying domestic voices and ex-

ploiting weaknesses of our own mak-

ing. This maximizes the reach and

perceived authenticity of divisive rhet-

oric. Moreover, the Russians no longer

need to post during the Russian work-

day. They intersperse human activity

with bot networks that infiltrate on-

line conversations and distort legiti-

mate online dialogues.

The Russian government may no

longer pay for online a ds i n rubles, but

the lack of legal requirements for

transparency — some of which could

have been addressed with the stalled

Honest Ads Act — means there are

still loopholes whereby bad actors can

push dark money into politics. R ussia

uses its state-sponsored media outlets

such as RT and Sputnik to push

one-sided narratives, conspiracy the-

ories and half-truths to its audiences.

These reinforce and are fed by social

media accounts that create pipelines

for disinformation. Local media, of-

ten trusted alternatives to main-

stream media, are also vulnerable, as

they often don’t have large fact-

c hecking departments. And because

local media is more trusted, the Rus-

sian information operations include

creating fake “local” news outlets.

We should expect to see “cheap

fake” a nd “deepfake” v ideos, which are

alterations of real videos made to

convincingly show something that

may not have happened. These videos

are less likely to “prove” a lie than to

create noise, thus contributing con-

flicting evidence to overwhelm mem-

bers of the public and push them

toward a post-truth reality.

Traditional cyberattacks are of con-

cern, as well. Russia was reportedly

behind the hack on Ukrainian gas

company Burisma. It was also brazen-

ly involved in the hack and leak of

emails in the run-up to the most recent

French presidential election. We

should prepare for a mix of both real

and fake documents to be leaked. And,

of course, we must prepare for at-

tempts to hack election infrastructure

and ransomware attacks to disrupt

voting.

So what is the Russian government

seeking to achieve? Putin’s objectives

go beyond elections. He targets a few

audiences with the same basic narra-

tive: Democracy is corrupt, hypocriti-

cal and chaotic. For his own popula-

tion and in countries where the United

States and Russia compete for influ-

ence, the goal is to convince people to

not desire Western-style democracy.

The message for Americans is more

pernicious. Putin’s g oal is to weaken us

by exploiting and exacerbating divi-

sion and distrust. He seeks to make it

harder to galvanize and sustain public

support for action that might prevent

Russia from acting in ways that under-

mine U.S. interests and security.

By undermining trust in institu-

tions such as the media and the courts

— i nstitutions we look to as arbiters of

truth — P utin hopes to get us to give up

on the idea of truth and on the idea

that we can hold our institutions ac-

countable. He wants us to despair and

disengage. Without an informed and

engaged citizenry, democracy cannot

function.

So how does this play out in the

election? Russia will likely try to exac-

erbate divisions by amplifying the

least-centrist candidates. Russian pro-

paganda outlets are seizing on exist-

ing narratives that these “mavericks”

are not getting a fair shake because the

corrupt system, controlled by the “po-

litical elite” and mainstream media, is

working against them. Russia’s activi-

ties could support a post-election as-

sertion, depending on the outcome,

that the election was rigged — includ-

ing claims that election infrastructure

was hacked, discourse was inauthen-

tic and disruptions to voting were

targeted against a certain candidate or

group of voters.

In a close election, the courts could

be called upon to adjudicate processes

used to settle the outcome. The Krem-

lin has already been working to under-

mine public trust in our courts, again

often amplifying domestic voices.

What more powerful way to weaken

America and undermine the appeal of

democracy than to threaten the peace-

ful transition of power?

Americans must understand what

Putin hopes to achieve. It’s not just

about which candidate Russia may

support. Democracy is under attack,

and we must all fight to defend it by

refusing to give up. Hold our institu-

tions accountable, and believe in our

power to bring about change. Vote.

Know there may be disruptions and

claims of corruption. Insist on impar-

tial processes to resolve issues, and,

when all is said and done, accept the

outcome of the election. That’s the

American way of beating Russia at its

own game.

the writer is the senior adviser for

homeland security at the center for

strategic and International studies. Fr om

2013 to 2017, she was the undersecretary

for cybersecurity and infrastructure at the

Department of Homeland security.

Enough finger-pointing.

Our democracy is at stake.

AlexeI DruzHInIn/sputnIK/KremlIn pool/epA-eFe/sHutterstocK

Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia, on Feb. 2 0.

BY JOSHUA SPIVAK

W

ith Sen. Bernie Sanders

(I-Vt.) in the front-runner

position in the Democratic

nomination fight, he may be

able to all but end the race with a strong

performance on Super Tuesday. That

one day will see the awarding of about

34 percent of pledged delegates, enough

to grant him a potential overwhelming

plurality. B ut regardless of the outcome,

the political parties may face significant

criticism that a single day — only one

month since voting started — could be

so decisive.

Since the 1960 election, when the

country moved away from the conven-

tion system and primaries gained new

influence as a means of choosing presi-

dential nominees, the states have tried

different ways of staying relevant in the

process, to ensure that their voters still

had a say. Eventually, a number of states

came up with the idea of banding

together to have primaries take place on

the same day.

While Super Tuesday started in 1984,

it really took off in 1988, when a group

of Southern states joined together to

have an effective March 8 regional

primary, relatively early in the electoral

season. With both parties having a real

nomination fight that year because of

the lack of an incumbent, Super Tues-

day was seen as a great success. Since

then, states have tried to use this

strategy to gain more attention for their

voters, but this comes at the expense of

a coherent nomination fight.

The status of Super Tuesday has been

a critical marker. In 2004, the race was

effectively over after Super Tuesday,

rendering the rest of the country irrele-

vant. In 2008, states raced their prima-

ries forward, creating a “Super Duper

Tuesday” and radically changing the

calendar. And now, as we see this year,

the failure to come up with a coherent

long-term strategy for choosing a nomi-

nee to replace the old one has become

all too evident. Neither party has fig-

ured out how to satisfy voters’ desire to

cast a meaningful ballot without dam-

aging the eventual nominee in the long

run.

If one candidate scores some early

victories in Iowa and New Hampshire

and then quickly gains overwhelming

momentum, there will be complaints

about the nomination being all but

decided before most states have a

chance to vote. And if the nomination

fight drags on, there is serious fear

about splitting the party and damaging

the nominee for the November race — i n

2016, for example, Hillary Clinton never

fully healed the party rift from her

nomination fight with Sanders.

The parties have not been able to

figure out how to properly navigate

either of these issues. The result is a

constant stream of complaints, which

have been gleefully amplified by the

Republicans in both 2016 and this year

in hopes of discouraging potential Dem-

ocratic voters in November.

For this election season, there’s not

much that can be done. But Democrats

— and Republicans, who are facing an

open race themselves in the next elec-

tion — could start planning ahead for

2024. Beyond the obvious idea of elimi-
      nating caucuses, restoring the original
      idea of Super Tuesday — a regional
      primary rather than a large grouping of
      states across the country — may be the
      best fix.
      The plan to have a rotating series of
      regional primaries has been consistently
      discussed but always dropped. Still,
      though not a magic bullet, regional

primaries have significant advantages

compared with the dismally uncoordi-

nated system that currently exists. A

rotating system would prevent one or

two kickoff states from playing such a

large role in the process (as occurs with

Iowa and New Hampshire, states that

are no longer representative of much of

the electorate) while at the same time

still allowing smaller states to “count” in

a campaign effort. And a regional s ystem

would mitigate the imbalances resulting

from an over-large Super Tuesday, in

which California and Te xas, the two

biggest states participating, may over-

whelm the smaller states that are also

attempting to have their say on that day.

Regional primaries would also give

candidates a chance to do more retail

politicking, while being able to give

coherent answers on region-specific

issues. They would certainly help save

candidates the time and expense of

cross-country travel. A smaller cam-

paigning radius for the early primaries

would allow candidates to build mo-

mentum and could even compress the

primary calendar so that party infight-

ing has less time to develop.

This Super Tuesday is set to be a

critical moment for Democrats, but

voters have good reason to be con-

cerned that both the party and the

states have botched the planning of a

singularly important day in the nomi-

nation fight. Both Democrats and Re-

publicans should start planning ahead

— they will need a more effective

nomination system for the future.

Joshua spivak is a senior fellow at the Hugh

l. carey Institute for Government reform at

Wagner college. He blogs at the recall

elections Blog. this is the fifth op-ed in a

series about how to improve the

presidential nominating process.

The trouble with Super Tuesday