After a week of efforts to equate the controversial remarks of two particular members of Congress, I pushed back a bit at New York:
It looks like House Republicans are going to deal with outrage over their perennial problem child Marjorie Taylor Greene by finding a Democrat to punish. That would be Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, according to Politico’s Huddle:
“’I think that Ilan should receive the same type of punishment as Marjorie because if it’s good for one, it is good for another,’ Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.), who voted to remove Greene from her committees, told me. ‘Anti-semitism is the same thing as anti-semitism. It’s just that Nancy is afraid …'”
There are others who want to push for Omar’s removal as well as those looking to censure her over her war crimes remarks — and a few Dems may join them.
The idea of equating Omar’s complaints about unequal treatment of countries in investigating military misconduct with Greene’s comparisons of mask and vaccine requirements to the Holocaust is deeply satisfying to a lot of people. Republicans can continue their now-ancient habit of waving away extremism in their ranks by claiming it’s more prevalent on the other side of the aisle. Nervous centrist Democrats can document their nervous centrism by firing thunderbolts left and right. And most of all, accusing both parties of harboring those prone to “false equivalence” appeals to the false equivalence many Beltway media folks want to draw between Democrats and Republicans, who are engaged in the mutually assured destruction of partisan polarization.
There’s only one problem: Treating what MTG and Omar have said as equal expressions of false equivalence actually is false, as any honest evaluation of their words quickly shows. Greene bluntly compared COVID-19 precautions to the Holocaust, analogized vaccine documentation mandates to the Nazi practice of making Jews wear yellow stars, and, for good measure, said Democrats are like Nazis because they are “socialists.” Omar said this in the midst of a virtual exchange with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken over investigations of the brief but intense war between Israel and Hamas:
“’We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity,’ she wrote. “We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.’”
Her point wasn’t to say the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban were equally culpable in their commission of atrocities, but that all should be equally subject to international investigation. I suppose there are superpatriots who would dispute the idea that America has ever committed “unthinkable atrocities,” though the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks, and of countless genocidal assaults on Native Americans, among many examples, suggest otherwise. But in any event, when challenged by Republicans and Democrats alike to make it clear she was not imputing equivalent culpability to these various nations and coalitions of fighters, Omar complied instantly:
“U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar said Thursday that she was ‘in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries with well-established judicial systems … ‘
“’To be clear: the conversation was about accountability for specific incidents regarding [International Criminal Court] cases, not a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and Israel.’”
MTG, meanwhile, kept doubling down on her comparisons of public-health measures with the slaughter of many millions by Nazi Germany, and finally, after more than three weeks and a tour of the Holocaust Museum, she issued an apology that betrayed little understanding of the full scope of the Holocaust, and then refused to apologize for the Democrat-Nazi analogy.
Looking more broadly at the two women and their records of controversial utterances, Ilhan made an unfortunate and erroneous reference to “the Benjamins,” in a gratuitous comment about support for Israel in the United States, for which she “unequivocally” apologized:
“Anti-semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-semitic tropes. My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole. We have to always be able to step back and think through criticism, just as I expect people to hear me when others attack my identity. This is why I unequivocally apologize.”
Greene lost her committee assignments earlier this year after media focus on an almost incredible blizzard of incendiary statements she made on social media before coming to Congress (barely anyone even noticed her practice of brandishing an AR-15 when discussing her enemies in campaign ads). In February, she apologized for claiming that school shootings were fake and for promoting QAnon conspiracy theories. She never apologized for happily contemplating violence against congressional Democrats (including, very specifically, Ilhan Omar) and the Speaker of the House, or for her unusually aggressive support of Trump’s electoral big lie and the effort in January to overturn the presidential election results, or for her own subscription to very weird anti-Semitic claims.
If you cannot discern a qualitative difference between Omar’s “outrages” and Greene’s, and between the speed and coherence of their clarifications and apologies, it may be time for some remedial work in logic and rhetoric. These two members of Congress aren’t alike at all, and as much as I sometimes disagree with Ilhan Omar, treating her as a left-wing MTG is lazy and just plain wrong.
Ed: A lot of what’s seen in these polls just confirms their limited use at this early point, especially when the nomination hinges on something as weird as the Iowa caucuses.
The nuance that Tiparillo talks about emphasizes an oft-repeated point that seems hackneyed but also makes sense: Obama’s voters, recuited by Oprah or not, are not good bets for caucusing in Iowa, and they will likely only turn out in NH if Obama has momentum coming in. Basically Obama has the Bill Bradley voting base, and I haven’t seen much from the Obama campaign that indicates they’ll be much better than the Bradley campaign at targeting them and bringing them out to vote.
Unlike Bradley, however, Obama isn’t so naturally strong in NH that he can use it as a firewall against losing Iowa. If Obama loses Iowa, he has enough money to stay on TV until March, but it would be an ultimately vain Bradley-esque denoument.
These polls say Edwards is doing better in SC. At this stage in the campaign, this can only reflect Edwards’s recent TV buy there. Polls really echo TV buys pretty well (see the inflated Richardson numbers in IA and NH). It’s more likely that Edwards has always had a fairly entrenched but small base there, that his TV buys haven’t moved him much, and that he is buying TV in SC to maintain what he has in case he wins IA and loses NH. Maybe he bought the TV to make people think he’s confident in his internal Iowa numbers. The same dissonance with polls is possible in Nevada, which is a caucus: Even if the only people who show up are HERE members, polls will inevitably reflect a much wider universe. (Maybe most importantly, no one knows who the Nevada caucusgoers are for sure, but there probably won’t be many of them, and it may not matter who wins.) In any case, the poll only tells a small part of the story.
Even if everyone realizes the CW is overreliant on polls, they are such attractive reference points that it’s impossible to put them in realistic perspective.
Iowa has always been decided by field organization and this time will be no different. Obama has always looked like a third-place candidate in Iowa because he just doesn’t have enough precincts and his turnout strategy is oddly Howard Dean-like. Thus he has an outsized place in the narrative of this campaign.
The most crucial narrative is the Edwards vs. Hillary battle on the ground in Iowa. Hillary has the decided edge here.
Once Iowa is over, the campaign finally takes shape in time for open primaries, and polls start meaning a lot more.
Tiparillo:
I was surprised, too, though it may be a good reminder that despite Edwards’ faithful channelling of netroots rhetoric, his actual base of support is among rank-and-file union folk and/or older Democrats who aren’t likely to be that attracted to Obama. From that perspective, it’s also not surprising that Obama supporters who perceive HRC as the ultimate blast from the past would prefer Edwards in a one-to-one with Hillary.
Ed Kilgore
Wow – I have a hard time believing that the Edwards voters will break that dramtically for Clinton.
My impression from a limited sample is that Edwards voters – much like the cnadidate – are not fans of Clinton at all.
But this poll is about New Hampshire in particular so…..