Channel 1's Weird Likud Primary Coverage

Because of long lines and problems with voting machines, polls closed only at 1 a.m. in the Likud primaries. Polls are still open in the West Bank. Because of this, results are expected at 2:30, instead of midnight. Nobody is still covering this election, except for Channel 1, the public (government-owned) channel.

Newscasters Geula Even and Oded Shahar, along with political commentator Yaron Dekel, are joking around with the guests in the studio and Ayala Hason-Nesher,the reporter at Likud HQ. Hason-Nesher even asked Even and Shahar how long they have to stay on the air and killing time. They keep joking about not falling asleep. They are acting so silly that when they interviewed Limor Livnat, Even fake-complimented her on her looks and brains, "in case you become the minister in charge of public broadcasting."

Hason-Nesher to Even after Even successfully guessed Moshe Yaalon is in 7th place, according to the unofficial list Hason-Nesher got: "You're not just beautiful, you've got brains".

It doesn't seem like they think anyone is actually watching them.

Likud Moderates vs. Feiglins: Who Should I Root For?

Tomorrow the Likud holds its primaries to elect its list for the Knesset. Benjamin Netanyahu is hoping that right-wing extremist Moshe Feiglin and his supporters, known as "the Feiglins", will not do very well. He fears that if they make it into high places on the list it will cost the party a significant amount of votes. I'm sure he's right. A radical Likud Knesset list would definitely hurt Netanyahu in his race against Tzipi Livni.

I have mixed feelings about the results I'd like to see coming out of tomorrow's vote. A part of me would like to see the extremists win, so that Likud will lose to Kadima in the general election. However, as an Israeli, I don't really want these dangerous nuts in my parliament. I'd rather see moderates like Dan Meridor, Asaf Hefetz and Uzi Dayan get into the Knesset than Moshe Feiglin.

I've come to the conclusion that I'd like to see the moderates in the top 20, spots considered safe, and I don't want the Feiglins to be in completely unrealistic spots, like 40 and up, but rather places that are on the brink - mid-20's to mid-30's, places where people will say to themselves, "if my vote is the one giving Likud a 26th (or 30th) seat and putting that guy in the Knesset, I'd rather vote for a different party."

Labor's Knesset List

I have mixed feelings about the primary election's results. On the one hand, most of the candidates I support are at the top of the list (Braverman, Yechimovich and Pines), while another, Daniel Ben-Simon, is in 11th place, which just might get him into the next Knesset. On the other hand, the entire second fivesome ("hamishya", places 6-10, not including 7, which was reserved) is made up of people I hoped would be pushed out of the Knesset - Matan Vilnai, Yuli Tamir, Amir Peretz and Fuad Ben-Eliezer, while one of the people who were pushed out was Colette Avital, one of the finest Knesset Members Israel has.

I'm also not happy about Yoram Martziano winning the seat reserved for struggling neighborhoods. Martziano is a thug whose main contribution to Israeli legislation was to overturn a desicion to remove huge billboards from buildings along a busy highway. Transportation experts said the billboards, which usualy have scantily clad models on them, distract drivers and cause accidents, but Martziano came out in defense of the advertising companies. He also got into a fistfight at a nightclub and was accused of sexual harassment. The good news is that Martziano is only in 17th place, and the way it looks now, Labor will get only about ten seats.

Anyway, here's how the Labor Party's Knesset list will look (top 19):

1. Ehud Barak, party chairman
2. Yitzhak Herzog (1st place in primaries)
3. Ofir Pines (2nd)
4. Avishai Braverman (3rd)
5. Shelly Yechimovich (4th)
6. Matan Vilnai (5th)
7. Eitan Cabel, reserved as secretary-general
8. Fuad Ben Eliezer (6th)
9. Yuli Tamir (8th, bumped up one seat due to reservation for women)
10. Amir Peretz (7th)
11. Daniel Ben-Simon (9th)
12. Shalom Simhon (seat reserved for Moshavim)
13. Orit Noked (seat reserved for Kibbutzim)
14. Einat Wilf (10th place in national primary)
15. Ghaleb Majadla (seat reserved for Arabs)
16. Shekeev Shanan (seat reserved for Druze candidate)
17. Yoram Martziano (seat reserved for struggling neighborhoods)
18. Leon Litinsky (seat reserved for Olim, new immigrants)
19. Colette Avital (12th place in national primary, bumped up due to reservation for women)

Labor Primaries Postponed Mid-Voting

I waited two hours today at my polling place to vote in the Labor Party's primary election. The voting system crashed and so we had to wait for it to come back up again. Once in a while it came back up, two or three people managed to vote and then the system crashed again. The poll workers said there were problems all over Israel and that the company running the system had only two tech support guys for the whole country. It was ridiculous. In the end I didn't vote at all.

Turns out that the party has decided to stop today's elections and postpone them to December 10. This was the Labor Party's first attempt at electronic voting, and during the re-vote they'll go back to the old system of paper ballots. I think they should have had paper ballots available today as backup in case the system fails.

Labor List Prediction

Other than Ehud Barack and Eitan Cabel, who have the 1st and 7th places on the Labor list reserved, as well as a few people running unopposed for seats reserved for specific geographic and demographic districts, all other people who want to get into the party's list have to succeed in tomorrow's primaries. Here's how I predict the top 10 will look:

1. Ehud Barack (Reserved, as party chairman)
2. Ofir Pines (1st place in primaries)
3. Shelly Yechimovich (2nd)
4. Avishay Braverman (3rd)
5. Yitzhak Herzog (4th)
6. Daniel Ben-Simon (5th)
7. Eitan Cabel (Reserved, as party secretary-general)
8. Colette Avital (6th)
9. Amir Peretz (7th)
10. Einat Wilf (8th)

Coming in at 9th place and getting the 11th spot on the list will be Fouad Ben Eliezer. 10th place, who will get to be no. 14, after the two spots reserved for Moshavim (Shalom Simhon, running unopposed) and Kibbutzim (where Orit Noked will probably win), will be Yuli Tamir.

I'm predicting that 4 women will be among the ten people with the most votes, and three of them will also make it to the Knesset list's top 10. They don't even need the places reserved for women (5th, if no woman is elected to places 1-4; 9th, if no woman is elected to places 6-8; and 14, if no woman is elected to places 11-13). I may be too optimistic here.

Polls close at 22:00 (3 PM Eastern), and voting is electronic, so results should not take too long to be tallied and announced.

My Labor Votes

The Israeli Labor Party selects its Knesset list tomorrow. Each party member chooses five to eight of the 19 general candidates plus votes for district candidates. As a (not so proud) member, I'll have the right to vote as well. I'll be voting for Avishay Braverman (a brilliant economist), Ofir Pines (a sane moderate on social and national security issues), Shelly Yechimovich (an excellent legislator who used to be extremely leftist in her previous journalism career, but who has become a moderate), Colette Avital (excellent legislator and former diplomat) and Daniel Ben-Simon (a former Ha'aretz journalist who has entered politics recently). I might also vote for Shimon Sheetrit, a law and political science prefessor and former cabinet member, and Dr. Einat Wilf, a young academic with interesting ideas about education.

You may notice I'm not voting for any generals. I have no idea what good Fouad Ben-Eliezer, a retired Brigadier General, has ever done for this country in all his years in government. He's been good to members of strong labor unions, but not to the general population. Matan Vilnai, a retired Major General who I used to like, has had some very odd security proposals recently.

Neither will I be voting for Yuli Tamir, the Minister of Education. She has let the Ministry of the Treasury run negotiations with teachers' and university professors' unions and , and she has led the awful Ofek Hadash (New Horizon) reform plan, which gives teachers slightly more pay for a lot more work (meaning that per hour, their pay was cut), among other problems.

I will not vote for the inept Amir Peretz or the bleeding-heart Peace Now chairman Yariv Oppenheimer. I will also vote against the Ars (thug) Yoram Martziano, who is running in the "neighborhoods" district (where only residents of poor neighborhoods can run but all party members can vote).

Florida and Michigan's Leverage

The Democratic Party's state branches in Florida and Michigan should threaten the national party that if their delegates are not seated at the national convention in Denver this August, they will not put the Democratic Party's nominees on the ballot in these two states. Instead, one Michigan Democrat and one Florida Democrat will run together for president and vice president in those two states under the Democratic Party line. Such a move would pretty much ensure John McCain's victory in November, so the DNC would have to listen in order to avoid this scenario.

Hillary Must Defeat Obama

Senator Hillary Clinton, as the only qualified of the three candidates left in the race, must not quit. If she will not be the Democratic nominee then the United States will have to choose between two very different paths, but both of them just as dangerous. Clinton is the sane middle between the militarism of John McCain and the naivete of Barack Obama.

Right now, it looks like the race is finished and Clinton doesn't have a chance, but she should try anyway. Obama is a horrible candidate as it is, and would make a horrible president, so it doesn't really matter if she bloodies him ahead of November.

Obama the Carteresque

Jimmy Carter's recent visit to the Middle East has convinced me that Barack Obama is presidential after all. The problem is that the president he resembles is Carter, the guy who owes George W. Bush a favor for pushing him off the number one spot on the list of worst presidents of the last half century.

Both Obama and Carter are very intelligent people who are extremely naive with regard to diplomacy. They both support high-level talks with all the unrepentant bad guys of the world. Barack Obama is willing to sit down with Mahmoud Ahmedinijad without preconditions and without lower level talks first. Jimmy Carter wants Israel to talk to Hamas, an organization that still says all it can agree to is a 10 year ceasefire in return for all of their demands (a Palestinian state and return of refugees).

Of the two most recent Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton was far better than Jimmy Carter. Hillary Clinton is very Clintonian, and not just because of her last name. So this primary season it is Clintonian Democrats vs. Carteresque Democrats, and if the latter win, the United States will be in big trouble.

Barack Obama's Israeli Blog

Senator Barack Obama apparently believes Israel is the 51st state of the Union and it hasn't had its primary yet, or perhaps that the outcomes of American elections are decided in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. Why else would he open a blog on an Israeli website, intended for an Israeli audience (and apparently not just for American citizens in Israel) in both Hebrew and English?

As a dual citizen of Israel and the United States I'm supposed to be flattered by this move, but I'm not. Obama is trying to show he isn't anti-Semitic or anti-Israel in the wrong way. For one thing, as a candidate for president of the United States of America he shouldn't be courting foreign nationals. Second of all, if he decides to court foreigners anyway, he should try courting different countries. Does he have a French blog? A Mexican blog (and not just for Mexican Americans)? Does he have blogs in Kenya, his father's birthplace, or in Indonesia, where he spent some of his childhood? Does he have a blogs in Arabic, Greek, Portuguese, German, Swahili, etc.?

The fact that Obama's only foreign blog is in Israel is troubling. It seems he attributes too much power to Israel. Does he think that if Israelis don't like him American Jews won't vote for him? The Jews of the Land of Milk and Honey don't have that kind of influence and veto power over the Jews of the Land of Opportunities.

USraelis Pick Hillary

The term USrael is usually used as a derogatory term to describe an alleged colonial imperialist conspiracy spearheaded by Little Satan and Big Satan to meddle in the affairs of the Middle East and the rest of the world. I, of course, will not use it that way. Instead, it's how I'll call dual citizens of the United States and Israel.

Last month Democrats Abroad conducted a global primary for American citizens living outside of the US who identify themselves as Democrats. Obama won a big victory, winning two thirds of the votes and all but three countries. Democrats in Israel, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic (USraelis, USlippinos and USominicans, I guess) chose Hillary Clinton. In Israel, she won 54 to 45 - not such a huge margin. It was so close that among those who voted on-line the vote split evenly between Obama and Clinton, with 124 votes for each contender. The vote in the Tel-Aviv voting center made the difference, with 59 votes for Clinton and 31 for Obama (Clinton also won the mail-in/fax vote 7 to 4). In the Palestinian territories only one person cast a vote, and it was for Obama. A country by country breakdown is available here.

I expected Clinton to win by a landslide here in Israel. I'm surprised it was as close as it was. Bill Clinton was, and still is, the most popular American president among Israelis. Indeed, Israel's Channel 10 news conducted a poll among Israelis (not USraelis this time, but the general population) that asked how they would vote if they were American citizens. In a Clinton-Obama match, Clinton wins 62% to 16%. In a Clinton-McCain race, she wins 58 to 12. In a McCain-Obama race McCain wins 42 to 30. When asked which of the three is best for Israel 53% said Clinton, 16% said McCain and 9.5% said Obama.

Global Democratic Primary

Today is not only Super Tuesday in 20-something states, it is also Day One of the week-long Global Primary held by Democrats Abroad, the official wing of the Democratic Party for American citizens living outside of the United States. Voting is being conducted in person, as well as by fax, mail and on-line. Registration for the latter three forms of voting is over, but if you are an American citizen living abroad you can just show up in person at one of the voting centers with your American passport and register on the spot.

Democrats in Israel can vote in Tel-Aviv, at Beit Daniel, 62 Bnei Dan Street. The voting center will be open on Thursday, Feb 8 between 17:00-21:00 and on Friday, Feb 9 between 10:00-12:30.

Here's a list of all other voting centers worldwide.

Obama Inspires Me To Vote Clinton

Pundits like to say that the Democratic race is split more or less along the following lines: younger, more educated and centrist/independent-leaning voters support Barack Obama, while older, less educated and more die-hard "establishment" Democrats support Hillary Clinton. According to these categories I should be in the Obama camp: I'm young, I'm a grad student, and I'm a centrist. But I'm a Clintonite, not an Obaman.

Many Democrats say they are excited about both candidates. I'm not. I'm excited about Hillary, but not about Barack. If he wins the nomination, I will probably vote for him in November, but only because I don't want another Republican in the White House. I totally fail to understand the enthusiasm surrounding him.

BHO seems to think he is the new JFK, RFK and MLK all in one, minus the assassinations. However, unlike the Kennedys and King, his inspirational rhetoric comes without any action. I find him to be a mostly empty shell. He is vague on most issues. On the issues where he is clearer, like healthcare and withdrawal from Iraq, I much prefer Clinton's proposals.

By the way, as an American growing up in Israel, Bill Clinton has been the closest thing to JFK that I've ever known. Maybe that's why Obama's "I'm the new Kennedy" stance hasn't worked on me.

Michigan Dems, Vote Ron Paul

Markos Moulitsas of The Daily Kos wants Michigan Democrats to vote for Mitt Romney in the Republican primary next Tuesday. Since the DNC stripped the state of delegates, making the Democratic primary meaningless (Clinton is the only one on the ballot anyway) and anyone can vote in the Republican primary, Democrats can use the primary to their advantage. Kos says that if Romney wins, the Republicans will fight amongst themselves, wasting their time and money on the primary, leading to a Democratic victory in November.

If you want to screw with the Republicans I have a better target: vote Ron Paul. Wouldn't everybody go crazy if he won the primary? Maybe he'd even get a boost ahead of the next primaries, thus winning more delegates to the Republican convention, which would lead to a nuttier libertarian platform.

I'm not sure that trying to screw up the Republican nomination process is so smart. Since any Republican nominee will have a chance of actually winning the presidency, maybe Michigan Democrats should vote for the Republican who would do the least damage as president. It seems to me that John McCain fits this description. On the other hand, voting for the best Republican would make the general election tougher for the eventual Democratic nominee.

3 Notes: Obambee and Iowa

The first one tenth of one percent of Americans have spoken. Hopefully, the other 99.9% will make different choices than Iowa voters have made. Senator Barack Obama is not the best candidate among Democrats, while former Gov. Mike Huckabee seems like one of the only candidates on either side who just might turn out to be even worse than President Bush. Both Obama and Huckabee share the same flaw - inexperience. For Obama it's his greatest weakness. For ultraconservative Huckabee it's just the tip of the iceberg.

I actually like some aspects of the caucuses. I like the idea of a public debate between ordinary citizens trying to convince each other why their candidate is better. Nobody should be forced into such a debate, though, and neither should people who cannot attend the caucus be denied a vote. That's why I think some kind of primary/caucus combo might be a good solution. Some people will attend a caucus, while others, possibly the majority, will vote behind a curtain or via absentee ballots. Sure, the secret ballot option might kill the caucus, but allowing more people to vote is worth it.

Other than that, Iowa shouldn't be the first to vote, at least not every presidential election. In 2005, a panel lead by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker suggested a system of four regional primaries, where each region would hold primaries and caucuses at monthly intervals, with their order rotating every election year. That's a great idea. The panel also recommended that Iowa and New Hampshire remain the first two states to vote, because they test the candidates in door-to-door campaigning. I disagree with this. Candidates can be scrutinized in the same way in other states, too. One or two states could be selected randomly every presidential election to be the first to vote.

P.S. What do you think about Obambee as a word for the Obama-Huckabee duo? I like it more than Huckobama or Huckabama. Oh, the silliness.