On missile ping-pong – Aluf Benn in Haaretz:

‘For the 11th time in 12 months, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has visited Israel and other countries in the region to push us, even implore us, to agree to a cease-fire. Blinken is full of good intentions, and his country's policy, based on President Joe Biden's "postwar Gaza" plan from last December, is sensible and doable.’

(…)

‘But since April, when the war in Lebanon escalated and Israel and Iran began their ominous game of missile ping-pong, which presumably will resume shortly, a new dimension was introduced: the U.S. presidential election. It's no secret that Netanyahu wanted nothing more than for the United States to be dragged into a war with Iran and turn the debacle of October 7, 2023, which happened under his responsibility, into a grand strategic triumph.’

(…)

‘ It's unlikely that the Middle East war, and Israel in particular, will have a major impact on the U.S. presidential election. Of the 161.5 million eligible voters, few vote on foreign-policy issues. Americans vote on the economy, health care, abortion, immigration, law and order and democracy, not on the Middle East and certainly not on Israel.

In fact, it's very rare that a U.S. presidential election is centered around foreign policy. That was the case in 1968 during the deepening Vietnam War, even if the incumbent, Lyndon Johnson, withdrew after the New Hampshire primary. In 2004, against the backdrop of 9/11 and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the election revolved to a large degree around national security.
These are the only examples of foreign-policy supremacy in a U.S. presidential election in recent memory. The United States was actively involved in the war going on, while in today's Middle East, it isn't, at least not yet.
Still, the Middle East and Israel are a contentious issue and a priority for many younger voters, while millions of other voters have seen gory television footage of a raging war. And even if the impact is limited to the margins, the margins are where this election may be decided.
In a poll conducted between September 27 and October 3, Data For Progress, a progressive think tank in Washington, asked voters 18 to 29 years old a simple question: "Do you support or oppose the U.S. imposing an arms embargo on Israel?"
The result – 55 percent "support" and 29 percent "oppose" – shouldn't surprise anyone observing the shifts in American public opinion, particularly among younger voters since Hamas' attack on October 7, 2023, and the ensuing Gaza war that doesn't end.’

(…)

‘There are roughly 3.5 million Arab Americans in the United States, both Christians and Muslims, many of them Palestinian, Lebanese or Egyptian Americans. The Detroit metropolitan area is home to over 400,000 of them. The 370,000 in New York City and the 300,000 in Los Angeles are in solid blue states and can't have an electoral effect as in a battleground state like Michigan, where elections are decided by the smallest of margins.
In 2016 Trump won Michigan by a mere 0.2 percent, or 10,700 votes, while Biden won back the state – considered one of the three remaining "blue wall" states along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – by 2.8 percent. So if enough Arab Americans in Dearborn, a suburban town just west of Detroit, decide to punish the administration by not voting for Harris, Michigan may be lost.
A new Arab News/YouGov Poll found that Trump leads Harris among Arab Americans 45 percent to 43 percent. An earlier poll this month by the Arab American Institute had Trump leading 42 percent to 41 percent. In the 2020 election, the Arab American vote went overwhelmingly for Biden, 64 percent to 35 percent, and in Michigan, according to exit polls, it reached 70 percent.’

(…)

‘The United States will very likely not be dragged into a war with Iran in the next week and a half, and there will probably be no cease-fire on any of the three fronts during that short stretch.’

Read the article here.

Again: if Trump wins because of Gaza that’s beyond irony. But real existing democracy most probably is beyond irony.

The US might be willing to be dragged into a war with Iran. Not in the next two weeks, in the next months or so.

It’s possible that Trump and Harris are not so different on the issue of Iran. And no, I’m repeating the mistakes made by progressives in 2000.

Half of the electorate in the US believes that Trump is good for the empire. Probably less good for its citizens, but that’s more often the case. In the end, the empire eats everything, including its own citizens, and then it disappears.