November 9, 2016

In forging an unprecedented and stunning path to the presidency, Donald Trump claimed to represent Americans who were anxious, resentful and ready to make radical changes. Their electoral strength blindsided pollsters and pundits — and flabbergasted many Jews, for whom the Trump base was once largely invisible. That is about to irrevocably change.

Here are some questions raised by Trump’s showing:

Donald Trump says good things about Israel and plays up conspiracy theories embraced by anti-Semites. Can they be tweaked apart?

Trump won Florida, by a hair’s breadth.

Campaigning hard for the state, he sought the support of its substantial Jewish community, in part by pivoting from relative coolness to Israel at the outset of his campaign to aligning with a right-wing pro-Israel posture by its end: bashing the Iran nuclear deal, swearing to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, retreating from emphasizing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We will stand strong, we have to stand strong with the State of Israel in their fight against Islamic terrorists,” Trump told a rally Monday morning in Sarasota. He bashed President Barack Obama’s record on Israel.

Three weeks earlier, same state, West Palm Beach: Trump in a speech indicted Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, as part of a secret conspiracy involving international banks seeking global control – codes straight out of the anti-Semitic canon.

“Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors,” he said.

Last Friday, he ran a final statement video ad featuring excerpts of the speech – and this time attaching to it three famous Jewish faces (again without saying “Jew” or naming Jews as a class).

The speech and ad culminated a campaign pocked with similar dog whistles, including Trump’s use on Twitter of images that originated on anti-Semitic websites. Several times in debates and speeches, he invoked the names of little-known Jewish advisers to Clinton as emblematic of nefariousness.

Anti-Semites on the alt-right eagerly perked up at what sounded to their ears as whistles.

It’s tempting to liken this dilemma to that faced by Jews under President Richard Nixon, who was obsessed with what he believed to be the conspiracies against him by American Jews, but who adored their Israeli cousins. (And who also had trusted Jewish advisers, including his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.) Jews survived Nixon, and still thank him for the massive airlift of arms during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

But it’s different with Trump. Whatever Nixon’s weirdness about Jews, it did not permeate his campaigns; it became evident years later, as tapes he recorded peppered with anti-Jewish epithets became public.

Moreover, Nixon was a relative liberal when it came to other minorities. It is true that under him the Republican Party pursued a “Southern strategy,” sending coded messages to white racists. But his policies, including desegregation and investing in the rise of a black middle class, would seem progressive today.

Trump, by contrast, has hardly been coded in his messages he sends about other minorities, especially Hispanics and Muslims, but blacks as well. And there is also the matter of his record of misogynistic comments.

That presents a host of dilemmas for Jews, conceivably forcing them to weigh their American identity, forged through a close association with the civil rights and feminist movements, and their loyalty to Israel. Cozying up to Trump as a means of keeping Israel on his good side would likely be seen as a betrayal among considerable swaths of the Hispanic, African-American and Muslim communities, constituencies Jewish and pro-Israel organizations in recent years have been eager to cultivate.

Israel is the Jewish homeland. Israel is also foreign. Does Trump get that?

Trump seems to understand – at least in his more recent speeches – the importance that much of the Jewish community attaches to Israel as the homeland. He also wants to pull up the drawbridge, to insulate America against the wider world, likely diminishing U.S. influence.

The centrist pro-Israel community, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, for decades has cast assistance to Israel as inextricable from the robust U.S. foreign presence overseas. Invest in U.S. influence in the Middle East, in Europe, in Africa, the thinking went, and Israel, as a close ally, could only benefit. America could, and did, leverage its considerable influence in those arenas to benefit Israel.

What holds back the expansion of the boycott Israel movement? What drew a broad coalition of nations to sanction Iran? The willingness to leverage U.S. influence in the global arena and expend U.S. largesse. Diminish influence and leverage fades as well; there is not stick without carrots.

The formula advanced by Trump – and by the Republican Party, which at its convention embraced closeness with Israel while retreating from overseas engagement – is that America will keep Israel close whatever the vicissitudes of its relationships with other countries.

That raises tough questions for Israel, which chafes at the notion that it must rely on a great power to survive. It also casts American Jews as a protected class, able to seek favors for its homeland while other ethnic minorities are cut off – not a status much of the American Jewish community would embrace gladly.

What happens to Jewish conservatives?

A good portion of the conservative resistance to Trump during the campaign was driven by Jews in the movement. Jewish conservatives over the decades had led the effort to make the party more amenable to other minorities and also argued for the holistically robust foreign policy described above. (Both postures, rejecting racial particularism and advocating expanded U.S. influence, were hallmarks of neoconservatism, a movement in which Jews are preeminent.)

The thinking until now was to let the election pass, anticipate Trump’s loss and rebuild the party.

Trump now is the party. Where do these conservatives go?

Who are these people?

Trump tapped into real frustrations with an American economy that even as it grew robbed the middle class of guarantees it once took for granted: college educations for the kids, pensions that lasted until death, a lifetime free of debt.

He also tapped into visceral fears among the portion of the middle class that is white, traditionalist and Christian, that the country looked like it less and less; that privileges that white middle-class Christians had never acknowledged – the protection of the police without considering what it cost marginalized communities, a culture with icons that were as white as they were, first dibs at jobs – were falling away.

It was a class that to a great degree was invisible to Jews, who are largely liberal and confined to coastal enclaves.

Like the rest of the country, Jewish Americans must now contend with this population: Who are they? What are their legitimate grievances? What are the things they seek to preserve that are abhorrent to Jews?

How do we reconcile these things?

An emotional Hillary Clinton urged Americans to lend President-elect Donald Trump “an open mind and the chance to lead,” while also vowing to fight for the diversity she had claimed during a bitter campaign that Trump was trashing.

Clinton delivered her public concession speech at the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan about seven hours after Trump, the Republican nominee, was declared the victor and took Clinton’s private concession over the phone.

“I know how disappointed you feel because I feel it, too,” she said. “This is painful and it will be for a long time.”

Clinton made clear that she intended to hold Trump’s feet to fire on the biases and the threats to encroach on speech freedoms he expressed during his campaign.

“Our democratic Constitution enshrines a peaceful transition of power,” she said. “It also enshrines the rule of law, the principle we are all equal and freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values, too, and we must defend them.”

Trump during his campaign had delivered multiple broadsides against Muslims and Latinos, condescended to African-Americans, intimated conspiracy theories involving Jews and frequently used denigrating language to describe women opposed to him.

In the wee hours of Wednesday, however, he also was conciliatory, saying “now it’s time to bind the wounds of division; we have to get together.”

Choking back tears, Clinton spoke of the hopes she had stirred of becoming the first woman president.

“To all the little girls watching this, never doubt you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world of deserving to achieve your own dreams,” she said. “I count my blessings every single day that I am an American. I still believe that if we stand together and work together with respect for our differences, our best days are still ahead of us.”

Republican Donald Trump stunned the world by defeating heavily favored rival Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election, ending eight years of Democratic control of the White House and sending America on a new, uncertain path.

A wealthy real estate developer and former reality TV host, Trump rode a wave of anger toward Washington insiders to win Tuesday's White House race against Clinton, the Democratic candidate whose gold-plated establishment resume included stints as a first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state.

President Barack Obama, who campaigned hard against Trump, invited the Republican to the White House for a meeting on Thursday. Obama is due to speak later on Wednesday about the election.

“Ensuring a smooth transition of power is one of the top priorities the President identified at the beginning of the year and a meeting with the President-elect is the next step,” the White House said.

Trailing in public opinion polls for months, Trump pulled off a major surprise and collected enough of the 270 state-by-state electoral votes needed to win, taking battleground states where presidential elections are traditionally decided, U.S. television networks projected.

His four-year term begins on Jan. 20 and he will enjoy Republican majorities in both chambers of the U.S. Congress. Television networks projected the party would retain control of the 100-seat Senate and the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats were up for grabs.

Worried that a Trump victory could cause economic and global uncertainty, investors fled risky global assets.

The U.S. dollar, Mexican peso and world stocks fell on Wednesday but fears of the kind of shock that wiped trillions of dollars off world markets after Britain's “Brexit” vote in June failed to materialize immediately.

But U.S. stocks were little changed on Wednesday, rebounding from stunning overnight losses fueled by the election result. Sectors such as banking and steel that appeared poised to benefit from a Trump presidency led the charge.

Trump's victory marked a crushing end to the presidential aspirations of Clinton, 69, who also ran an unsuccessful White House bid in 2008.

Clinton conceded victory to Trump in a phone call overnight and was poised to give the traditional concession speech of a losing presidential candidate on Wednesday morning.

Trump appeared with his family early on Wednesday before cheering supporters in a New York hotel ballroom, saying it was time to heal the divisions caused by the campaign and find common ground after a campaign that exposed deep differences among Americans.

“It is time for us to come together as one united people,” Trump said. “I will be president for all Americans.”

He said he had received a call from Clinton to congratulate him on the win and praised her for her service and for a hard-fought campaign.

His comments were an abrupt departure from his campaign trail rhetoric in which he repeatedly slammed Clinton as “crooked” amid supporters' chants of “lock her up.”

But Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, on Wednesday did not rule out the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton's past conduct, a threat Trump made in an election debate last month.

Despite losing the state-by-state electoral battle that determines the U.S. presidency, Clinton narrowly led Trump in the nationwide popular vote, according to U.S. media tallies.

Republican National Committee senior strategist Sean Spicer told MSNBC that Trump and his senior aides were meeting at Trump Tower in New York on Wednesday to “start the proper transition” to a Trump presidency.

 

SADNESS FOR CLINTON

The wife of former President Bill Clinton, voters perceived Clinton as a cautious and calculating candidate with an inability to personally connect with them.

Clinton's planned election victory party in New York turned sour as results came in and supporters realized her bid to become America's first woman president was failing.

Supporters, some in tears, milled around the convention center in Manhattan where they had gathered.

Prevailing in a race that opinion polls had clearly forecast as favoring Clinton, Trump won avid support among white non-college educated workers with his promise to be the “greatest jobs president that God ever created.” He did well in “Rust Belt” states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.

“Such a beautiful and important evening! The forgotten man and woman will never be forgotten again. We will all come together as never before,” Trump wrote on Twitter early on Wednesday.

In his victory speech, he said he had a great economic plan, would embark on a project to rebuild American infrastructure and would double U.S. economic growth.

Trump, who at 70 will be the oldest first-term U.S. president, came out on top after a bitter and divisive campaign that focused largely on the character of the candidates and whether they could be trusted in the Oval Office.

The presidency will be Trump's first elected office, and it remains to be seen how he will work with Congress. During the campaign Trump was the target of sharp disapproval, not just from Democrats but from many in his own party.

 

GOOD NEWS FOR RUSSIA

Foreign leaders pledged to work with Trump but some officials expressed alarm that the vote could mark the end of an era in which Washington promoted democratic values and was seen by its allies as a guarantor of peace.

During the campaign, Trump expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, questioned central tenets of the NATO military alliance and suggested that Japan and South Korea should develop nuclear weapons to shoulder their own defense burden.

Russia and Putin appeared to be winners from Trump's victory. Defying years of U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy, the Republican has promised much warmer relations with Moscow, despite Russia's intervention in the Syrian civil war and its seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region.

Russia's parliament erupted in applause after a lawmaker announced that Trump had been elected, and Putin told foreign ambassadors he was ready to fully restore ties with Washington.

“It is not an easy path but we are ready to do our part and do everything to return Russian and American relations to a stable path of development,” Putin said.

Russia is hoping that improved relations could yield an elusive prize: the lifting or easing of sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union to punish Moscow for its 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped to reach “new heights” in bilateral ties under Trump. Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing and Washington shared responsibility for promoting global development and prosperity.

Iran urged Trump to stay committed to the nuclear accord between Tehran and world powers. Several authoritarian and right-wing leaders hailed Trump's victory.

Other officials, some of them with senior roles in government, took the unusual step of denouncing the outcome, calling it a worrying signal for liberal democracy and tolerance in the world.

“Trump is the pioneer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist international movement. He is also a warning for us,” German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview with the Funke newspaper group.

U.S. neighbor Mexico was pitched into deep uncertainty by the victory for Trump, who has often accused it of stealing U.S. jobs and sending criminals across the border.

Trump wants to rewrite international trade deals to reduce trade deficits and has taken positions that raise the possibility of damaging relations with America's most trusted allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to take the country on a more isolationist, protectionist “America First” path.

Trump survived a series of blows on the campaign, many of them self-inflicted, including the emergence in October of a 2005 video in which he boasted about making unwanted sexual advances on women. He apologized but within days, several women emerged to say he had groped them, allegations he denied. He was judged the loser of all three presidential debates with Clinton.

A Reuters/Ipsos national Election Day poll offered some clues to the outcome. It found Clinton badly underperformed expectations with women, winning their vote by only about 2 percentage points.

And while she won Hispanics, black and young voters, Clinton did not win those groups by greater margins than Obama did in 2012. Younger blacks did not support Clinton like they did Obama, as she won eight of 10 black voters between the ages of 35 and 54. Obama won almost 100 percent of those voters in 2012.

During the campaign, Trump said he would “make America great again” through the force of his personality, negotiating skill and business acumen. He proposed refusing entry to the United States of people from war-torn Middle Eastern countries, a modified version of an earlier proposed ban on Muslims.

His volatile nature, frequent insults and unorthodox proposals led to campaign feuds with a long list of people, including Muslims, the disabled, Republican U.S. Senator John McCain, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, the family of a slain Muslim-American soldier, a Miss Universe winner and a federal judge of Mexican heritage.

A largely anti-Trump crowd of about 400 to 500 people gathered outside the White House after his victory, many shocked or in tears. Protests against Trump also broke out overnight in downtown Oakland, California, where demonstrators set ablaze a likeness of him, smashed store front windows and set garbage and tires on fire.

Throughout his campaign, Trump described a dark America that had been knocked to its knees by China, Mexico, Russia and Islamic State. The American dream was dead, he said, smothered by malevolent business interests and corrupt politicians, and he alone could revive it.

He has vowed to win economic concessions from China and to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants.

His triumph was a rebuke to Obama, a Democrat who spent weeks flying around the country to campaign against him, repeatedly casting doubt on his suitability for the White House. Obama will hand over the office to Trump after serving the maximum eight years allowed by law.

Trump promises to push Congress to repeal Obama's signature healthcare law and to reverse his plan to curb greenhouse emissions mainly from coal-fired power plants.

Even though the FBI found no grounds for criminal charges after a probe into her use of a private email server rather than a government system while she was secretary of state, the issue allowed critics to raise doubts about her integrity. Hacked emails also showed a cozy relationship between her State Department and donors to her family's Clinton Foundation charity.