Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro is perhaps the top contender to be Kamala Harris’s running mate. But Shapiro would be an awful selection, with a history of alienating and antagonizing core party constituencies and caving to pressure on major issues.
That’s from their linked article about how he tried to stifle free speech by condemning protestors. Yet the article says he said they should protest elsewhere and not attack Jewish businesses.
These articles critiquing him on Israel always seem to omit that Shapiro has called Netanyahu the “biggest barrier” to peace in the Middle East. They also omit that his college editorial focuses on his personal views on Arafat. Even though he opines that both sides should set aside their differences for peace, the point of that article is that he doesn’t think it’ll happen.
The article goes on to say he made “a false equivalence between criticism of Israel and antisemitism.” Again, he literally said they should protest not in front of businesses, as well as one other comment where he said the encampments were unsafe.
I also think it’s laughable that these same people continue to hold up Walz as some sort of example of perfection. He has refused to engage with the BDS movement and actively engaged with AIPAC (more than Shapiro has, from my understanding). He even stated “Israel is our truest and closest ally in the region, with a commitment to values of personal freedoms and liberties, surrounded by a pretty tough neighborhood.” The only thing he’s done that is remotely in support of Palestine is to say that Democrats shouldn’t ignore the uncommitted activists if they want to win. That’s a logical statement about the math behind winning an election, not a support of Palestine.
I gotta say, I didn’t know much about Shapiro before this so started, and frankly I still don’t.
But nothing is more suspicious than seeing someone go from limited mention to being called a zionist constantly, 0 to 100 like I’ve seen with Shapiro.
I think that’s a pretty natural consequence of:
Reports that he is the front-runner to be Harris’s vice-presidential pick (which pretty naturally takes someone from “who?” to the topic of national discussion); and
The Philadelphia Inquirer digging up an old op-ed where he says that the Palestinians are incapable of governing themselves.
I’m going to skip over everything else that has been reported about that op-ed and focus on that one line. Because that is bonkers.
I do believe people’s political opinions can change, and that’s why I’ll forgive most of the op-ed (my opinions have certainly changed since I was 20, and I’m not much younger than Shapiro). But that one line speaks to a bigoted, colonialist mindset that would have been more at home in the 1860s than the 1990s.
I honestly think it’s disqualifying. For someone to think like that at age 20 points to such a lack of empathy, it’s probably the sign of a sociopathic personality.
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