Democrats to the Center,
Republicans to the Right
T he midterm elections are now a little more than
nine weeks away. What was once predicted to
be a resounding Republican recapture of the House
and the Senate is no longer quite so clear.

But there are some interesting trends that were
reinforced in last week’s primaries: Republicans
are voting for Trump-endorsed election deniers
but not so much if they aren’t Trump-endorsed;
and Democrats are leaning toward the center.

In New York’s District 12, the state’s botched
redistricting fi asco ended up pitting two prom-
inent and moderate Democratic incumbents —
Rep. Jerry Nadler and Rep. Carolyn Maloney
— against each other. Nadler won that race. In
nearby District 10, former federal prosecutor Dan
Goldman defeated progressive State Assembly
member Yuh-Line Niou and progressive incum-
bent Rep. Mondaire Jones. And in District 17,
moderate incumbent Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney
beat progressive state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi,
despite her endorsement by Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez. We saw a similar result last month in the Michigan
Democratic primary in a battle of two incumbents,
where moderate Rep. Haley Stevens beat pro-
gressive Rep. Andy Levin. And in Minnesota, pro-
gressive Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was nominated by
a wide margin in 2020, barely beat out her centrist
Arizona lawmaker Mark Finchem won the
Republican nomination for secretary of state.

Finchem denies that President Joe Biden
won the 2020 election.

opponent in the 2022 primary.

If these and other Democratic results point to
a tentative, but welcome, shift to party modera-
tion, Republican results appear to be shifting to
the right-wing fringe, where a Trump endorse-
ment carries great weight and the assertion that
President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election is
taken as gospel.

Arizona is a good example. State lawmaker
Mark Finchem won the Republican nomination
for secretary of state. Finchem is an election
denier who was endorsed by Trump. If he wins
in November, Finchem will oversee the state’s
Let’s Not Make a Deal
I srael Defense Minister Benny Gantz was in
Washington last weekend to brief think tank
directors on Israel’s objections to the latest draft of
a potential deal between the United States and Iran
on Iran’s nuclear program.

His argument was simple: Iran’s nuclear know-
how and infrastructure are irreversible. And
if existing centrifuges are stored rather than
destroyed as part of a new deal, they will be
available to enrich uranium once the proposed
agreement expires in 2031 — or immediately, if
Iran chooses to do so.

Beyond that, no one has explained why there
is any reason to believe that Tehran will be any
more compliant with International Atomic Energy
Agency regulations and investigators in 2022
than it was under the 2015 version of the deal.

Of course, that concern may be irrelevant, since
multiple sources maintain that Iran’s enrichment
capabilities have advanced to the point where it
could produce a nuclear bomb within a matter of
weeks, if it wants to.

12 SEPTEMBER 1, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
But even if those reports are incorrect, and
Iran needs a lot more work before being ready
to produce and deploy a nuclear weapon, is it
reasonable for the U.S. to trust Iran to comply
with the terms of any new deal? This is, after all,
the same regime that harbors and promotes the
Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, the terror mon-
gers who, according to the Justice Department,
off ered a $300,000 reward for the killing of for-
mer Trump national security adviser John Bolton
and a second reward for killing former Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo. Are these the honorable
people the U.S. government should trust?
We’re skeptical. Nonetheless, even if there is
good reason to believe that Iran will comply with
inspection and assessment measures of IAEA,
and a genuine belief that Iran will abide fully by
restrictions regarding further nuclear develop-
ment, we still don’t understand what sense it
makes to lift Western sanctions and free up the
regime’s access to more than $100 billion in fro-
zen assets.

election processes and will be the fi rst in line to
succeed the governor, since the state has no lieu-
tenant governor.

In Florida, Cory Mills, a defense contractor who
won the Republican nomination for a U.S. House
seat, has also questioned Biden’s 2020 victory.

The same is true for Florida House nominee Anna
Paulina Luna, who was endorsed by Trump and
also boasted campaign backing from Georgia Rep.

Marjorie Taylor Greene of Jewish space laser fame.

Compare those results with the Republican
elected offi cials that voters tossed out. For exam-
ple, we wrote last week about Rep. Liz Cheney of
Wyoming. Another Republican punished by vot-
ers is Rusty Bowers, speaker of Arizona’s House
of Representatives. Like Cheney, Bowers is pro-
life, pro-gun, pro-small government and a former
Trump supporter. He is also one of the people who
refused requests to overturn 2020 election results
in Arizona. He lost his seat to Trump-endorsed
David Farnsworth, who believes that the 2020
election had been stolen by the “devil himself.”
Such is the push and pull of today’s politics. We
are seeing a Democratic party strengthening its
center as the Republican Party races for the right.

While these primary results will present some
clear general election choices in November, it isn’t
yet clear which way America wants to go. JE
Were that to happen, Iran would have even
more resources to do all of the things we want
the country to stop doing — including further
pursuit of its nuclear ambitions, funding for the
international terror activities of IRGC and even
more support and encouragement for Hezbollah,
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are poised to
send deadly rockets into Israel and would like
nothing more than to upend the spreading sense
of acceptance of Israel as a legitimate partner in
both the Middle East and, more broadly, around
the world.

And fi nally, what would the U.S. get in return for
entering into a new Iran deal? Simply correcting a
perceived mistake by the Trump administration in
an eff ort to vindicate a fl awed deal of the Obama
administration doesn’t justify the move. We there-
fore encourage the Biden administration to aban-
don eff orts to recreate a 7-year-old deal that is
outdated and focus on charting a new course that
is refl ective of today’s realities and responsive to
today’s concerns. JE
GILI YAARI/FLASH90 PHOTO BY GAGE SKIDMORE / ATTRIBUTION-SHAREALIKE 2.0 GENERIC
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