Who would have thought that the decisive factor in the 2024 United States presidential election would be a squirrel? Yes, the October surprise came in November, and involves the convoluted story of a Pine City, New York, household whose pet squirrel was confiscated and euthanized.
And, in a Canadian twist, their pet raccoon met the same fate. (Pine City isn’t that far from Toronto.)
The squirrel, Peanut, had been something of an influencer on Instagram, whatever that means for squirrels. Was it encouraging other squirrels to use a high-end tail shampoo? But one is apparently not meant to harbour wild animals, particularly the rabies-prone sort. (If U.S. government officials want to confiscate any inadvertently-harboured raccoons living in my garage, they’re all yours.)
What, you might wonder, does any of this have to do with the presidency?
We’re living in a meme-dominated moment, so there isn’t a logical answer. No, the Biden-Harris administration did not seize anyone’s squirrel. The police did, and the squirrel apparently bit a cop (when does one need to say allegedly when speaking of rodents? consulting a squirrel lawyer) so if anything you might expect the right-wing position here to be the other way around.
But somewhere along the line, the Trump-Vance side of things got the notion that ‘the government is coming for your pets’ could replace ‘immigrants are eating your pets’ as its meme du jour, and this at least has the benefit of partial truth.
U.S. voters have a choice: another Democrat in the White House, or a return to the Trump Show. What is Trump offering? Entertainment, mainly, plus a weaselly VP prone to misogynistic gaffes, plus the ever-looming possibility of RETVRNing to a time before vaccination.
As a Canadian-American Jew—Canadian officially for just over a year now—I have a specific, though hardly unique, vantage point on all of this. And I want to plead with American Jewish Trump supporters, the ones who imagine they’re supporting Trump for Jewish reasons that is, despite preferring Democrat-type policies, and ask them to look at literally everywhere else, how it goes anywhere but the U.S.
In the rest of the world, Jews very often do have to decide between the liberal or progressive side and the one with a past-and-present commitment to Jewish safety and flourishing. Not so in the States, where—even setting aside the prospect of an unapologetically Jewish First Gentleman—the choice is between two pro-Israel, anti-antisemitism major parties. Relative to what exists elsewhere, at least.
If the Republicans are a smidgen more rah-rah Israel and more resistant to “woke antisemitism,” they are also the side prone to America First isolationism and nativism, to insistence that America is a Christian country and that if someone wishes you ‘Happy Holidays’ rather than ‘Merry Christmas’ it’s some sort of disaster, and a disaster for which guess who’s responsible.
Yes, left-wing antisemitism is real. It’s marginal in the States, doubtless more visible than prior to Oct. 7, 2023, but hardly woven into the current Democratic party. Not at a moment when the Democrats are striving to show just how moderate and “normal” they are! The keffiyeh and purple hair brigade are not—much to their own dismay, it would seem—the face of blue America. The reason you get super-lefty sorts saying they won’t vote for Democrats is because… the Democrats are not super-left, and are therefore a comfortable landing place for the not-insignificant number of Jewish voters who seek stability, moderation, and liberalism.
I would say that this is my last-minute personal plea to any of my fellow dual-citizen sorts (or American Jews who found their way to this article despite no Canadian ties) to vote Harris-Walz, but with some exceptions you were already going to do this. Republican Jews exist, but are, much like antizionist Jews, of outsize media interest relative to their numbers.
Why is that? American Jews’ support for reproductive rights extends to observant Jewish women, and is not merely a position held by politically progressive secular-leaning Jews. A specific-to-the-States aspect of this election is that abortion law is on the line, and this, rather than Israel, will be some Jewish voters’ main concern. Abortion, but also contraception and assisted reproduction. There are also Orthodox Jews, men and women alike, with doubts about Trump specifically.
And if Trump wins, will we see a bunch of American Jews flocking northwards? We won’t, but if we did, I’d say welcome, and also suggest they join me in trying to make sense of how everything shakes out up here, because it is no, not quite the same.
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The CJN’s senior editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy can be reached at [email protected], not to mention @phoebebovy on Bluesky, and @bovymaltz on X. She is also on The CJN’s weekly podcast Bonjour Chai.
