21 August—Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was settled in the 1760s by people from the Colony of Connecticut and named after John Wilkes and Isaac Barré, two British members of Parliament who supported the cause of colonial America. In fact, it’s Barré (with the acute accent) who coined the term “Sons of Liberty” for the colonial Sons of Liberty.

Geez, you’re thinking, people were fleeing Connecticut even before it became the loser state it is today under the entrenched Democrat trifecta. Don’t forget the Connecticut Western Reserve in Ohio way back then. But it’s all irrelevant to this disquisition.

So it was during a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre (without the acute accent) last Saturday night that Donald Trump accused the Democrats of being antisemites because they turned down Pennsylvania’s Jewish Governor Josh Shapiro as Kamala Harris’s running mate in favor of Minnesota’s gentile Governor Tim Walz.

“They turned him down for other reasons,” Trump said, “but the primary reason is because he’s Jewish. Any Jewish person that votes for Kamala or a Democrat has to go out and have their head examined.” Didn’t Biden say something like that about people of color voting for Trump or a Republican?

Trump also volunteered that there has “never been a more dangerous time since the Holocaust” to be Jewish. While we may quibble about the comparative degree of danger for Jews, Trump’s point is well taken. Because Jew-hate that has been cyclically running hot and less hot (but never cold), a universal undercurrent, since God circumcised Abraham is now as hot—and pernicious—as most of us can remember. Everywhere.

Antisemitism is no longer just an undercurrent. Jew haters now smugly broadcast their irrational malignant resentment to receptive audiences whose metastasis is undeniable. Even the Nazi nutzies tried to justify Jew hate. But now it’s just hate for hate’s sake. Largely from Trump supporters, it must be said.

Trump has been playing the antisemite card a lot lately, including in Connecticut. Probably sour grapes, since a Harris-Shapiro ticket would have guaranteed the win for the Trump-Vance ticket. So is Democrat antisemitism (which is no less contemptible than Republican antisemitism but currently more visible) the primary reason Kamala and the Dems gave Tim the nod over Josh?

No. And yes.

No, the Democrats didn’t (necessarily) reject Josh Shapiro because they had anything in particular against Jews. Only the usual. Certainly a vocal ad hoc Jew-hating contingent of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist- supporting Democrats would have opposed his candidacy at the Chicago convention, but to no avail.

Yes, the Democrats rejected Josh Shapiro because in Realpolitik terms (realistic, practical politics) a Jew of either (or, these days, any) gender on a ticket with a non-white and particularly non-male is guaranteed to lose in November. That Kamala Harris is married to a Jew doesn’t help her cause.

The idea, after all, is to win the November election. And, sad to say, except in a very few places in this country a Jew at the top of the ticket won’t help. Yes, even in America. On second thought, especially in America. This country has never had a Jewish leader or even come close.

But a number of other countries have had or currently have Jewish men and women at the helm. In addition to Israel, of course, they include, in alphabetical order, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic, France, Guyana, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, New Zealand, Panama, Peru, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine. Mexico’s president-elect is a Jewish woman. And there are more.

But not the United States . . .