But Friedman’s declared appetite to move the embassy is not the only reason liberal Jewish organizations have responded to his nomination with something close to horror. The 57-year-old bankruptcy lawyer has also been an outspoken and active supporter of the settlement movement, and has argued that Israel doesn’t face a “demographic threat” to its Jewish character if it fails to separate from the Palestinians.

...

In June, Friedman accused J Street supporters of being “far worse than kapos” in a column for the right-wing, pro-settlement Israel National News website, using the term for Jews who aided Nazis during the Holocaust. Speaking before the Brookings Institution’s annual Saban Forum earlier this month, he refused to walk back his comparison.

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Unlike Obama, who made Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank a fundamental issue of criticism throughout his presidency, Trump will not “put his finger on the scale or tell Israel what policies they should adopt,” Friedman said, adding that his new boss “doesn’t see Israel as in need of any particular correction at this point.”

That principle, he indicated, covers both how Trump will treat the settlement issue and the manner in which Israel seeks to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. The Trump administration will not “dictate to Israel where it can and cannot build” in the West Bank, according to Friedman.

...

Friedman stated that, in his discussions with Trump, “a two-state solution is not a priority. I don’t think he is wed to any particular outcome. A two-state solution is a way, but it’s not the only way.”

Unlike the last three presidents, who have tried to push both parties into negotiating a compromise, Trump will let the Israel make its determinations without pressure from the US, said Friedman.

A Trump administration will try to be helpful with the Israelis bringing stability to the region, to make it as quiet as possible, as peaceful as possible, and ultimately to come up with a long-term solution,” he said. “As far as what that solution is, Trump will be guided by the Israelis’ view, very much so, and will not be seeking to impose any particular path upon the Israeli government.”

“Friedman has a deep love for all of the land and people of Israel, including those in Judea and Samaria,” said Oded Revivi, the mayor of the Efrat settlement and Yesha’s foreign envoy, in a statement. “His knowledge and wisdom of the issues will strengthen the bridge between our great nations,” he said.

Local settler leader Yossi Dagan also welcomed Trump’s announcement on Friday morning, calling it an “encouraging” move.

“David Friedman is a true friend and partner of the State of Israel and the settlements,” said a statement from Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council in the West Bank.

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Zionist Organization of America chief Morton Klein, a Trump supporter, said Friedman “has the potential to be the greatest US ambassador to Israel ever.”

Friedman “thoroughly understands the detailed tragic reality of the Arab/Islamic war against Israel,” Klein said in a statement. “He has a powerful grasp of Israel’s defense needs, the dangers they face, and the danger now of a Hamas/[Palestinian Authority] State. No previous ambassador appreciates the political, historic, legal, and religious rights of the Jews to Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem like David. Yet he respects and understands the beliefs and hopes and dreams of the political left in Israel and America. This, in addition to his heartfelt love of Israel and all its people, makes him uniquely qualified for this position.”

On one hand they say they want a younger candidate, one who's never run for President. 57% of Democrats say they want their candidate to be under the age of 60, and 77% say they want their candidate to be under the age of 70. Only 8% actually want a candidate who's in their 70s, with another 15% expressing no opinion in regards to the age of their candidate.

Beyond wanting a younger candidate, only 25% of Democrats say they want their candidate in 2020 to be someone who has run for President before. 41% would prefer someone who's never run before, and 34% say they're not sure one way or the other.

But despite saying that they generically want a younger candidate who hasn't run for President before, the top 2 choices of Democrats for 2020 at this very early stage are...people in their 70s who have run for President before.

Joe Biden leads the way for Democrats with 31% to 24% for Bernie Sanders, and 16% for Elizabeth Warren. They're the only folks we tested with meaningful support for the nomination at this point. Cory Booker gets 4%, Al Franken and Kirsten Gillibrand each get 3%, Sherrod Brown and Andrew Cuomo each get 2%, and Julian Castro gets less than 1%.

Over the course of the campaign, Friedman was outspoken on his belief that West Bank settlement activity is not an obstacle to peace and that Israel does not face a “demographic threat” to its Jewish character if it fails to separate from the Palestinians.
...
Friedman stated that, based on his discussions with Trump, “a two-state solution is not a priority” for the president-elect. “I don’t think he is wed to any particularly outcome. A two-state solution is a way, but it’s not the only way.”

He also suggested that Trump would not apply pressure to Israel over approving settlement construction projects in the West Bank, saying he would not “dictate to Israel where it can and cannot build.”

...
In a June column for the far-right Israel National News website , Friedman accused the dovish group’s supporters of being “far worse than capos.”

“The kapos faced extraordinary cruelty and who knows what any of us would have done under those circumstances to save a loved one?” he asked. “But J Street? They are just smug advocates of Israel’s destruction delivered from the comfort of their secure American sofas – it’s hard to imagine anyone worse.”

From 2002 until 2006, he was a member of the Montgomery County Council. He was the first Latino ever elected to the Council, and served as Council president in 2005

Everybody could see Hillary Clinton was cooked in Iowa. So when, a week-and-a-half out, the Service Employees International Union started hearing anxiety out of Michigan, union officials decided to reroute their volunteers, giving a desperate team on the ground around Detroit some hope.

They started prepping meals and organizing hotel rooms.

SEIU — which had wanted to go to Michigan from the beginning, but been ordered not to — dialed Clinton’s top campaign aides to tell them about the new plan. According to several people familiar with the call, Brooklyn was furious.

Turn that bus around, the Clinton team ordered SEIU. Those volunteers needed to stay in Iowa to fool Donald Trump into competing there, not drive to Michigan, where the Democrat’s models projected a 5-point win through the morning of Election Day.

The anecdotes are different but the narrative is the same across battlegrounds, where Democratic operatives lament a one-size-fits-all approach drawn entirely from pre-selected data — operatives spit out “the model, the model,” as they complain about it — guiding Mook’s decisions on field, television, everything else. That’s the same data operation, of course, that predicted Clinton would win the Iowa caucuses by 6 percentage points (she scraped by with two-tenths of a point), and that predicted she’d beat Bernie Sanders in Michigan (he won by 1.5 points).

Most importantly, multiple operatives said, the Clinton campaign dismissed what’s known as in-person “persuasion” — no one was knocking on doors trying to drum up support for the Democratic nominee, which also meant no one was hearing directly from voters aside from voters they’d already assumed were likely Clinton voters, no one tracking how feelings about the race and the candidates were evolving. This left no information to check the polling models against — which might have, for example, showed the campaign that some of the white male union members they had expected to be likely Clinton voters actually veering toward Trump — and no early warning system that the race was turning against them in ways that their daily tracking polls weren’t picking up.

Nor did Brooklyn ask for help from some people who’d been expecting the call. Sanders threw himself into campaign appearances for Clinton throughout the fall, but familiar sources say the campaign never asked the Vermont senator’s campaign aides for help thinking through Michigan, Wisconsin or anywhere else where he had run strong.It was already November when the campaign finally reached out to the White House to get President Barack Obama into Michigan, a state that he’d worked hard and won by large margins in 2008 and 2012. On the Monday before Election Day, Obama added a stop in Ann Arbor, but that final weekend, the president had played golf on Saturday and made one stop in Orlando on Sunday, not having been asked to do anything else. Michigan senior adviser Steve Neuman had been asking for months to get Obama and the first lady on the ground there. People who asked for Vice President Joe Biden to come in were told that top Clinton aides weren’t clearing those trips.