BIDDEFORD, MAINE – George Weismeyer is America.

He lives on the ground floor of a three-story walk up on Gove Street, down by Saco Bay in a working class neighborhood. He used to be an Independent, which is a recognized and registered political affiliation down here. Last year, half of American voters said they were independent, neither Democrat nor Republican.

Asked which way he’ll be voting in November’s historic vote, Weismeyer smiles and says Democrat. Why, he’s asked.

“I used to be an Independent,” says George. “But when he started up on that born in Kenya stuff, that was it for me. Democrat.”

Weismeyer is referring to the Birther Hoax, which happened in 2008. In that year, Barack Obama was running for president, and some conspiracy theorists started to suggest that Obama was ineligible for high office. Because he’d been born in Kenya.

He wasn’t – he was born in Hawaii – but the Birther Hoax got legs in 2012, when a private citizen named Donald J. Trump started to tweet that it was true. An “extremely credible source” had told him, Trump said at the time.

History will record that Obama won anyway, and that was that. But the Birther Hoax – which ushered in the Donald Trump era, and ushered George Weismeyer towards the Democrats – was the official start of Crazy Time in U.S. politics.

In that way, George Weismeyer is America. His political orbit was changed by the black hole in space that is Donald Trump. Everyone in America has had their politics changed by Trump – either pulled toward him by some dark gravity, or pushed away.

Over on Cleave Street, there’s more of this. Two Canadians volunteering for the Democrats on a sunny and hot Sunday are looking for Tammy Wilder. They find her husband instead.

She’s a Democrat, and so is he, he says. Kamala Harris was anointed the Democratic Party presidential candidate just days before, so Tammy Wilder’s husband is asked about the issues Harris should be talking about. He stops cleaning the stove top and squints.

“There’s a lot of issues, actually,” he says. “But that sonofabitch? No way.”

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It’s getting bad again.

At the start of the Summer, many of the anti-Israel occupations at universities and colleges were shut down, or moved on. In the streets, the pro-Hamas protests seemed to be happening less often. Things seemed to be getting a bit quieter.

Then this week happened.

Here’s a recap of the past seven days:

• Across Canada, more than 100 Jewish organizations and people – from physicians to hospitals to synagogues – received a written death threat: “We placed many explosives inside your building. They are placed in black backpacks. You will all end up in a pool of blood, none of you deserve to keep living.” Police took the bomb threat seriously, and evacuated multiple locations to search for bombs.

• At the Democratic Party’s national convention (DNC) in Chicago, thousands of Israel-haters surrounded the United Center while Kamala Harris, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton spoke. They burned American and Israeli flags, they breached barriers, they assaulted police, and they repeatedly called for violence to – as one sign put it – “end Israel [and] stand with Hamas.” Meanwhile outside the DNC, a Nazi flag was held aloft, and greeted with Nazi salutes.

• After a long, long delay, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) finally asked their national vice-president Fred Hahn to step down for posting a wildly anti-Semitic video. However, they notably did not ask Hahn to step down as president of Ontario’s CUPE branch. And, the next day, they abandoned all decency and called criticism of Hahn’s anti-Semitism by Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Labour Minister David Piccini “completely revolting and unacceptable.”

• An undated photo surfaced of Toronto’s Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik speaking at an anti-Israel rally beside the flag of Hezbollah, a listed terrorist entity in this country. Toronto’s Mayor Olivia Chow neither condemned it nor disciplined Malik.

Anti-Semitism and extremism, clearly, have come roaring back. They never completely left us, of course – there have been too many documented cases of arson and vandalism and threats throughout the Summer of 2024 – but it felt, for a fleeting moment there, that things just might be getting a little less awful.

Not so. The beast of Jew hate – and the hatred directed at the majority of non-Jews who support the Jewish state – is back, slouching through our streets towards its ultimate goal, a dark and antediluvian caliphate.

When we look at footage of the Israel-hating protests at the DNC or in our own streets, something is readily seen. It’s not that the majority are self-professed Muslims, necessarily, or that they belong more to one race than another.

It’s this: in Canada, in the United States, in Europe, the ones who detest Israel and the West the most are young. Specifically, Gen Z (from ages 19 to 24, roughly) and Millennials (from age 25 to 39 or so). Polling confirms the same thing: anti-Semitism – and even pro-Hamas sentiment – is surging among young people. But why?

Avi Melamed is a former Israeli intelligence officer. He has been paying close attention to the rising tide of Jew hatred both before and after the pogrom of Oct. 7.

In an interview, Melamed says this: “Young people very, very easily fall for sensationalized, romanticized images and rhetoric and symbols. It’s very easy to capture their hearts and minds and manipulate them. When you don’t have knowledge, when you don’t have basic educational skills like critical thinking and media literacy, you are not going to be looking for context and nuance. And it can lead to disaster.”

He pauses, then adds: “As long as you’ve got a combination of fast-food information, and young people who lack the basics in education, groups like Hamas will continue to excel on these social media platforms.”

And capture support and recruits.

Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, the brilliant head of Internet watchdog CyberWell, pays close attention to anti-Semitism online and brings it to the attention of Meta (who own Facebook and Instagram), Elon Musk (who owns X), and others. Younger people rely on the online world more than any other demographic, she agrees.

“We know from history, and we know from the Holocaust, that anti-Semitism is one of the most destabilizing social conspiracy theories for any society,” says Cohen Montemayor. “When [CyberWell and others] warn about the popularity or the trendiness, the boldness of anti-Semitism in online spaces, we are warning about it for this reason: history has shown what a destabilizing conspiracy theory it is.”

“And every Western democracy is under the threat, right now,” she adds.

The evidence, Melamed and Cohen Montemayor and other experts agree, is everywhere to be seen: anti-Semitism is worse, now, than it has been since the Nazi era.

And young people, shockingly, are falling under its sway.

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NEW YORK – The 2024 Democratic National Convention – the DNC – is over.

The red, white and blue balloons have dropped. The speeches have been spoken. The 4,700 Democrat delegates are heading home, or home already.

So what was accomplished? What wasn’t? What is still to be done?

Here’s ten observations from an (admittedly) biased perspective – a Canuck who has volunteered for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and (now) Kamala Harris.

1. It ain’t over. One thread ran through the speeches of Harris, Barack Obama and even Oprah Winfrey: independents. Over and over, the Democratic luminaries stressed the critical importance of that middle swath of American voters – the ones Harris needs to win. The media polls notwithstanding, the earnest appeals for independent support strongly suggest that the Democrats haven’t won the election, yet.

2. Harris is a good speaker. But she ain’t Barack Obama, or even Michelle Obama.  Her Thursday night address was only 38 minutes long – the twelfth-shortest in modern history. Content-wise, it was a pretty safe speech, with the traditional Democratic Party themes. But it broke no new ground. Harris isn’t a bad speaker – but nor is she Winston Churchill. Hope she’s better in the debate.

3. The DNC had one theme, however, that wasn’t traditional – it was positively radical, for them: freedom. For a generation, conservatives have made “freedom” their own: freedom to buy lots of guns, freedom to drive big cars, the freedom to say and do what you want. They owned it. The Dems have now flipped the script. Because Donald Trump is an aspiring autocrat, the Democrats are preaching a different kind of freedom – freedom of reproductive choice, freedom to love who you want to love, freedom to vote how you want to vote (and have it respected). It’s freedom with a twist.

4. Notice something missing? Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama needed to address his skin color – or in 2016, when Hillary Clinton needed to address her gender – Kamala Harris did not say anything, not a word, about hers. Polls have shown that Americans don’t really consider those to be a big deal, so Harris smartly decided to follow their lead. Her gender and her racial identity make her truly extraordinary, but – for now, she’s keeping all of that on the down low. Voters don’t want those things to be the center of her campaign, and she agrees.

5. Tim Walz was an inspired pick.  With a Left Coast woman of color at the top of the ticket, the Democrats had no choice: they had to find a regular white guy from the middle of America. They needed the Doug Fordiest Ralph Klein of all Jean Chretiens, and that’s exactly what they got. Walz is remarkably unremarkable and it works. Big time.

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Every successful politician has a secret power.

Jean Chretien was a brilliant strategist and tactician. But he’d hide it behind the sports pages, and let his cocky opponents underestimate him. At their peril.

Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar and possessed of a razor-sharp mind. But he loved a Big Mac, and talked like normal people talk.

Barack Obama wasn’t a populist like Chretien or Clinton. But, with stirring oratory, he had an unerring sense of where the people were at, and how to lead them to where they needed to be.

At long last, I’ve figured out Kamala Harris’s secret power.

Harris is running against Donald Trump, a bad man. Trump has been found to be a rapist by a court, convicted of 34 felonies by another court, and is considered a racist in the court of public opinion.

Because he has no policies, because he doesn’t have any interests beyond his own, Trump always has had just one strategy: personal attacks.

If he’s good at anything – and he isn’t good at anything that is good – it’s that: running people down. Calling them names. Denigrating them. Lying about them.

So, he is using his favorite strategy on the Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris.

His press conferences are about one-half recitation of personal grievances and gripes, and depicting himself as a victim. The other half is about attacking Kamala Harris.

So, just in recent days, he has said that he is better looking than her, despite the fact that he looks like an octogenarian orangutan jammed into a Fifth Avenue suit.

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Proud to have worked for Hillary and Joe. Last night reminded me of that.

Will be working for this woman next week. Proud to do so.

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