Israel Elections: Lapid's campaign of positivity seems to fail - analysis

Yesh Atid’s election night event was a staid affair.

Not one of the party’s MKs or candidates arrived at the small events hall it rented in Tel Aviv by press time, and activists were not gathering in the small space allotted for them.

Screens around the room played the greatest hits of Yair Lapid’s party: an ad where he speaks to his mother, noted author Shulamit Lapid, about his leadership qualities; an ad promising to pass a law enhancing worker’s rights for the self-employed, included the right to get unemployment; an ad featuring the anti-Netanyahu protests around the country; and an ad about fighting for LGBT rights.

After the major TV channels aired their exit polls, showing Yesh Atid trailing far behind Likud and almost no chance for Lapid to form a coalition, nothing changed.

The only sound in the room remained journalists talking to each other, or to anchors only they could hear in their earpieces. And in the front of the room, Lapid continued talking to his mother on the big screens.

As the leading party in the center-left bloc, and a party with deep ties to the protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one would have expected a campaign focused on slamming Netanyahu, whether for the chaotic handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his three corruption cases, or other issues.

Yet Lapid’s party realized that attacking Netanyahu was not what would peel votes away from the prime minister, who looms so large over Israel and its entire political field.

First, Yesh Atid wanted to make sure that none of the other parties in its bloc would drop below the electoral threshold, and made sure not to punch to its left or even at Defense Minister Benny Gantz, with whom Lapid and his party have very bad blood after he split up their Blue and White alliance. They succeeded in preserving the parties in the bloc – though perhaps too much.

Yesh Atid went with a positive agenda. Sort of. Their logo was an orange circle, symbolizing the sunrise. That, of course, meant a Netanyahu-led government, by contrast, was the darkness. Their slogan was that they will bring a sane government, the implication being that insanity is currently governing Israel. And when Lapid, the secularist son of Israel’s most notorious secularist – former justice minister Tommy Lapid – talks about insanity, it’s a not-so-subtle hint at Netanyahu’s reliance on haredi parties to win.

But if you don’t think about it too much, Lapid is just saying he’s going to let the sun shine in, as the cast of Hair would say.

Though Lapid has run more negative campaigns in the past, platitudes like “let’s bring the sunrise” and “let sanity win” are, in fact, his trademark. He would famously ask all the guests on his talk show: “What is the most Israeli thing in your opinion?” Indeed, there was once a viral Internet quiz that asked people to guess if a sentence came from a speech by Yair Lapid or an IKEA catalog.

That ability of Lapid is both his strength and his weakness. He knows how to relay a message that a large percentage of Israelis find relatable, with the charisma of, well, a popular talk-show host. That is a great skill in a politician, and one that hardly anyone in Israeli politics has.

But sometimes it also masks his more serious side. Yesh Atid had one of the most comprehensive political platforms in this election – Likud, famously, has not had one in over a decade – but many, even those in the anti-Netanyahu camp, still view Lapid as superficial.

That also may be why the Yesh Atid campaign did not focus on Lapid as the candidate for prime minister, as opposed to Netanyahu. And Netanyahu realized that, so he did whatever he could to highlight Lapid – negatively, of course.

In the end, the positive attitude and the lack of clarity over Lapid being the leader of the anti-Netanyahu bloc does not seem to have worked for Yesh Atid. The final election results remain to be seen, but all the exit polls show almost no chance of us seeing a prime minister Lapid anytime soon.