With all due respect to the candidates who have announced they are running for Labor leader, all eyes are now on former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yair Golan, who are set to make a final decision on their candidacy in the coming days. Such an announcement would serve to finally inject some energy into the party's base.
Gabbay is now paying the price for the Blue and White party's having succeeded through a simplistic and transparent campaign to convince the masses to abandon their longtime political home.
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In the days after his election to party chair, Gabbay was the hope of the entire leftist camp and it ultimate leader. He was so good at encouraging the sleepy and dried up Left that major TV presenters, apparently without any restraint or self-awareness to speak of, went so far as to send him flowers. Yes, Gabbay seemed to have it all: a new, Mizrahi candidate with an impressive business record.
That is why party members rushed to grant him the "tools" he demanded: a series of draconian constitutional changes that turned Gabbay into something of a quasi-dictator. Among these changes, numerous reserved slots for his picks for the party list and changes aimed at preventing Gabbay's rivals from interfering with his decisions.
But instead of taking these aforementioned tools and building a palace, Gabbay chose to construct a doghouse. Despite the many months he had to wise up, he did not bring in a dynamic figure that could have changed the balance and brought the party success in the election.
Even though others, like former Labor leader Isaac Herzog, had already paved the way for such a move through the establishment of the Zionist Union and a variety of political alliance that were on the table, Gabbay, like Blue and White's Benny Gantz, chose instead to cover his tracks and head out on a new path, alone. That is until the party's inevitable defeat on Election Day.
Labor must also redefine itself. Will being a satellite party in the leftist bloc orbiting the Blue and White party's sun be its only purpose in the coming government, or does Labor intend to lead the country again someday?
Stav Shafir, who is now running for party leader, could bring Labor many more Knesset seats should the party situate itself as a satellite party in the opposition. But the race for prime minister is something else entirely. Both Amir Peretz and Barak would be better suited to this role.
The parties to the right of the Likud face a similar challenge. As a result of the disunion and the division, one of them may not meet the electoral threshold.
While the leaders of the United Right, Rabbi Rafi Peretz and Bezalel Smotrich, are focused mainly on clinching ministerial positions in the government, no one is prepared for the reality that the small right-wing parties will wind up gnawing at the Likud's voter base, and as a result, bring about the Right's coming collapse.
