It doesn’t hurt Herzog that, as in last year’s elections, the economy is outranking security as the primary concern for Israeli voters, albeit modestly so. This, in fact, is the strategy he is banking on. Herzog pointed to the 2011 protests in Tel Aviv as indicative of the Israeli electorate’s hunger for a “fair and square” economic deal. The “summer of 2011 was a major watershed in Israeli history,” he said. “All of a sudden the nation woke up and demanded not security or peace; they demanded social justice.” Demands for economic equality and social justice helped Yesh Atid become Israel’s second-largest party in 2013, and Herzog is counting on those same motivations to drive his own electoral success.

Goldberg zeroed in on what is widely considered Herzog’s—and Labor’s—weak point: security. The country’s March 17 election will come less than a year after Israel’s latest war in Gaza, and perhaps amid ongoing violence between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem. Herzog wouldn’t name his “security gurus,” but he assured the audience that his security team consists of people “who have devoted their life to the state of Israel.” In an underhanded jab at Netanyahu, he also quipped, “I’m not going to chicken out.”

What, Goldberg asked, made Herzog think he could succeed in the peace process where previous prime ministers like Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak had failed? The Labor leader referenced his close rapport with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his dedication to confidence-building measures such as freezing settlement construction outside major settlement blocs. Herzog forcefully endorsed the two-state solution while acknowledging the challenges to achieving such an agreement, and blamed Netanyahu for endangering the peace process through his adversarial relationship with Abbas.

Herzog also laid the onus on the prime minister for the deterioration in U.S.-Israel relations. “It’s a fact that there is no trust between the [U.S.] president and [Israeli] prime minister,” he declared, going on to say that “one of my first aims [as prime minister] will be to mend those relationships.” Herzog could potentially overcome misgivings about his security credentials by arguing that he is in the best position to mend Israel’s relationship with its most important ally.

Herzog’s overall goal is an ambitious one: to reverse the country’s rightward “skid toward the abyss.” Likud, after all, remains the most popular party in Israel despite widespread dissatisfaction with Netanyahu, and Labor hasn’t held the premiership in over a decade. Israelis may want “anyone but Bibi.” But Herzog has yet to prove that the “anyone” is him.

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