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August 7, 2024 - 8:00pm
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is methodically reshaping the Democratic Party, picking off progressive candidates one by one. Its latest triumph is the unseating of Cori Bush, the firebrand congresswoman from Missouri’s 1st district. Bush, a former nurse and Black Lives Matter activist, fell to Wesley Bell, a county prosecutor who ran as a “pragmatic” progressive. The secret ingredient in Bell’s victory? Over $8 million in spending from AIPAC-affiliated super PACs — the second most expensive primary of all time.
This wasn’t AIPAC’s first rodeo. Just weeks earlier, they helped topple another member of the progressive “Squad,” Jamaal Bowman of New York. The price tag for that race was a cool $15 million. These astronomical sums are transforming once-sleepy House primaries in safe Democratic districts into high-stakes battlegrounds, with AIPAC as the heavyweight champion.
The pattern appears to be clear: speak out against Israel’s ongoing aggression in Gaza, and AIPAC will open its considerable war chest to fund your opponent. It’s a simple equation that’s yielding results. Bush and Bowman are just the latest casualties in a broader campaign to purge the Democratic Party and Left-aligned spaces like academia more generally of voices critical of Israel.
But AIPAC’s success wasn’t solely due to its financial muscle. Bush’s own ineffectiveness in Congress played a significant role in her downfall. During her tenure, she failed to pass a single piece of legislation, focusing instead on divisive rhetoric and symbolic gestures. Her obsession with the Gaza conflict seemed tone-deaf to many St. Louis residents grappling with more immediate concerns like crumbling infrastructure and economic hardship.
AIPAC and its allies shrewdly exploited this disconnect. Rather than focusing on the war in Gaza, their messaging highlighted Bush’s poor congressional record on bread-and-butter issues. Mailers and ads branded her as “INEFFECTIVE,” spotlighting missed votes and her opposition to key Biden administration initiatives. This strategy hit all the right notes, resonating with voters who felt neglected by their representative.
It bears restating how effective this strategy has become. AIPAC isn’t just influencing elections; they’re fundamentally altering the DNA of the Democratic Party. With each victory, they send a chilling message to other progressives: criticise Israel at your own peril — and if you must, choose your words carefully, as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has.
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SubscribeMeh. AIPAC has supported candidates running against unpopular reps. Bowman was cratering in the polls before AIPAC spent a dime. Clearly, candidates like Bush are not only unpopular, but ineffective. If your rep is nothing more than a social media warrior, you might think twice before supporting them.
“purge the Democratic Party and Left-aligned spaces like academia more generally of voices critical of Israel.”
I don’t think the author need worry about this! Where is the “left-aligned” space that isn’t critical of Israel? Academia?
At no point is it explained why the mere spending of the money is actually problematic in this case. I can see the case for there to be less money in politics but it doesn’t seem to have been used to spread falsehoods.
I guess the idea is just to link the concepts “Jews” and “money” in readers’ minds, and then let envy and resentment do the rest, as they so reliably do .
“speak out against Israel’s ongoing aggression in Gaza, and AIPAC will open its considerable war chest to fund your opponent. ”
This is disingenuous. Israel is no more the aggressor in Gaza than the US was the aggressor on D-Day. When you start a war, you’re still the aggressor even when you start losing.
Yes, poor choice of words. All of that ‘squad’ and the others around the world like them aren’t politicians they are virtue signallers tub thumping about their ideological tripe instead of doing their actual job. Serving the voters.
Every year Israel gets bigger, Palestine gets smaller, and Palestinians are killed or displaced by Israel. It is a gradual genocide, no different than what the American Colonists did to Native Americans.
Native Americans and Jews are the same in that they were both robbed of their ancestral homeland by ruthless invaders.
Considering that the population of Palestine has gone from just under a million in 1950 to nearly five and a half million today, Israel are appallingly inefficient at genocide.
But factually incorrect-the” Palestinian ” population has boomed and the recent death tolls will hardly make a dent in the numbers-funny form of genocide -could take a few centuries!!!
Palestine only keeps getting smaller when it keeps waging war against Israel and losing. As soon as it accepts a two-state solution, it will get defined territory like every other country.
Funny how when Israel gets smaller (as it did when it withdrew from Gaza in 2005) its opponents still see it getting bigger. When Israel tried to withdraw from the West Bank with the Oslo Accords, it was Yasser Arafat who walked away, yet Israel’s opponents can only blame Israel.
For anyone interested in a primer on the history of Israel and its conflict with Palestinians, from the POV of someone who once believed as Arthur does, I highly recommend Miko Peled’s book “The General’s Son: Journey Of An Israeli in Palestine.”
The problem with these optimistic paths to a two-state solution, it fundamentally misunderstands the basic Palestinian stance on Israel. A Palestinian state would simply be the launching pad for a future war on Israel and to believe otherwise is wishful thinking at best.
Just to clarify, I haven’t advocated a two-state solution, and Miko Peled, the Israeli author I referenced, doesn’t advocate it.
Further to my recommendation above, for those interested, Miko Peled was interviewed Oct. 19, 2023 by Briahna Joy Gray on her YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8M0mYzD8ZY
And thank heaven for that. The ‘squad’ are not in tune with the base despite what the author suggests. They are in touch with a vocal small minority of Democrats not a few of whom are anti-semites and oppose the very existence of the State of Israel. Ineffective noise bags and ignorami like the ludicrous Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez.
Thanks to AIPAC for ridding Congress of loud-mouthed dullard deadbeats who would be terrible legislators no matter what their political affiliations or opinions. The Squad is in part a weird byproduct of the Covid/George Floyd mob insanity epidemic. The sooner it’s gone the better.
Hamas, the government of Gaza, invaded Israel. Israel has responded by taking the fight to Hamas in Gaza. The aggressors were Hamas, not Israel.
Palestinians in Gaza should do themselves a favour. Get rid of their government.
All the hostages that have been released report being held in apartments of “civilians”. There are no civilians in Gaza. Every person there is a combatant. Bomb away, Israel.
Some people believe that history started Oct. 7, 2023. There is Israel, minding its own business, when out of a vacuum of context comes Hamas.
This belief allows, and leads to another, far more significant one: that an entire population are combatants, and therefore all are fair game for bombs.
There are many examples of notorious, outspoken depravity like this in history. We can so easily turn ourselves into monsters.
Excellent. Delighted to see another obnoxious pro-hamas toad biting the dust.
I have no truck with Progressive Democrats nor the Palestinian cause but find it distasteful that an organisation representing a very small minority of the American vote has such power over the legislature and it’s decisions. It may come back to bite AIPAC and the Democrats.
It is US politics. If you have the money you can buy the influence – legally. On the right there is the NRA, here there is AIPAC. If you do not like it you would have to change the system and take the big money out of politics altogether, curtailing the ‘freedom of expression’ to spend unlimited money to influence politics. Or, if you do not want that, accept the system you have, and work within it. Just moaning is not going to get you anywhere.
This article is so extremely biased.
Oliver Bateman’s articles always are. Gaza is his King Charles’ Head.
“The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)is methodically reshaping the Democratic Party, picking off progressive candidates one by one.”
Well, I guess we should thank the writer for clearly stating his belief in the Jews-Control-the-World myth in the very first sentence.
I have so many problems with this authors opinion as written. So here is my opinion-
(1) in both cases the candidates who beat Bush and Bowman are also both very progressive and were supported by the Jewish community (and others) in their districts. This shows you can be both progressive and supportive of Israel’s right to self defense. The opinion piece assumes, incorrectly, that all progressive are in lock step on this issue
(2) both of these extremists that lost were also likely to lose without AIPAC anyway. They had embarrassed themselves repetitively and had either been charged (Bowman fire alarm) or under investigation (Bush campaign finance issue)
(3) seriously “More’s the pity for civil discourse”??? Clearly this writer has not been paying attention to the re-birth of the Jew-Hatred, coming from millions across the world, from the minute that civilian Jewish blood (babies too) was intentionally spilled by the hundreds in Israel. This from an attack that had been planned by Hamas for just that specific purpose. Not one word of sympathy was expressed before the machine that Bush and Bowman supported went into full effect and has snowballed until this day.
For goodness sake- Civil discourse does not include calling a people doing its best to survive genocidal, while not uttering one word of criticism for Hamas that actually committed genocide again those killed on 10/7 and then commit additional war crimes by storing and firing weapons from the UN buildings, Mosques, Hospitals and schools.
How about the cowardice of hiding under your own civilian population or UNRWA’s actual participation in HAMAS. I guess none of that matters.
The ancient Jew hatred of Europe and North Africa is certainly a feature of all this. A history lesson might have helped the author.
For the record-I am a proud Jewish American man. I am proud that my fellow Jews finally have our country back and that we can finally defend ourselves in times like these. I pray one day the Kurds get this too.
The world proves once again how much they hate us and how indifferent they are to our suffering.
Israel stands between us and the constant persecution that congresspeople like Bush and Bowman ignored. Remember, Bowman’s district has a large Jewish constituency that he was ignoring and that Jewish residents had every right to vote him out.
We are only 15 Million +/- people in a planet with almost 8 Billion people (,0019 as a percentage of world population) and yet the majority of the UN General Assembly and the Security Council’s actions always seem to be against Israel.
One out of many example of hypocrisy-How many Arabs did Assad kill suppressing his opponents (many with Russia’s help) and where was the outrage then? Do you at least see the hypocrisy?
Sorry Mr Bateman but as Jewish Americans we have every right to stand up against blind hatred and support candidates that reflect our liberalism without surrendering our pride in being Jewish or in the State of Israel as our ancestral homeland and protector in time of need. No-one seems to question the money that goes into attacking us, only the money that goes into defending us.
If you cared about the amount of hatred being inflicted on millions of Jewish people around the world, (by the ugliness of what you describe as “civil discourse”), you might have chosen different words. Most that hate us don’t even know any Jews.
Jews are the most vulnerable minority in the world- please wake up to our peril or at least stop throwing additional logs on the fire. I would hope for an apology from the author after considering these points.
Forgive my forwardness but I seriously want to give you a hug x
Jew-hating is not appropriate. Helping the rapists of Hamas should send you down to defeat.
The test will be Ilhan Omar. Her primary is in a week or 2. She looks vulnerable. Can AIPAC get her? We can only hope. Brother-fuckers should be in jail, not in congress.
Another terrible article from this author. AIPAC is not “reshaping” the Democratic Party – historically the party has enjoyed the disproportionate support of American Jews and in turn it has supported Israel. The people “reshaping” the Democratic Party are the anti-West, anti-American, anti-Zionist progressives.
I also find it interesting that we simultaneously insist democracy is the only way to run a country, but then acknowledge that the electorate can be ‘bought’ through cheap advertising. That doesn’t make sense. Either give the electorate some credit… or don’t give us the vote. Let’s not be ruled by mindless sheep that do whatever the advertisers say.
Aipac isn’t purging Dems. They equally hit republican targets, as was seen with their big bucks donation to defeat Thomas Massie. All they care about is the politician’s stand on Israel, period.
The old ‘Jews pulling the strings behind the scenes’ trope. Gross.
I don’t know enough about Cori Bush to speak with authority about whether she’s good or not, but my understanding is that she’s become a laughing stock. Not clever, unsophisticated, and as pointed out, an ineffective representative of one of the US’s poorest communities. Do candidates like this usually forge long political careers?
Good for AIPAC!
Democrats should be thanking AIPAC for eliminating a member of the Hamas caucus from the lineup.