The Squad’s Own Goals

By Judson Berger

Friday, August 09, 2024

 

This week brought a shrill new round of media alarm bells alerting American democracy to the influence of Jewish money — sorry, that of “pro-Israel interests” — in our elections after another AIPAC-backed candidate toppled another member of the progressive “Squad.”

 

There are two ways to view Cori Bush’s primary defeat to prosecutor Wesley Bell in Missouri. One is to accept that AIPAC is an all-powerful force that can swing elections any way it chooses if it invests heavily enough — to believe that the money itself defeated Cori Bush. The other is to acknowledge that, yes, the millions help, but the fallen incumbent bears most of the blame for having rendered herself aloof and unelectable.

 

The evidence, consisting of Bush’s own record and remarks, overwhelmingly supports the second.

 

As NR’s editorial recounts, the congresswoman has been committed to radical causes and exhibitionism since before she assumed office. Jeff Blehar notes how dealing with constituents, in time, took a back seat to raising her Washington profile. More recently, her hard-line pronouncements on the Gaza war helped to further alienate her from parts of her party and district. Bush sought to portray the criticism she faced as misplaced anger over her call for a Mideast cease-fire. But her hostility toward Israel, and permissiveness toward Hamas, went well beyond that. Let’s review:

 

·        In the immediate aftermath of October 7, Bush called on Israel not to respond militarily to that historic slaughter of its citizens.

 

·        That same month, she accused Israel of waging an “ethnic cleansing campaign.” Bell entered the race shortly afterward, citing her stance on Israel and other issues.

 

·        Bush was one of ten members of Congress to oppose a resolution supporting Israel after the attacks, and one of two Democrats to oppose a resolution barring October 7 perpetrators and participants from entering the U.S.

 

·        And in the run-up to this week’s primary, Bush declined to call Hamas “terrorists,” instead likening them to American protesters against police violence. “We were called terrorists during Ferguson,” she said. “Have they hurt people? Absolutely. Has the Israeli military hurt people? Absolutely.”

 

The rest of her comments to the New York Times evinced either genuine or contrived ignorance about an organization that makes no attempt to hide its true nature.

 

“Would they qualify to me as a terrorist organization? Yes. But do I know that? Absolutely not,” Ms. Bush said. “I have no communication with them. All I know is that we were considered terrorists, we were considered Black identity extremists and all we were doing was trying to get peace. I’m not trying to compare us, but that taught me to be careful about labeling if I don’t know.”

 

Emphasizing the shared struggle of one’s constituents and Hamas is a losing message, in almost any district. Yet it was a consistent theme for Representative Bush, as NR’s editorial notes: “All this and more catalyzed the primary challenge that ended up convincing enough of her constituents to give her the boot.”

 

The congresswoman, predictably, is among those who accuse AIPAC of trying to “buy” the seat and “trick” voters. Her concession speech, if you could call it that, included not-at-all-veiled warnings to those who had crossed her. “AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down,” she bellowed. Noah Rothman writes,

 

It cannot be that Bell was willed into this race as a result of sincere grassroots enthusiasm for challenging Bush. It must be that an exotic group of outsiders deployed ill-gotten gains in a mesmeric campaign of subterfuge.

 

That false narrative is the same one advanced to try to avert and later explain fellow Squadster Jamaal Bowman’s primary loss in New York in June. But as our Horse Race newsletter noted at the time, Bowman spent that race catering to a sliver of his district while antagonizing the part that’s home to a large Jewish population, which then gravitated to his primary rival who offered more mainstream views on Israel and more. As Jeff catalogued, Bowman had denied Hamas atrocities, complained that Jews in his district lived in close proximity to one another, and went on a profanity-laced tirade against AIPAC that didn’t exactly telegraph “stable genius” to your median voter. “Jamaal Bowman was destroyed . . . not because of outside Jewish money but rather because he angered his own voters, many of whom are Jewish,” Jeff wrote way back when.

 

Jamaal Bowman defeated Jamaal Bowman. Cori Bush defeated Cori Bush. And voters have not actually been hypnotized by the Israel lobby.