By Jeffrey Blehar
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
While I grant Phil Klein’s point that a Jamaal Bowman
unchained from all need for political restraint is a Jamaal Bowman likely to say some impressively deranged things in the
next few months, talking about him feels for me — given all that I’ve said
already — a bit like exhuming a body I just buried. After bludgeoning to death.
(Speaking of terminal business, you may enjoy my political obituary for the man from last night.) And
something tells me this may not be the last we’ve seen of Bowman anyway, at least on cable television.
That said, a brief note on the quickly congealing
progressive narrative about What Really Happened in last night’s thumping.
Bowman didn’t just lose in his Democratic primary race in New York’s 16th
congressional district, after all: He was thwacked upside the gob with an
electoral 2-by-4, blown out by George Latimer by 17 percent. And the Left has a
theory of the case: “It was AIPAC wot done it.”
The New York Times led with that interpretation in its headline this
morning before hastily changing it: “Bowman Falls in House Primary, Overtaken
by Flood of Pro-Israel Money” was their take. They then changed the headline
after a chorus of boos emerged on social media, but the sentiment surely
remains regardless. Axios did so as well: “Democrats Groan at AIPAC ‘Overkill’
Against Jamaal Bowman.” And that line has been taken up by all the usual
suspects as well: It was sinister Jewish money from outside the district, and
particularly interference from that notorious bully AIPAC, that defeated our
noble Squadroneer. (Bowman himself made the charge with shocking vulgarity at a rally — a
rally held outside his district, it must be noted — the weekend
before he was defenestrated.)
It is all patent nonsense and deserves to debunked as
such. First of all, even if AIPAC’s involvement had decided
this race, there is nothing wrong with that; it is literally their
constitutional right. Jamaal Bowman surely appreciated it when outside national
groups spent big to help him defeat Eliot Engel in his 2020 Democratic primary;
it surprises me not a whit that he appreciates it less when the shoe is on the
other foot, but then again he is the one who willingly chose to don cement
shoes, not AIPAC.
Which brings me to my real point: Jamaal Bowman was
destroyed last night not because of outside Jewish money but rather because
he angered his own voters, many of whom are Jewish. Long before AIPAC got
involved in the race, he was down 17 percentage points in the March 26–30
Mellman Group poll of the race. He ended up losing by . . . 17 percent. Not a
very good ROI for AIPAC, it would seem. The truth is, AIPAC got involved simply
because — despite their famously bipartisan outreach on Capitol Hill — they
simply could not remain silent in the face of acts like Bowman’s.
But it was Bowman’s own people who cast him out. I have
heard stories, from those well familiar with the Westchester County Jewish
community, that the level of spontaneous internal organizing around this
race was truly something to see, an organic community response to Bowman’s
relentless provocations and antisemitic rhetoric. Bowman’s district includes a
smidgen of New York City proper (the north Bronx) but is otherwise composed entirely
of the southern half of that county. An enormous number of Democratic voters
live there. Many of them are Jewish — and they vote. Bowman’s loss requires
zero conspiracy theorizing about the Jewish Lobby or dark money to explain. The
answer is much more prosaic: It turns out it’s a bad idea to defecate where you
eat.
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