A Democratic National Committee member is proposing a symbolic resolution for consideration at a DNC meeting next month to reject the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s massive spending on Congressional races.
The measure, sponsored by a young DNC member from Florida, could put party leaders on the spot about the pro-Israel lobbying group’s outsized role in Democratic primaries.
A lobbying behemoth that for decades courted lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, AIPAC has become an increasingly toxic brand in the Democratic Party.
In recent years, Israeli leaders and their backers in Washington have become more closely aligned with Republican politicians. At the same time, however, AIPAC’s super PAC has focused tens of millions in spending on Democratic primary races.
Why Kat Abughazaleh lost her race due to APIC spending in that primary. The person who got the nom took a ton of their money.
And it isn’t going away. This is how our elected officials funnel our taxpayers money int their pockets. Why do you think they vote to give Israeli billions of dollars each year.
yeah there was a lot of machine type winning this primary that sucks. Its amazing how well she did with that funding behometh against her. That chicago progress caucus or whatever bs political misnomer they were using pissed me off so much. kelley did well to considering the three way. people really need to start understanding that the primaries are where the real stakes are now.
Daniel Biss says he didn’t take any AIPAC money but was also not willing to denounce aid to Israel on the same level as Kat did. I haven’t looked enough into whether or not he accepted shadow money from AIPAC, but its very telling that AIPAC celebrated his win over Kat even though their opebly funded candidate Laura Fine lost.
Laura Fine took a ton of AIPAC money to split the vote from Kat. They were also paying influencers $1500 a post to disparage Kat. She’s Palestinian, so they threw millions against her in the final days of the race to ensure democracy didn’t function.
He’s not their friend, but she was openly their enemy. And they want to take credit for it, to maintain the sense that they call the shots.
They campaigned against Biss and I think he said he wants conditions on aid to Israel (which is currently unconditional).
This is not a win in any way for AIPAC, but the loss would have been bigger if Kat had won, which she nearly did, so I guess that’s something?
It’s definitely a sort of progress. I’ve seen interviews where Biss said that he encouraged AIPAC to sit the campaign out, but then they threatened him, so he made AIPAC funding an issue in the campaign. They also told him he was a bigger problem for them than Kat was, since he’s Jewish and the son of Shoah survivors. That makes him harder to discredit.
Having said all that, I don’t see Biss as a committed anti-Zionist, more as someone who won’t be unconditionally subservient to Netanyahu.
As long as he opposes genocide. That’s good enough for me. (And it’s ridiculous that that’s where the bar is.)
I didn’t realize they already had their primary. That’s disappointing. I wanted to kick some money her way before the election. Too late now.