Jamaal Bowman and American progressivism
This meeting of money and politics is more complicated than you think
Sometimes it’s worth pausing for a moment to reflect on how weird America’s system of competitive primary elections is. Because many congressional seats are safely red or blue, these intra-party slug fests are often the only competition that matters. If you win a primary in the Bronx or in a red swathe of Mississippi, then your victory in the general election is virtually guaranteed. In many cases, you’ll go on to enjoy a long career in Congress without ever having to face a competitive election again.
That’s a valuable prize, which is one reason why primaries often end up being so bitterly contested. The other is that, as any long-term politico can tell you, intra-party beefs often stir more emotion than those against the opposition. We tend to get angrier being betrayed by people who we thought were in our corner than at people who we never thought shared our values in the first place.
Occasionally, a primary will come along which captures one of these intense intra-party struggles and, like a lens to the sun, intensifies and focuses it. A set of interest groups and party factions will become determined to unseat a high-profile opponent in order to send a chill through the ranks of the remainder. They’ll call it the beginning of a new way of doing politics, and the end of an old. Sometimes they’ll be right, as when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s 2014 loss presaged the rise of Donald Trump and the declining power of the Republican establishment. Other times, as with AOC’s upset against Democratic caucus chair Joe Crowley in 2018, the results are more complicated.
Why am I talking about this? Well, yesterday, New York Democrat Jamaal Bowman went down to defeat against George Latimer. The race was the most expensive House primary in U.S. history, with more money being spent than in the entire British general election so far. Bowman is a member of “the Squad” of progressive Democrats – which includes AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and others – who have attempted to reshape their party in the last few years.
Bowman has clashed with his party over many issues in the past, including voting against Biden’s infrastructure bill, which he said wasn’t radical enough. But what really super-charged this primary was the war in the Middle East.
Before October 7th, Bowman had been one of the more Israel-friendly members of the Squad. He visited Israel and voted in favor of Iron Dome funding (Tlaib, Omar and others voted against; AOC voted “present”). But after the Hamas massacre in October and Israel’s response, Bowman tacked hard to the left. He called reports of Hamas sexual assault “propaganda”, said Israel was engaging in “genocide”, and made clear that he wouldn’t be voting to fund Iron Dome again any time soon.
With Bowman turning himself into such a lightning rod, a primary challenge seemed inevitable - particularly because his district has a large Jewish community. Pro-Israel factions within the Democratic Party and U.S. politics more broadly wanted to make an example of Bowman and show that there was a political cost to speaking this way about Israel. Pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC spent nearly $15m on the race, an incredible amount for a House primary.
What’s notable about AIPAC’s spending is that it wasn’t strictly necessary merely to defeat Bowman, who was trailing Latimer by double digits before AIPAC even spent a cent. Bowman had become obviously out of step with his district, a problem which was intensified by recent bizarre behavior - remember him pulling the fire alarm in Congress? - and revelations from his past, such as that he had once dabbled in 9/11 conspiracy theories.
But even though Bowman was headed for defeat anyway, AIPAC wanted to do something else - to publicly destroy him in a way that would send a message to other House Democrats, many of whom are now rattled and significantly less likely to speak out against Israel. That the future of the party consensus was what was really at issue in this race and not just Bowman’s own future is why many progressives agreed with Bernie Sanders when he called the primary “one of the most important elections in the modern history of this country”.
It’s worth noting that the relationship between money and politics here is not the one that progressives often claim. Sanders and other figures on the left have accused AIPAC of effectively buying this race, using their financial firepower to stamp all over the will of the people. In reality, the group only put this much money into the race because Bowman was already pretty certain to lose due to getting so out of touch with the people he represented. Spending $15m trying to unseat Ilhan Omar and failing would not have made AIPAC look powerful or scary, so they picked an easy target instead.
The race also led me to reflect on the ways in which the Israel-Palestinian conflict deranges U.S. politics. The primary became racially charged on both sides, with Bowman accusing his opponents of trying to keep black people down and Latimer - who has shown himself to be no angel - implying that Bowman didn’t care about white people.
One of the reasons this happened is because the debate in the United States over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, among other things, a proxy struggle in the broader conflict over American race and identity. Progressives like Bowman will argue that the struggle for racial equality and other progressive goals at home is in some way inseparable from the struggle for the human rights of Palestinians and others abroad. But as a matter of practical politics, I’m not sure this is actually remotely true. And the struggle for racial equality in the United States is difficult enough to win without linking it to another massive, divisive issue which also fundamentally splits the left-liberal coalition - especially when the office you’re running for has pretty much zero influence over U.S. foreign policy.
Indeed, Bowman’s opponents inundated the race with attack ads not about Israel, but about more mundane matters - his votes against the infrastructure package and raising the debt ceiling, along with the fire alarm incident. Meanwhile, other House Democrats with similar records on the Middle East cruised to re-nomination in their own primaries (although the jury is still out on Cori Bush, whose primary is August 6th). Whatever either AIPAC or the left wants you to think, the Democratic Party’s debate over the Middle East is far from settled, a division which might hurt the party come November.
…. And Boebert fights on
The other big primary news yesterday was that far-right Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert won her primary and is now heavily favored to be returned to Congress this November. Boebert barely won re-election in 2022 in the state’s 3rd district, which includes some deep-blue urban areas, so she decided to up sticks and move to the 4th, where no Democrat has come close to winning in 15 years. Normally voters don’t reward carpetbagging, but Boebert benefited from Donald Trump’s endorsement and a crowded field which split the anti-Boebert vote. The primary shows that although his record is not perfect, Trump is still a powerful kingmaker - and Republicans remain wedded to celebrity firebrands who tell them what they want to hear.
There are still eight American hostages in Gaza. Anyone doing anything to undermine Biden's efforts to get them home should not be surprised if there are consequences. Almost everyone is horrified by the situation in Gaza, pretty much everyone agrees that the Hamas attack on October 7 was unconscionable, and basically no one here knows what is happening behind the scenes in the negotiations.