In New York, the Democratic establishment strikes back
YOU MIGHT expect a party’s leaders to inspire its activists about an upcoming election by invoking the vision of their standard-bearer. But on a recent sweltering Saturday afternoon, in a park in the Democratic stronghold of the South Bronx, in New York, Democrat after Democrat, including three congressmen and a senator, spent 75 minutes addressing a crowd of more than a thousand without mentioning President Joe Biden.
For all the enthusiasm, there was, in retrospect, a touching quality to the scene, and not only because the congressman who was the focus of the rally, Jamaal Bowman (pictured), would go on to lose his primary three days later, on June 25th. It captured the predicament Mr Biden has presented to his party’s leftists, and that they are presenting him in return. Can they praise Mr Biden, and he them, without alienating key supporters? Can they criticise one another to court such supporters without helping Donald Trump?
The war in Gaza has so sharpened such questions about where Democrats stand that it is splitting the anti-war left itself. Mr Bowman’s criticism of Israel prompted the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel group, to spend a record amount of money to defeat him. Yet during the rally, scores of protesters, blocked off by steel barricades and watched by police, chanted for a “free Palestine” and against Mr Bowman and the other Democrats on stage, who included such stars of the left as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. “AOC, Bowman, Sanders: Shills for ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden!” read one sign. Even from inside the barricades, Mr Sanders drew some boos when he said Israel “had the right to defend itself against a terrorist attack” before adding, “It does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people.”
Mr Biden beat Donald Trump in New York in 2020 by 23 points, but a Siena College poll this month found Mr Biden leading by just eight. He and Democrats generally have lost favour with independent voters and others who do not affiliate with either major party, the state’s second-biggest bloc after Democrats. With six congressional seats in New York believed to be up for grabs—including five picked up by Republicans in 2022—Democrats are trying to reclaim the political centre. Mondaire Jones, a former congressman running in a district adjoining Mr Bowman’s, once advocated defunding the police, but recently told the Washington Post that was “one of the dumbest phrases ever to exist in American politics”. Mr Jones alienated former allies on the left by endorsing Mr Bowman’s opponent, George Latimer.
Though Democrats’ lurch towards the centre in New York is unmistakable, Mr Bowman’s race is better understood as an indicator of the tensions building within the party than of how they will be resolved. Mr Bowman, a 48-year-old former school principal given to joyfully rapping in social-media posts, is the first member of the “Squad” of progressive legislators to lose a primary. He is black, and his defeat by a 70-year-old white moderate endorsed by the likes of Hillary Clinton might be read as a sign that the establishment is back in control. But Mr Latimer was a formidable candidate with a long record of service as a local elected official, and Mr Bowman, who first won his congressional seat in 2020, was particularly vulnerable.
Mr Bowman went well beyond criticising Israel’s war in Gaza—a mainstream Democratic position—to dismissing reports of rape by Hamas as “propaganda”. He apologised for that, but as recently as the final debate of the primary he accused Israel of “75 years of military occupation”, a view questioning the legitimacy of the state itself. He had troubles apart from the politics of Israel. It emerged in the campaign that in years past he indulged in conspiracy theories about the attacks of September 11th and other subjects. He was caught on video last year pulling a fire alarm in a House office building, prompting an evacuation before a vote on a funding bill, and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour. He could be tone deaf to the politics of his district, mostly composed of suburbs of New York City. “We’re gonna show fuckin’ AIPAC the power of the motherfuckin’ South Bronx!” he roared on Saturday—a vow that might have jarred his constituents not merely for its profanity but also because the South Bronx is not in their district.
The role of AIPAC in the race also complicates its lessons. The group’s political arm spent more than $14.5m helping Mr Latimer, the most ever spent by an interest group on a House race, but not by emphasising Mr Bowman’s views on Israel. Instead, its ads portrayed him as undermining Mr Biden by, for example, voting against his infrastructure bill.
Donald Trump, unifier
Because AIPAC’s donors include Republican billionaires, Mr Bowman charged that “Republican racist MAGA Trump money” was trying to buy the district for Mr Latimer. Indeed, to some on the left, how Mr Bowman lost is a sign they are winning the larger struggle. As Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats, a political action committee, argues, “It shows how weak the establishment and AIPAC are that they have to resort to breaking records alongside Republican billionaires to advance their interests.” For its part AIPAC is already boosting the primary opponent of another vulnerable member of the Squad, Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri, whose contest is in August.
Far more than admiration for Mr Biden, antipathy to Donald Trump is holding the Democratic Party together. That may prove enough to turn out progressives to vote again for the president this autumn. But whoever wins, any polite silence within the party will end after November, and a great, noisy struggle will begin over whether the likes of Mr Bowman, or of Mr Latimer, should represent its future. ■