Jamaal Bowman lost last week’s primary to moderate Democratic challenger George Latimer. Coverage of the loss – both in the mainstream press and on the left – focused on his shifting positions on Israel and Palestine.
That’s fair enough. Israel and Palestine turned out central both to the campaign and its funders, in light of the ongoing Israeli invasion of Gaza. But this leaves out a broader ideological struggle within the Democratic Party between a more moderate and a more progressive wing. Latimer might have run on foreign policy issues, but he’ll also join Congress as a voice against ideas like Medicare for All.
However, the struggle between Democratic moderates and progressives typically doesn’t involve foreign policy.
Indeed, that fact is highly relevant to internal struggles within the Squad and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Most progressives don’t see foreign policy as central to their political project. They’re often willing to vote in favor of the foreign policy consensus on most issues, so long as those issues don’t involve U.S. troops literally on the ground. They give ground on foreign policy because it’s not central to their political vision. It’s not very important to them.
AIPAC exploited this very division in the ways it heavily poured funds into the Bowman vs. Latimer race.
But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. Let’s start by talking about why Bowman lost. And then let’s ask what his loss means for DSA and the electoral left.
Why Bowman Lost
The consensus in DSA and the broader electoral left is that Bowman lost because AIPAC poured millions of dollars into the race.
And the consensus is wrong. Why?
First, there are better explanations from the facts on the ground.
Bowman kept doing things in office that put off or offended his voters. Voting against the 2021 infrastructure bill was probably a political misstep. And foolishly pulling a fire alarm during a Congressional session was an inexplicable, unforced error that undermined his presentation as an upstanding high school principal. It’s something he surely suspended his students for doing.
In other words, Bowman never ran as some kind of DSA ‘cadre’ candidate. He ran as a generic progressive who would build a broad coalition of voters in his district. And, by 2024, he was no longer that candidate.
But there’s a even bigger reason.
Due to redistricting, Bowman represents a much different district than when he was first elected to Congress. Taegan Goddard, an astute political analyst who runs the website Political Wire and lives in Bowman’s district, reported that Bowman never built strong ties in his new district and that Latimer was a much better retail politician than Bowman.
AIPAC money didn’t cause Bowman to play bad retail politics or pull fire alarms. And those things would’ve defeated Bowmen even without the AIPAC money.
Why AIPAC Spends Money
While leftists are wrong to argue that AIPAC money defeated Bowman, they’re certainly right to question the role of money in politics. It’s just that they don’t understand why AIPAC spends money.
If we think about AIPAC as a narrow electoralist project aimed at getting specific candidates into office, it’s mostly a failure. AIPAC spends a ton of money, and it does so very inefficiently. It spent about $15 million on the Bowman race, and Latimer won about 45,000 votes against Bowman. That amounts to about $330 per vote.
That’s not very impressive. On efficiency alone, AIPAC could’ve gotten better results by just directly bribing voters. It could’ve paid each voter $100 to vote for Latimer and thereby saved itself a bundle. For a good comparison, Bloomberg was Biden’s largest contributor in 2020, and it spent less than $1 per vote.
But, of course, AIPAC isn’t worried about any of this. It doesn’t spend money to elect specific candidates. Rather, it spends money to make it as difficult as possible for any candidate to oppose its political issues. If you rig the game so that everyone votes the way you want, who cares which candidate wins?
In short, the point of AIPAC spending isn’t to elect specific people to office. It’s to rig the political system so that its issues always win. That’s why corporations traditionally donated to both parties.
So, no. AIPAC money didn’t defeat Bowman. But AIPAC money successfully set up a political environment in which it was maximally painful for Bowman to oppose Israeli government interests.
That was a tough hand for Bowman to draw, and he didn’t play it very well.
What It Means for DSA
At this point, we can go back to the post I wrote on Bowman and DSA a few years ago.
Back then, an internal DSA debate erupted over whether to expel Bowman from the org. Bowman had taken a variety of political positions at odds with DSA commitment to BDS as a political line and activist strategy on issues related to Israel and Palestine. Many in DSA objected.
Bowman improved his politics in the coming months, but his waffling on these issues never totally stopped. A few days before the primary, he engaged in a Twitter feud with Within Our Lifetime.
AIPAC’s rigging of the politics explains why Bowman kept waffling, all the way to the end. AIPAC made it really, really painful for Bowman to oppose Israeli government interests. Some politicians playing progressive politics – notably John Fetterman – just surrender and fully embrace the AIPAC program. Others, like Bowman, try to have it both ways.
And while AIPAC money didn’t defeat Bowman, it has far more influence over political power and narrative than DSA. Bowman got caught up in all that. DSA showed, again, that it’s big enough to win but not big enough to win on its own or to hold power.
When push comes to shove, DSA has less political influence within the Democratic Party than AIPAC has. That’s the core issue DSA needs to address, if it wants to keep playing electoral politics.
“Holding electeds accountable” or putting strenuous requirements on endorsements might feel good for DSA members, but it won’t fix this problem. The problem, again, runs deeper than Bowman.
More broadly, this all means that DSA and the electoral left are still at an early stage of development. It needs to figure out how to build power in a more comprehensive way that begins from the ground up.
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