Yesterday there were primary elections in several states and in general progressives did well in winning Democratic races against candidates backed by the Democratic establishment and the Israel lobby.
The closest race was for the Michigan senate where progressive Abdul El-Sayed won a very close race against Haley Stevens, where AIPAC affiliated lobbies spent massively on her behalf, dwarfing his spending.
El-Sayed, 41, is a former public health official who centered his run on the Medicare For All model of universal healthcare, while confronting massive outside spending against him, which became another theme of the race. Stevens, meanwhile, touted her work on the US auto rescue taskforce, where she served as chief of staff.
…Stevens saw the backing of establishment Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, while El-Sayed received endorsements from prominent progressives such as Sanders.
…More than $40m has poured into the race from outside groups supporting Stevens or attacking El-Sayed, including from groups associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), a pro-Israel lobby. Some ads elevated Stevens’ connection to Barack Obama on the auto rescue, which voters have seen as a quasi-endorsement, despite Obama not formally endorsing in the race.
There were down ballot wins as well.
Michigan voters also delivered victories for other progressive candidates, nominating climate activist William Lawrence and Donavan McKinney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, both of whom are backed by Bernie Sanders in their bids for seats in the House of Representatives.
The 34-year old McKinney defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar despite Thanedar’s backing from AIPAC and cryptocurrency interests. Lawrence, a climate organizer wss endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rashida Tlaib and defeated two ‘moderate’ candidates in the Lansing area.
On the other hand, in Washington state, the establishment backed candidate Marie Gluesenkamp Perez won her primary race for the congressional seat where she is the incumbent.
Gluesenkamp Perez, who has carved out a distinctive political profile, is viewed as one of the most vulnerable House Democrats. Since flipping the Republican-held seat in 2022, she has built support among moderates, independents and some Republican voters, often emphasizing her background as the co-owner of an auto repair shop and breaking with her party on high-profile issues such as immigration, transgender rights and Trump’s elections overhaul bill, known as the Save Act.
That approach, however, increasingly alienated parts of her own party. Progressive critics argued she has too often sided with the president and Republicans, while supporters countered that her willingness to stake out opposing views reflected the realities of a district that has consistently backed Trump for president, most recently by about three points.
In Missouri, progressive Cori Bush failed to defeat incumbent Wesley Bell, the latter being heavily supported by Israel lobby groups.
The United Democracy Project, a Super Pac aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), poured about $3m into helping Bell’s campaign overwhelm Bush on the airwaves. In a post on X, Aipac congratulated Bell on his victory.
But Missouri also saw a good result for democracy in general. Although the elected state representatives are solidly right wing Republicans, voters have used the referendum option to pass various measures opposed by them, such as to create abortion rights, legalize marijuana and sports betting, paid sick leave, and expand Medicaid healthcare coverage for low-income adults. To prevent measures like that in the future, the Republican legislature tried to create very stringent rules that would make it almost impossible to pass.
Missouri’s proposed Amendment 4 would make it significantly harder to amend the constitution by requiring citizen initiatives to pass in all eight of the state’s diverse congressional districts instead of by a traditional, simple statewide majority. No other state has such a high standard — or has even asked voters to consider it.
But that measure was resoundingly defeated, with 80.3% of voters voting against it.
However Missouri state officials are preventing a new ballot measure that would allow voters to have a say in the state’s redistricting plans. Lawsuits will be filed to challenge it.
Not all the results are in as yet but in general it was a good day for progressives.
I live in Missouri’s Second Congressional District, so I didn’t get a vote in the 1st-district Bush v. Bell race; but I can tell you that anti-Bush ads were all over the TV, so there must have been loads of money behind them. Most of the ads complained about all the votes that Bush missed, but left out the bit that she wasn’t gallivanting around, but rather was home alone recovering from COVID. Bush is a Democratic Socialist who opposes most of what Israel is doing, so the oligarchs and AIPAC had common cause here.
Amendment 4 was probably partly due to performative Christians in Missouri’s Bible Belt being in a snit over a pro-abortion amendment that passed state-wide a while ago. It applied only to citizen-sponsored initiatives; amendments that originated in the Republican-controlled state legislature wouldn’t have the same requirement. That was sufficiently transparent that even the vast majority of voters in this mainly rural and red state could see through it.
Also defeated with 83% no votes was Amendment 5, an oligarch-sponsored initiative that would phase out income and property taxes. There were also tons of TV ads about this claiming a big tax cut for “regular folks” but failing to mention that the revenue would be replaced by increased sales and use taxes. Regular folks got the news about that one, too.
Writing more about progressive wins generally, Robert Reich suggested on his substack that the progressive wins were really mostly anti-oligarch.
I was really wondering what happened with Cori Bush. It felt a bit far-fetched that ordinary democratic voters would vote in favor of an AIPAC backed candidate with the horrors of Gaza being so well known and a disastrous war with Iran that was promoted and forcibly continued by Israel. Although I suppose even in the current environment you can still tell yourself things like there will be no genocides on your watch as long as you just… don’t actually watch. That seems to be the American voter’s Great American Pastime.
Overall I’m not sure how much to take away from these progressive wins in particular. I feel like I’ve learned the hard way that until we get a solid mass of progressives in the Democratic party we’re still going to find every choice to be between Republican or Republican-lite with an extra dose of hypocrisy. And the GOP has devolved almost completely away from policy or governance and into whatever shot-stirring nonsense will give them more power in the short term. The only line they’ve refused to cross so far is they won’t let Trump blow up the economy immediately. They won’t and haven’t stopped him from doing it but as long as he takes the scenic route to get there they’re content to blame it on someone else.