AIPAC is laundering immense sums of money— so far they’re reporting to the FEC have raised just under $51 million this cycle— through various SuperPACs, making it harder to trace who they’re targeting. But one thing is sure, they are taking money from Republicans billionaires to attack progressive Democrats in blue areas where GOP candidates have no hopes. And they know how to do it effectively through smears, lies, innuendos and… well, never mentioning Israel, Gaza, genocide of what they’re really all about. Aside from the $200,000 they gave to the conservaDems at Emily’s List, mostly they help defeat progressives by last minute spending on TV and radio and by pointing their donors towards allied SuperPACs and campaigns of anti-progressive candidates.
For example, the moment they got the idea that Harry Dunn might be somewhat progressive they started dumping millions of dollars into an effort to defeat him with Maryland puppet candidate Sarah Elfreth, on whom they spent almost $5 million. But the really big money is reserved for defeating progressive incumbents and this cycle their two top targets are Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO). AIPAC has sent torrents of money into George Latimer’s and Wesley Bell’s campaigns and the've just started spending on serious advertising in both. AIPAC is just getting started and they've already run $8 million in ads against Bowman for a June 25 primary and on Tuesday ran their first ads against Bush for an August 6th primary.
They’re still celebrating having defeated two progressive front-runners in Oregon, Susheela Jayapal and Jamie McLeod-Skinner. On Tuesday John Nichols noted that AIPAC failed to beat far right Republican Thomas Massie in an R+19 red Kentucky hellhole… except they didn’t really try. Massie had two no-name/no-money opponents, Michael McGinnis and Eric Deters and in the 21 counties in the northern Kentucky district, Massie didn’t dip below 70% in any of them. In 5 counties he had over 80%. District-wide his share of the vote was 75.9%. Massie spent $342,405 while neither McGinnis nor Deters raised over the $5,000 that would have required them to file a report with the FEC. AIPAC tossed out $319,783 worth of anti-Massie ads, while far right billionaire Jeff Yass’ neo-fascist Protect Freedom PAC spent $548,571 on Massie’s behalf.
Anyway, if Nichols’ was trying to point out that AIPAC could be beaten, he could have just said, except when they spent 10 times more against progressives than they do against Republicans— especially when the ads are really stupid and unconvincing like the one they ran against Massie: “Israel, the Holy Land, under attack by Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Congressman Tom Massie.” Not even in Kentucky is anyone going to take that hyperbole seriously.
As Nichols reported, that after his landslide win “Massie said the results were a message for AIPAC, declaring on election day, ‘AIPAC, your smear campaign on this American has backfired.’ He also said the result was a signal to his party’s leadership in Washington. ‘I don’t vote for wars, and I don’t vote for foreign aid,’ Massie said. ‘That puts me apart from most of my colleagues in Washington, D.C., but hopefully my colleagues will see that you can get 75 percent of the vote back home if you just represent those things in the Republican Party.’”
Alas, the Democrats have no unified message for AIPAC… unless it’s abject surrender. I sure don’t see them coming to Jamaal Bowman’s or Cori Bush’s aid. If you’d like to help them fight off the un-American attacks against the, you can do it on our Give AIPAC The Finger page… cause I guarantee you, Hakeem Jeffries and the DCCC sure won’t. Democratic Party leadership is too busy sucking up AIPAC’s bribes and cheering for Israeli genocide. (And wondering why young voters are abandoning them.) the leaders of teh pack:
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