bobburger

One of my links shows AOC has opposed the genocide of Palestinians since 2021. How far back do we need to go?

It's pretty apparent you have no evidence to support any of your claims and are trying to move your own goal posts.

At this point you're just spreading misinformation and poorly trying to push some kind of weird narrative.

Have a good day.

I know it's hard to provide a source for a negative, but do you have any showing she is friendly to Israel and the AIPAC?

These suggest she is harshly critical of Israel, the AIPAC, and the invasion of Gaza: CNN, March 2024

NY Times, September 2021 This article shows a history of being critical of supporting Israel

Times of Israel, November 2023 This is a biased source, but it contains the tweets where AOC directly condemned the AIPAC

NY Times, November 2023 MSNBC, June 2024

The last article seems to be about the "Zionist lobbyist on her live-stream", where AOC said:

Criticism of the Israeli government is not inherently antisemitic and criticism of zionism is not automatically antisemitic. That being true does not mean that we should not recognize criticism and when that criticism crosses a line into real harms against our Jewish community.

Do you have the quote where she said "criticism is Israel is antisemitism"?

How do you use Mullvad without an account?

Why didn't the AIPAC spend $15 million to buy AOCs seat as well if that's all there is to it?

I think something you may not be taking into account is that Bowman's district was redrawn since he first got elected, drastically changing his constituency:

The congressional district’s boundaries have shifted since Bowman first won office in 2020, losing most of its sections in the Bronx and adding more of Westchester County’s suburbs. Today, 21% of its voting-age population is Black and 42% is non-Hispanic white, according to U.S. Census figures, compared to 30% Black and 34% white in the district as it existed through 2022. Bowman is Black. Latimer is white.

This change made him particularly susceptible to a primary challenge, regardless of PAC spending.

This article shows the AIPAC has contributed almost $900 thousand to Wesley Bell's campaign as of April 30th. This isn't total spending in the race, just direct campaign contributions. Still less than they contributed to the Latimer's campaign for sure, but not insignificant. We're still almost 6 weeks until the Missouri primary election which is when the spending usually ramps up. To do an apples to apples comparison at this point in time would take more time than I care to invest but I'd love to see the results if you want to do it. Regardless of the exact figures, it's clear the AIPAC is targeting only specific progressive Democratic candidates, and it seems to me the reason they're doing so is because the candidates are already politically vulnerable.

Also Latimer beat Bowman by nearly 17% per NBC news.

I respect sticking to his principles, but sometimes in politics you have to do something you find distasteful for the greater good.

We have no idea what would have happened had Bowman kept his head down about Israel, but we do know that speaking out against the invasion of Gaza and calling for a ceasefire didn't really move the needle on actually achieving a ceasefire. It did make him unpopular with his constituents and made him vulnerable to a primary challenger.

Now Bowman is probably going to lose his seat in congress and there's one less progressive voice and vote in congress.

I don't know what the full outcome of this will be, but sometimes doing the right thing causes more harm than good in the very morally gray area of politics.

Why do you think that is?

My opinion and all the evidence I've seen is that It's because AOC wasn't vulnerable.

Polls from March show Bowman was already in trouble as far back as March. Bowman's campaign (the Upswing research poll) showed Latimer and Bowman were essentially tied. That's bad for an incumbant. The AIPAC poll from the Melman group around the same time showed an overwhelming preference for Latimer over Bowman. That's when the AIPAC started pouring money in to the campaign to exploit that weakness.

The AIPAC research showed Bowman was vulnerable, similar to why the AIPAC is spending big to replace Cori Bush but they are essentially leaving Ilhan Omar (so far).

The AIPAC analysts are highly skilled at collecting and analyzing data. This allows them to know how and where to spend their money to get the maximum return on their investment. They aren't going to waste money trying to defeat a candidate like AOC who is still largely popular with their constituents.

This is really unfortunate. Bowman had a choice between doing what he thought was right and oppose Israel's invasion of Gaza or keep his head down and probably get reelected.

I feel this is a great example of the Overton window in action, and AOC easily winning her primary shows how broadly the window can vary even in adjacent districts.

Biden really needs to be more carful when filling out those reports.

So what will stop October 7ths from happening again and again? If Isreal pulled out of Gaza and the West bank entirely Hamas would decide that everyone lives in peace?

Studying first thing it the morning is what works for me.

I get up early, study/work for a few hours, and then go about my day. If I do something else first any chance at studying evaporates (unless of course there's the looming deadline).

Not according to most users on Lemmy

Banning Democratic candidates from taking campaign contributions from outside actors like the AIPAC, but those are a pretty small drop in the bucket of the total spending.

This article summarizes the spending on the Bowman election.

About $22 million has been spent on the Bowman/Latimer race. About $6 million of that comes from campaign spending which you suggestion might address. It would be pretty easy to bypass the restriction because most of the AIPAC funding comes from bundling individual donations; the AIPAC could send links to contributors and have them directly donate to Latimer's campaign as individuals completely bypassing the process. So not really much the DNC can do there.

The majority of the money being spent on the campaign (about $16 million) is from independent PACs. Even if the DNC did ban contributions from these groups going directly to campaigns, that portion of their spending is really a very small piece of the funding that's being addressed (less than $3.2 million). The vast majority is really outside the candidates control, if a PAC wants to send out mailers and run advertisements they can pretty much do it with impunity.

How is the DNC leadership expected to control the spending of PACs and the contributions of individuals? (Your original claim was the DNC is allowing these things to happen, I'm simply rephrasing the claim not trying to move the goal posts).

We 100% need campaign finance reform, and less outside influence on elections in general, but blaming this situation on the DNC doesn't seem appropriate.