If polls are to be believed, as well as vibes by those in the district, New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman will lose Tuesday in a Democratic primary race framed around the war in Gaza, following AIPAC’s unprecedented spending in the race. Yet, if Bowman loses, it will be for reasons that go far beyond money or even the passions around the war in Gaza.
A HuffPost story from Sunday chronicles Bowman’s shift from a nuanced supporter of Israel’s right to exist (while criticizing right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s destructive policies), to calling alleged sexual assaults by Hamas on Oct. 7 “propaganda” and embracing some of the most strident anti-Israel rhetoric.
While Bowman’s district is solidly Democratic, he is now embroiled in a competitive primary, which requires a deft hand and sharp political instincts—both things that Bowman seems to lack.
New York’s 16th Congressional District comprises the northern Bronx and southern Westchester County, including the cities of Mount Vernon and Yonkers. It’s hard to get more ethnically and racially diverse than the 16th: 40% white, 29% Latino, 19% Black, and 6% Asian. Nearly 30% of the district’s population is foreign born. The per capita annual income of the district, nearly $63,000, is around 1.5 times that of the United States as a whole, and likely related, its education attainment (47.5% has at least a bachelor’s degree) is 1.3 times the national number. And Westchester County has a significant Jewish population.
What that all means is that entrenching oneself in this district requires judicious constituent service, being present and responsive to the vastly divergent interests of not just those larger communities but also the myriad subgroups within them. As we should all know by now, there is nothing monolithic about the white, Black, Latino, or Asian communities.
Even before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Bowman was failing the art of politics. His biggest misstep—one that’s been highlighted in plenty of ads—was his vote against President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill. His reason was sound as well. You might remember how progressives wanted to tie the infrastructure bill to Biden’s broader Build Back Better Act, a bill to massively invest in housing, education, and health care, among other programs. Biden and the Democratic leadership in Congress caved to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and ended up splitting the bills. Build Back Better failed to pass, though a substantially reduced version of it, the Inflation Reduction Act, did pass—and Bowman voted for it.
However, despite fighting for Biden’s broader agenda, Bowman’s vote against the infrastructure law has given his primary opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a clear line of attack. And it seems to be landing with voters in the area. From the aforementioned HuffPost story:
“The things that [Bowman and other leftists] are voting against because they’re not getting everything they want, to me, sounds very much like children who are packing up their toys and going home,” said Jim Metzger, an architect and photographer from Hastings-on-Hudson who supported Bowman in 2022.
If an elected official wants the freedom to cast statement votes, they need to rely on a strong base of supporters ready to have their back for casting those statement votes. And that brings us to some of the people Bowman has allied himself with …
Our political system has degenerated into an ungovernable mess where people think screaming and threatening is an effective way to influence policy and politics. Daily Kos has always promoted a programmatic politics in which we build public support before demanding our elected officials take on contentious issues. It does no good to force elected allies to cast futile votes that will hurt their chances of being reelected—and our chances of building political power to create lasting change.
Unfortunately for Bowman, he doesn’t seem to have that base of support in his district. Instead, he’s tried to court a far-left that appears to have little interest in engaging electorally. As one progressive activist told The Hill:
It’s disconcerting how many activists have pushed for Bowman to stand up for Palestinians, but as of yet, as of now, it doesn’t seem all the noise has turned into financial support and that’s why Bowman may lose.
No one is asking Bowman’s supporters to go toe-to-toe with the right-wing pro-Israel AIPAC, which has dumped a shocking $14.5 million into ousting Bowman. But if every pro-Palestinian activist in the country donated to Bowman, he’d have significantly more than the $4.3 million he raised, which is less than Latimer’s own $5.8 million. (Can’t entirely blame that on AIPAC.)
Worse, the far-left that Bowman has courted is now attacking some of the most progressive members of Congress. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has tirelessly defended Bowman, and Sen. Bernie Sanders held a weekend rally for Bowman in the Bronx. The pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetimes attended, but not to sign up to walk precincts, make phone calls, raise money, or otherwise help get out the vote for him. Rather, they protested the event, attempting to disrupt it because no one can ever be pure enough for them.
“AOC, your hands are red. Over 40,000 dead,” they chanted. Her crime? Seemingly, it’s that she supports Biden, whom many in this movement call “Genocide Joe.” On the issue of Gaza, specifically, few are as supportive of their efforts as AOC, and she’s ardently fighting for Bowman, who has adopted much of the same language as the protestors, even accusing Israel of genocide. And yet somehow, this group decided it is these representatives who need to be protested.
Can people possibly be more absurd?
This is the same crowd that would happily enable Donald Trump’s election, even though that would be orders of magnitude more catastrophic for the residents of Gaza. It’s the reason Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rooting for Trump to win in November.
Yet Bowman is cut from the same cloth. Responding to Latimer’s promise to deliver “real progressive results, not rhetoric,” Bowman retorted in a debate that “rhetoric creates movements in grassroots organizing that leads to American revolutions! That is what we need in this moment. We need rhetoric and results. We have both.”
As someone who lived through a revolution, I can tell you there’s nothing romantic about them. People die. Societies are turned inside out. Families are shattered. And the results are seldom what people expect.
Indeed, in American politics, “revolution” is the pining for change unsupported by popular opinion. It’s the (seemingly) easy way forward.
But let’s be charitable to Bowman and assume that he means it as some sort of benign awakening where the magic of his words and that of his allies spur a political realignment. …
Sorry, can’t do it.
Here are some commonsense guidelines for political change that these activists don’t seem to understand:
1) If you have public support, do politics.
2) If you don’t have public support, do advocacy to build public support.
It’s simple, pragmatic, practical, and realistic.
These pro-Palestinian activists don’t have public support, so the votes just won’t be there for them (AIPAC or no AIPAC), and wishing for a revolution to give them what they haven’t earned is naive extremism.
So given that lack of public support, they could’ve focused on advocacy work to influence public opinion while strongly supporting their elected allies. Instead, they turned on those allies while being obnoxious and turning off anyone else potentially open to their message.
That’s the difference between practical politics and performative politics. The right does it too, like mandating the Ten Commandments in classrooms and feigning piety to those commandments while supporting Trump.
The performative left doesn’t have the power of its counterparts on the right, they are in no way equivalent, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t doing MAGA’s bidding. Many would rather sink Biden’s campaign and hand Trump the victory than acknowledge that politics is messy and that progress takes hard work, money, and time.
New York’s 16th Congressional District seems set to remind Democrats that they value pragmatic results over performative rhetoric. Too bad that lesson will be lost thanks to AIPAC’s flood of cash. But elected incumbents don’t often lose, and it takes more than money to oust them.
If Bowman is defeated on Tuesday, he will have failed by losing touch with his district and by allying with people little interested in doing the hard work to have his back (preferring instead to damage him). The power of incumbency may save him yet. Odds are that it won’t.
