It's also worth remembering that Bush has another problem that could really hurt her, completely separate from ideological squabbles in the party.
Which is?
She has been under federal investigation since January.
Oh yeah I forgot about that. She’s actually flying under the radar for that in national media. I would hope her opponent is blowing up the airwaves and social media about it back in stl
I mean it was an incumbent Squad WOC vs a non-incumbent WOC primary.
I’m committed to
advancing progressive issues like advocating for gun violence prevention, fighting for reproductive justice, and creating good-paying union jobs.
I don’t actually believe that. They were targeted because they criticized Israel, duh.
But it’s the same kind of fallacious reasoning that permits their critics to call them antisemitic so I say f it, gotta get realpolitik. Especially in districts where the average voter is going to feel a lot more strongly about racism than they do Israel, and perhaps even to the extent that they connect these two issues together. While I am ambivalent about it, this kind of thinking is more common than you think.
I think Lee was targeted this cycle for being anti-Israel. I can only speak for myself, but I am glad Lee did much better than I expected. AFAIK, she’s genuinely just anti-Israel and conflating that with someone like Tlaib or Bush would be a very bad thing indeed.
I think Bowman and especially Bush are being targeted for numerous reasons. Being anti-Israel is certainly one reason, but I don’t think Bush’s situation would be any different if the I/P conflict never existed. She’s a poor fundraiser and fluke Congresswoman who neglects constituent service, is utterly despised by much of the Democratic Party (and the feeling is basically mutual), and is pretty unpopular with AA voters despite being in a AA majority-minority district. She’s been the target of a DoJ criminal investigation for months regarding crimes that are very easy to explain to low-information voters.
As for her opponents, the main one (Wesley Bell) is an extremely popular AA County Prosecutor with high local name recognition, who is a far better fundraiser, smart enough to make the race a referendum on Bush, and uniquely well-positioned to simultaneously maintain solid pro-criminal justice reform and anti-crime credentials with the primary electorate in this district. Then you have a former state legislator running who is basically a random nutjob with a small-ish yet very devoted personal following in the area who was basically grown in a lab to compete with Bush for exactly the type of person who should be the core of Bush’s base. Yes, AIPAC got involved because “muh Israel,” but I really don’t think they’re that big a factor here except *maybe* at the margins by inflating the already significant fundraising gap.
In Bowman’s district, I think his anti-Israel views definitively played a bigger role than in MO-1, but I also don’t think it’s as big as the narrative suggests. Remember, Bowman was long regarded as one of the more reasonable members of the Squad (to the point that I was even rooting for him to beat Engel in the primary when he first ran for Congress and hadn’t really had an issue with him until this year, although the fire alarm thing was admittedly dumb). Still, Bowman was inflicting more and more unforced errors and death by a thousand cuts screw ups/gaffes upon himself.
George Latimer is arguably a political force of nature in Westchester County and he was clearly recruited by national and state Democrats alike to run for Congress. And yet it is equally clear from the campaign he waged that he was intending to run against Mondaire Jones and Mike Lawler post-redistricting and wanted to build a strong campaign machine and fundraising warchest rather than waiting until it was too late in the game. The NY Assembly shocked a lot of people - including more than a few insiders (especially ones tied more to national Democratic politics than NY State politics, even the State Senate seems to have been caught at least somewhat by surprise) by doing a limited change map that only strengthened LaLota and Souzzi while weakening Williams.
This left Latimer with a choice to make: did he still want to run for Congress if the path was now primarying Bowman? He decided that he did. From then on, it was clear Latimer was in the driver’s seat although Bowman probably won’t be humiliated by a blowout margin for various reasons. That said, one cannot deny that I/P has worked in Latimer’s favor here. At a minimum, Latimer has benefited from campaign contributions from groups like DMfI and AIPAC (although I think it would be pretty inaccurate to attribute his lead to that, the man is very popular and has plenty of experience with highly competitive races, plus Bowman isn’t exactly beloved in general).
As Bowman has started to see the writing on the wall, he’s been getting more and more desperate. His latest tactic has been to say absurd things about the Gaza conflict (ex: claiming that Hamas didn’t rape anyone on 10/7 and that any claims to the contrary were “propaganda” before quickly backpedaling after heavy criticism). I think Bowman has decided his only hope is to attempt to turn the primary into a referendum on Gaza and hope for the best. However, I don’t think he’s nearly a talented enough politician to pull it off in a district that isn’t exactly the most fertile ground for such a strategy. As a result, he’s kinda flailing around in an increasingly desperate manner and embarrassing himself. I think Latimer wins here because he’s a much stronger candidate than Bowman, a better fit for the district, and b/c Bowman is both not ready for prime time and generally running a pretty poor campaign (the dude simply cannot stay out of his own way).
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