Bow(man)ing Out

As you've no doubt seen, George Latimer has ousted incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the Democratic primary for New York's 16th congressional district. The margin -- approximately 58-41 -- is similar to Bowman's own primary victory over longtime district Rep. Eliot Engel in 2020 (that was a 55-41 victory).

Of course, we all know the cardinal rule about ousting incumbents in primaries: My challenge is an authentic expression of popular rebellion, your challenge is an astroturfed manipulation by special interests and rabble-rousers.

The reality is that one shouldn't read too much into this result. I think it tells us a lot less about the state of "Israel politics" in the Democratic Party than anybody would like to admit. Yes, AIPAC dumped a truckload of money into this race. But Bowman made plenty of missteps that made him vulnerable; first and foremost being seemingly completely uninterested in connecting with his district once lines were redrawn after the census. Part of what haunted Engel was the sense he had grown distant from his district, but Bowman quickly fell victim to the same sentiment (particularly in contrast to Latimer, who had extremely deep connections and a reputation as an outstanding retail politician). When your closing rally cry is a promise to show "AIPAC the power of the motherfucking South Bronx", and none of your district actually includes the South Bronx, that's not awesome.

All of which raises the question of how much difference AIPAC's money actually made. A colleague of mine described their intervention as "feasting on a corpse", and while I think that's exaggerated, there's little question that AIPAC knows how to pick its spots and is happy to claim credit for backing a winning horse. AIPAC's backing might have given him some extra oomph, but Latimer was already an unusually high-profile challenger given his long run in Westchester politics. Right now, both sides have an incentive to talk up AIPAC's influence -- Camp AIPAC to gain the aura of deterrence, Team Bowman to provide a face-saving excuse -- but for my part I'm doubtful that AIPAC's dollars made much of a difference (or at the very least, the diminishing returns after the first infusion accelerated rapidly). As obnoxious as the glut of money sloshing around American politics might be, it just isn't the case that a truckload of money can simply buy a congressional seat (ask David Trone, or Carrick Flynn). Bowman may have been outspent, but he had plenty of resources (tangible or not) in his corner; he was hardly hung out to dry. And meanwhile, as much as AIPAC wants to crow that "pro-Israel = good politics", it remains the case that most of its advertising in Democratic primaries studiously avoids talking about Israel, suggesting it isn't as confident in its message as its bluster suggests. 

In fact, I'm mostly tired of how the Israel thing completely overwhelms and distorts how we talk about all the relevant players here. Bowman's 2020 victory over Engel was framed as an ousting of a "moderate", but that label almost exclusively played on Engel's pro-Israel voting record -- in reality, he was a reliable progressive vote through his entire multi-decade tenure in office. And Bowman, too, is disserved when people act like the only thing he did in office was yell about Israel. He was a passionate voice for the interests of working class Americans and that passion was an inspiration to many. I have no desire to dance on his grave, any more than Engel's. And, for what it's worth, I suspect Latimer too will be a generally reliable liberal voice in Congress (indeed, my understanding is that New York progressives generally had warm feelings towards Latimer up until the ugliness of this race). The real moral of this story is that while in highly-activated online circles Israel (pro- or anti-) might matter uber alles, that's not what's happening on the ground.

These posts aren't what anyone enjoys reading -- people want to crow at a Squad member being laid low or they want to fulminate over AIPAC bulldozing American democracy. But the reality is that most of the political dynamics in play here are considerably more prosaic. If Cori Bush loses her primary in a few weeks, the same will be true -- she's also facing a strong challenger and she also has had some bad headlines dragging her. And likewise, there's a reason why AIPAC has largely left folks like AOC or Rashida Tlaib or Summer Lee alone -- they haven't shown the same vulnerabilities. There's no unified narrative, save perhaps that there is a lot more political diversity amongst even committed, partisan Democrats right now than there is amongst Republicans.*

* Yet even these stories can be overstated. The linked article uses, as one of its examples of "moderates" prevailing in Democratic primaries, my own congressional district where Janelle Bynum beat 2022 nominee Jamie McLeod-Skinner. Yet I highly doubt that this result has much of anything to do with Bynum's "moderation". McLeod-Skinner was badly damaged by stories that she was abusive towards staff, but more importantly she ousted an incumbent Democrat in 2022 and then lost the seat to a Republican, which I think for many Democrats was an unforgivable failure. There are times when it's worthwhile to dislodge a rooted Democratic incumbent, but if you do it in a swing district you damn well better close the show, and McLeod-Skinner didn't. McLeod-Skinner's track record, coupled with Bynum's own history having defeated the Republican incumbent in a local race before, were I suspect far more decisive than notions that Bynum cut a distinctively "moderate" profile (I think she, like Latimer, will be a decidedly "normal" Democratic representative in Congress).

From Scarsdale To Dearborn, Enough with the Dogwhistles Already

Incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) is facing a tough primary challenge from fellow Democrat George Latimer. Much of the heat in the primary has centered around Israel (Bowman is a harsh critic; Latimer has AIPAC backing), and in that context Latimer claimed in a public debate that Bowman's constituency is not the local residents of New York, but rather "Dearborn, Michigan" (and "San Francisco, California"). Dearborn is well-known for its large Arab and Muslim population, and so Bowman quickly called him out for the racist "dog-whistle".

I, of course, immediately harkened back to not-so-fond memories of Antone Melton-Meaux's 2020 primary challenge to Ilhan Omar,* where Omar's campaign sent out a mailer highlighting her challenger's donor support, singling out one from the heavily Jewish suburb of "Scarsdale, New York" (all of the named donors in Omar's mailer were also Jewish). This, too, was pounced on by Omar's opponents and said to be an antisemitic dog-whistle.

Latimer's defenders say he was merely highlighting Bowman's lack of local support. Omar's defenders likewise contended she was being unjustly smeared as a critic of Israel.

So, is this sort of attack a dog-whistle? Quick -- everybody switch sides!

In all seriousness, if you condemned the Omar campaign for its "Scarsdale mailer" you don't get to give Latimer a pass on this. And likewise, if you poo-pooed the Scarsdale mailer as a ginned up controversy over nothing you can sit right down in your high dudgeon over the Dearborn remark.

(My answer: Both instances were shady and both politicians deserved to be called out on it.)

* I'm bemused to rediscover that my blogpost on this controversy was titled "I Have To Talk About Omar and Melton-Meaux, Don't I?", which really captures a certain mood, doesn't it?

New York Voters Who Elected George Santos Should Be Ashamed of Themselves

The degree to which George Santos appears to lie about everything really is jaw-dropping even in a post-Trump America. Is it worse to be the subject of a general list of one's "top 11 most absurd lies", or to be the subject of more specific headlines like "George Santos took $3,000 from dying dog’s GoFundMe, veterans say"? I can't even process.

I am curious, though, to see more interviews with voters in New York's 3rd congressional district, who just sent him to Congress. The NY-03 is a swingy enough district that I don't think Santos will be the beneficiary of too much "own the libs!" or "red right or wrong!" apologetics. Nonetheless, I want to know -- are Santos' constituents embarrassed? Not just of him, but of themselves? They picked this guy, after all. We get angry at politicians all the time, but in a democracy the choices of We the People are the responsibility of We the People. George Santos is first and foremost a failure of George Santos, but he is also in non-negligible fashion a failure of the voters who elected him.

It is I think too much to hope for that voters reckon with how they can taken in by such a naked fraudster and internalize some lessons that will inculcate them from future mistakes. But a boy can dream.

The 2022 Almost-Post Mortem

I was a bit hesitant to write my post-mortem recap today, since some very important races remain uncalled. Incredibly, both the House and Senate remain uncalled, though the GOP is favored in the former and Democrats have the slight advantage in the latter. It would be truly delightful if Catherine Cortez Masto can squeak out a win in Nevada and so make the upcoming Georgia run-off, if not moot, then slightly less high stakes. But again, things are up in the air that ought make a big difference in the overall "narrative" of the day.

Nonetheless, I think some conclusions can be fairly drawn at this point. In no particular order:

• There was no red wave. It was, at best, a red trickle. And given both the underlying fundamentals  on things like inflation and the historic overperformance of the outparty in midterm elections, this is just a truly underwhelming performance for the GOP. No sugarcoating that for them.

• If Trafalgar polling had any shame, they'd be shame-faced right now, but they have no shame, so they'll be fine.

• In my 2018 liveblog, I wrote that "Some tough early results (and the true disappointment in Florida) has masked a pretty solid night for Democrats." This year, too, a dreadful showing in Florida set an early downer tone that wasn't reflected in the overall course of the evening. Maybe it's time we just give up the notion that Florida is a swing state?

• That said, Republicans need to get out of their gulf-coastal-elite bubble and realize that what plays in Tallahassee doesn't play in the rest of the country. 

• That's snark, but also serious -- for all the talk about how "Democrats are out-of-touch", it seems that the GOP also has a problem in not understanding that outside of their fever-swamp base most normal people maybe don't like the obsession with pronouns and "kitty litter" and "anti-CRT". Their ideological bubble is at this point far more impermeable, and far more greatly removed from the mainstream, than anything comparable among Democrats.

• Abortion is maybe the biggest example of this, as anti-choice measures keep failing in even deep red states like Kentucky, while pro-choice enactments sail to victory in purple states like Michigan (to say nothing of blue bastions like California). Democratic organizers should make a habit of just putting abortion on the ballot in every state, and ride those coattails.

• It's going to fade away almost immediately, but I cannot get over the cynical bad faith of what happened regarding baseless GOP insinuations that any votes counted after election day were inherently suspicious. On November 7, this was all one heard from GOP officials across the country, even though delays in counting are largely the product of GOP-written laws. But on November 8, when they found themselves behind on election night returns, all of the sudden folks like Kari Lake are relying on late-counted votes to save them while raising new conspiracies about stolen elections. Sickening.

• Given the still powerful force of such conspiracy mongering, Democrats holding the executive branch in key swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan is a huge deal. Great job, guys.

• For the most part, however, most losing MAGA candidates are conceding. Congratulations on clearing literally the lowest possible bar to set.

• The GOP still should be favored to take over the House, albeit with a razor-thin majority. And that majority, in turn, seems almost wholly attributable to gerrymandering -- both Democrats unilateral disarmament in places like New York, but also truly brutal GOP gerrymanders in places like Florida. This goes beyond Rucho, though that case deserves its place in the hall of shame. The degree to which the courts bent over backwards to enable even the most nakedly unlawful districting decisions -- the absurd lawlessness of Ohio stands out, but the Supreme Court's own decision to effectively pause enforcement of the Voting Rights Act because too many Black people entering Congress qualifies as an "emergency" on the shadow docket can't be overlooked either -- is one of the great legal disgraces of my lifetime in a year full of them.

• Of course, I have literally no idea how the Kevin McCarthy will corral his caucus with a tiny majority. Yes, it gives crazies like Greene and Boebert (well, maybe not Boebert ...) more power, but that's because it gives everyone in the caucus more power, which is just a recipe for chaos. Somewhere John Boehner is curling up in a comfy chair with a glass of brandy and getting ready to have a wonderful day.

• My new proposal for gerrymandering in Democratic states: "trigger" laws which tie anti-gerrymandering rules to the existence of a national ban. If they're banned nationwide, the law immediately goes into effect. Until they are, legislatures have free reign. That way one creates momentum for a national gerrymandering ban while not unilaterally disarming like we saw in New York. Could it work? Hard to know -- but worth a shot.

• Let's celebrate some great candidates who will be entering higher office! Among the many -- and this is obviously non-exhaustive -- include incoming Maryland Governor Wes Moore, incoming Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, incoming Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman. Also kudos to some wonderful veterans who held their seats in tough environs, including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Virginia congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, New Jersey congressman Andy Kim, Maine Governor Janet Mills, and New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan.

• Special shoutout to Tina Kotek, who overcame considerable headwinds (and the worst Carleton alum) to apparently hold the Governor's mansion in my home state of Oregon. Hopeful that Jaime McLeod-Skinner can eke out a victory in my congressional district too, though it looks like that might come down to the wire.

• I also think it's important to give credit even to losing candidates who fought hard races. Tim Ryan stands out here -- not only did he force the GOP to spend badly needed resources in a state they should've had no trouble keeping, but his coattails might have pushed Democrats across the finish line in at least two House seats Republicans were favored to hold. (I hate to say it, but Lee Zeldin may have played a similar role for the GOP in New York).

• I'm inclined to agree that, if Biden doesn't run in 2024, some of the emergent stars from this cycle (like Whitmer or Shapiro) are stronger picks for a presidential run than the also-rans from 2020. But I also think that Biden likely will get an approval bump off this performance -- people like being associated with winners!

• On the GOP side, the best outcome (from my vantage) is Trump romping to a primary victory and humiliating DeSantis -- I think voters are sick of him. The second best outcome might be DeSantis winning narrowly over Trump and provoking a tantrum for the ages that might rip the GOP apart. DeSantis himself, as a presidential candidate, is an uncertainty -- I'm not convinced he plays well outside of Florida, but I am convinced that if he prevails over Trump the media will fall over itself to congratulate the GOP on "repudiating" Trumpism even though DeSantis is materially indistinguishable from Trump along every axis save that he's not abjectly incompetent (which, in this context, is not a plus).

• The hardest thing to do is to recognize when even candidates you really like are, for whatever reason, just not going to get over the hump. This fits Charlie Crist, Beto O'Rourke, and (I'm sorry) Stacey Abrams. It's no knock on them -- seriously, it isn't -- but they're tainted goods at this point. Fortunately, Democrats have a deep bench of excellent young candidates who we can turn to next time around.

• And regarding the youth -- I'm not someone who's a big fan of the perennial Democratic sport of Pelosi/Schumer sniping. I think they've both done a very good job under difficult circumstances, and deserve real credit for the successes we saw tonight and across the Biden admin more broadly. However, we do need to find room for some representatives from the younger generation to assume leadership roles. Younger voters turned out hard for the Democratic Party and deserve their seat at the table. It says something that Hakeem Jeffries, age 52, is the immediate current leadership figure springing to mind as a "young" voice -- that (and again, there's no disrespect to Jeffries here) is not good enough.

New York Primary Predictions

It's primary day in New York (and Florida), and there are quite a few interesting races on tap. I'm not going to predict all of them, but I figure I'd lay a marker down on a few Democratic races.

NY-10: This is a complete free-for-all with at least six candidates still in at least plausible contention, none of whom have broken beyond the high teens or low twenties in polling. That said, Dan Goldman, a relative moderate, does seem to be very slightly pulling ahead, and he might be benefiting from the inability of the field to unite behind a single alternative. Carlina Rivera might have been the mild front-runner at one point, but seems to be fading down the stretch. Yuh-Line Niou is the progressive darling in the race who strikes me as having a very Bernie-like high floor/low ceiling profile, but that could actually work to her advantage in a highly fragmented field. Rep. Mondaire Jones is probably my favorite candidate, but he doesn't seem to quite be able to get out of traffic.

Ultimately, I think Goldman probably will win a very, very divided vote (I'm guessing Niou will poll second). I'm not super confident in that prediction. But I'm far more confident that if Goldman does win, he will not lose to Niou in a hypothetical general election rematch where the latter runs on the Working Families Party ticket -- some extremely wishful thinking from lefty commentators notwithstanding.

NY-12: A slugfest between two thirty-year veterans in Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, with newcomer Suraj Patel trying to sneak in between the two. Though Maloney represents more turf, she's been notably vulnerable in recent primaries (Patel held her to a tight race last cycle), and Nadler seems to be pulling away. I don't see Patel able to pull the upset, and I do think Nadler is going to end up prevailing.

NY-16: Rep. Jamaal Bowman has shown a bit of vulnerability in late polling, but he may benefit from a split in the anti-incumbent vote as both Vedat Gashi and Catherine Parker are waging credible campaigns. Gashi has gotten far more attention, but the only poll I've seen has Parker in the lead. For my part, I think Bowman will end up surviving, albeit with less than 50%.

NY-17: Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney pushed Rep. Mondaire Jones out of his seat, but then encountered an energetic primary challenge from State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi. Biaggi took down one of the IDC schmucks a few years back, so I have residual goodwill for that. But I also don't think she has the firepower or local base to take out the well-resourced Maloney. She also made what I consider to be a truly boneheaded decision to embrace the view that women past "childbearing age" won't care about reproductive rights, which seems outright suicidal in a contested primary.

As to the Florida race, I won't venture predictions on any of them, but I do want to keep an eye on the Republican contest in the FL-11, where incumbent Rep. Daniel Webster is facing a challenge from certified crank and absolute shonda Laura Loomer. It would be a tremendous embarrassment if Loomer wins (and if she wins, she's absolutely entering Congress in this strongly GOP district). But what is the GOP today, if not embarrassment persevering?

A Buffalo Socialist in the Heart of America, Part II

The Washington Monthly has a good, short profile up on India Walton, the self-described socialist who is the Democratic nominee for Mayor of Buffalo. Walton earned that spot by upsetting the incumbent, Byron Brown, in the Democratic primary. While initially this made it look as if Walton would be a shoo-in for the general, Brown has waged a furious fight to keep his seat via a write-in campaign, and at least one poll has him with a sizeable lead.

While I have no particular dog in this hunt, I actually think it would be unfortunate if Brown prevails. This might surprise some of you, as I'm not especially oriented towards self-described socialist candidates. Partially, I'm of the view that, absent really strong reasons to the contrary, as a Democratic voter I'm going to support the Democratic nominee. But the larger reason is that, as I wrote back when Walton first won the primary, Buffalo actually seems like a really good candidate for experimenting with some of the socialist policies that Walton is putting forward, and seeing whether these ideas can be put into practice in an actual American city under "live fire" conditions. Buffalo is small enough so Walton won't constantly be under the national media microscope unless she deliberately seeks out the spotlight, yet large enough such that one actually has to manage various diverse stakeholders and entrenched interests -- which is something one has to do, if one seeks to govern and alter the society we have. Maybe Walton will prove up to the task, maybe not; maybe her ideas will have legs, maybe they'll be all smoke. But I'm curious to find out.

Brown has gone on a fundraising tear from developers and Republicans, and so is very well-financed; already Walton's backers are prepping a narrative where the Powers-That-Be conspired to keep her out of the seat in defiance of the popular will. I find such stories to be more than a little tendentious, even though it's true that Walton has admittedly been slow to consolidate formal Democratic Party support. Even still, and pat "establishment vs. insurgent" narratives aside, Walton was endorsed by both of New York's senators (Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand), and from my vantage there are more big-wig Democratic figures who are trying to stay neutral than who are actively backing Brown. More to the point: if you can't beat your opponent when his name isn't even on the ballot, then maybe your "popular" support isn't as broad as you think it is (and according to the above-linked poll, Brown actually sports surprisingly robust approval ratings -- 60%! -- for a guy who lost in a primary). 

That said, just as a political observer (and admittedly, someone who doesn't live in Buffalo), I'd be very curious to see how a Walton stint in the Mayor's office would go. So for now, I guess I'm still rooting for her.

A Buffalo Socialist in the Heart of America

In a significant upset, self-described socialist candidate India Walton has dethroned incumbent Buffalo mayor Byron Brown in the Democratic primary, which makes her almost a shoo-in for the mayor's seat next election. The victory would make Walton the first socialist mayor of a major American city in sixty years.

Occurring on the same election day where Eric Adams looks likely to win the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, this will certainly spark some chatter about where the future of left-wing politics lies in America. Upstate New York -- the old rust belt -- is a Democratic Socialist's fantasy of where they most want to be competitive, but historically haven't made much inroads compared to their success in upscale, wealthy areas like suburban Maryland. The dissonance between where they were winning and where their ideology says they should be winning was taking a toll, so this probably feels really good for them. It does mean the rest of us probably need to brace for another flurry of "socialist policies can win in the heartland" takes -- but listen, as skeptical as I remain, the one thing which can give that old tune new life is actually winning elections. So they've earned the right to drop another nickel into the jukebox.

In more immediate terms, I know virtually nothing about Walton, or Brown, or Buffalo. But in my uninformed opinion -- and what is the internet for if not uninformed opinions? -- Buffalo is the perfect place to try out a socialist as a mayor. It's a big enough city that one actually has to govern it and engage with diverse stakeholders rather than just grandstand, and it's far enough from the glare of national attention that Walton should be able to do her job more or less as a normal mayor without constant spotlight. That isn't to say she won't face opposition or pushback from various constituencies and power-brokers -- that's part of local politics, and navigating those shoals is part of what it means to be a success at local politics. But it's a good test case. Laboratories of democracy and all that.

So congratulations to Ms. Walton -- I look forward to seeing what you accomplish in your tenure!

Building Treehouses with Cuomo

The big story today is that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo allegedly complained about campaigning on Sukkot by saying, referring to Orthodox Jews, "These people and their f***ing tree houses." The quote is anonymous and as yet uncorroborated; Cuomo denies having said it.

In response, Josh Blackman wants to revisit the question of whether Gov. Cuomo's pandemic restrictions, while facially neutral, should be seen as motivated by animus against (Orthodox) Jews. He clearly means this as a gotcha -- "Under TrumpLaw (which may have expired on January 20), this statement would be fair game to understand Cuomo's animus." Of course, under the view Blackman successfully pushed in Trump v. Hawaii -- the actual TrumpLaw -- this statement could not be used to infer animus even for legislative enactments that were explicitly characterized as targeting a given religious group. Hypocrisy cuts both ways. That said, the way the Court has been treating religious animus in the pandemic cases compared to Trump v. Hawaii suggests that TrumpLaw really was just TrumpLaw -- albeit not quite in the way Blackman means. 

But for my part, there is no gotcha: I am perfectly willing to say that, if the statement is accurate, it is absolutely valid evidence that can be used to demonstrate Cuomo has acted with discriminatory animus towards Jews. And I suspect one would be hard pressed to find liberal commentators who'd disagree on this. Certainly, deep and abiding loyalty to Cuomo isn't going to be giving anyone much pause on the principle of the matter.

Speaking of hypocrisy, although the quote is anonymous (and denied) Blackman says flatly at the start of his post that he's making an exception to his general belief that anonymous press accounts sharing negative stories about politicos should be viewed with skepticism. Instead, he comes right out and says that this skepticism extends to quotes about Republican politicians only. "I take far more seriously negative coverage of Democrats in an institution like the Times. The editors would not slip up on a quote like this." This is impressively brazen. For my part, I think major newspapers like the Times are generally professional and so generally can be given a fair amount of credence when they run anonymous quotes like this, no matter who the subject is (though of course that doesn't mean they'll always get everything right). But if one takes a dimmer view of the professionalism of the mainstream media, then I'll just say that if one thinks that folks of the Times' social milieu could not be suckered into running an undersourced quote that reflects badly on Andrew Cuomo because of their latent political sympathies, then one really doesn't understand where New York politics are right now. I'm not saying the Times would run a hit job on Cuomo. I am saying that, if they were the sort of institution prone to running hit jobs, Cuomo very much would be towards to the top of their list.

How to treat a very offensive but also anonymous-and-denied quote also relates to the final note in Blackman's post -- a swipe at the ADL. The ADL "awarded Cuomo the highest honor in June 2020. Yet, as of the close of business, neither ADL nor its President has said a word about Cuomo's remarks." To the extent that the ADL didn't race out with a comment right away, I suspect that is almost assuredly because, unlike Blackman, they are not going to take an unsourced anonymous quote that Cuomo denies as gospel sight unseen, at least not without talking with Cuomo and his office first.

From my vantage, the quote seems plausible -- Jewish "friends" notwithstanding, Cuomo seems like exactly the sort of asshole who'd say something like this and think it's okay because he has many Jewish friends. And as I said, I trust the Times' general professionalism more than Blackman does. But given the close relationship the ADL has with the governor's office in New York, I neither find it weird nor offensive that the ADL is deciding to its own due diligence before commenting. 

Finally, it's hard to read the ADL comment outside of the shadow of Jonathan Greenblatt very publicly calling for Tucker Carlson's firing from Fox for promoting the White Supremacist "Replacement Theory". I've seen some conservatives appallingly cite this as proof of the ADL's liberal bias as opposed to the ADL rightfully calling out an extreme case of White Nationalist thinking embedding itself in mainstream conservative institutions. Blackman concludes by saying that he "will have much more to say about ADL and anti-semitism in due course"; perhaps he will address this then. But I hope in doing so he recognizes that there's simply no comparison between the ADL waiting to verify an anonymous quote compared to calling out Tucker Carlson for openly promoting White Supremacy where everyone can see it on national television.

What Do Ilhan Omar and Eliot Engel Have in Common?

I fully expect Rep. Ilhan Omar to cruise to victory in the upcoming Minnesota congressional primary election, notwithstanding the eye-popping amount of money raised by challenger Antone Melton-Meaux. But if she does end up losing her race, it will be an almost mirror image of New York Rep. Eliot Engel's apparent primary loss to Jamaal Bowman -- in that (a) the outside world mostly cares about the race because of Israel and (b) the actual reason for the challenger's success will be the incumbent's failure to pay sufficient attention to their home district.

It's flown under the radar, but (speaking as someone who used to reside in Omar's district, before she became congresswoman) there have been recurrent complaints that Omar has been weak on constituent services and local issues. Like Bowman, Melton-Meaux may be attracting outside money because of foreign policy, but his campaign focus is very much tailored to the local.

Ultimately, while the frustrations Melton-Meaux is tapping into are real among Democratic stakeholders in the Twin Cities, I suspect Omar is going to be fine in the primary -- she still seems relatively popular in her district. But the parallel between her situation and Engel's nonetheless amuses me greatly.

Primary Day Predictions (Kentucky and New York)

It's primary day in America, with some big races in Kentucky and especially New York. Why not lay down a marker  of some predictions?

Kentucky Senate: McGrath defeats Booker. Over/under: 15 point margin.

NY-03: Tom Suozzi (incumbent)

NY-09: Yvette Clark (incumbent) -- but with less than 50%.

NY-10: Jerry Nadler (incumbent)

NY-12: Carolyn Maloney (incumbent)

NY-14:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,(incumbent), and it's not close.

NY-15: Richie Torres breaks from the pack and defeats the loathsome Ruben Diaz Sr.

NY-16: Jamaal Bowman defeats Eliot Engel (incumbent) by a surprisingly comfortable margin (~10 points).

NY-17: Mondaire Jones in a tight race.

Keep in mind: I'm not very good at predicting things. But we'll see how I do?

How Endangered is Yvette Clarke?

Last week, we asked how endangered long-time NYC Rep. Eliot Engel (D) was in his Democratic primary later this month (incidentally, Engel's primary challenger, Jamaal Bowman, just picked up an endorsement from Bernie Sanders). Today, we ask the same question of Engel's neighboring incumbent, Rep. Yvette Clarke, who represents parts of Brooklyn. Like Engel, Clarke has a relatively progressive voting record, while (also like Engel) still generally associated with the establishment wing of the party. And like Engel, she faces a vigorous challenge later this month.

In the 2018 primary, the nation's eyes were riveted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's upset victory over incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary. This overshadowed Yvette Clarke's own narrow escape -- she turned back a challenge from community activist Adem Bunkeddeko with just 52% of the vote. Bunkeddeko is back for a rematch this cycle, but this time he's got company: Isiah James, a Democratic Socialist, and city councilor Chaim Deutsch, who is a conservative Democrat closely tied to the Orthodox Jewish community.  James and Bunkeddeko are running to her left, while Deutsch is tackling her from the right.

So how much trouble is Clarke in?

On the one hand, it is very often the case that a primary challenger who narrowly loses to the incumbent on their first try is able to close the deal on the second, as they become a more familiar figure and gain the attention of lower-information voters. Such was the case for Marie Newman against Dan Lipinski earlier this year, as well as Donna Edwards ousting Albert Wynn back in the youthful days of this blog. There was some indication that Clarke was caught napping last time around, and has kicked her campaign into gear this cycle. But coronavirus and lockdowns are throwing all normal campaigns for a loop, and to the extent Clarke needs to run from behind, she might not be able to do it.

On the other hand, unlike in Engel's race, here the field of challengers hasn't consolidated down. James and Bunkeddeko still may split the anti-establishment vote. And while James' candidacy appears to be sputtering out a bit, Bunkeddeko thus far hasn't received the high-profile endorsements that Jamaal Bowman has managed to pull down -- indicating that his challenge is potentially seen as less viable than Bowman's.

Yet while the conventional wisdom is that fractured fields help incumbents, that may not be the case here given how Deutsch is running his campaign. While Clarke is not a conservative Democrat, she has historically polled well in the Orthodox Jewish portions of her district where Deutsch's base resides -- this area almost certainly gave her the margin of victory in 2018. The way Deutsch is running his campaign -- actively touting endorsements from the NYPD and decrying "looters in the streets" -- seems ill-suited to actually winning a 2020 Democratic primary, but his laser-like focus on the portions of the district where Clarke has historically over-performed could suppress her numbers enough to allow Bunkeddeko to pull through.

This race has flown further under the radar than Engel's, but I think there's a solid chance the incumbent gets unseated. New York is shaping to have another eventful primary.

How Endangered is Eliot Engel?

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) has been in Congress for over thirty years. In that time, he's been a pretty standard-issue New York Jewish Democrat -- generally progressive, solidly pro-Israel, slowly working his way up the ranks (he's currently Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee).

This year, however, he's facing a spirited primary challenge from middle school educator Jamaal Bowman. Is this the next AOC-shocker (AOC just endorsed Bowman, as it happened)?

On the one hand: First, Engel would have to be an absolute idiot to be sleeping on this race -- especially given the AOC example from last cycle. So while I'm not versed in exactly what's going on in New York campaigning, I have to assume he's putting out ads and has his campaign apparatus in gear. Engel has the endorsement of the Congressional Black Caucus, which can only help him, and he also has a very large war chest to spend.

Moreover, there actually haven't been that many House Democratic incumbents that have gone down in defeat this cycle, despite a lot of online energy propping up this or that left-wing challenger. For example, there were plenty of people excitedly chatting up Mckayla Wilkes' challenge to House  Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, but earlier this week Hoyer beat her by almost 60 points. We have to remember: online energy doesn't usually translate into actual votes. The main counterexample this year was Marie Newman's defeat of Dan Lipinski in Illinois -- but Lipinski is far to the right of his district and was already shown to be vulnerable when he barely won renomination in 2018. Engel, by contrast, has a largely progressive voting record and has not shown much prior vulnerability.

On the other hand: The energy I'm seeing on Bowman's behalf does seem qualitatively different from those of other seemingly analogous challengers-from-the-left. He gained a boost when another left-leaning challenger dropped out and endorsed him, which will help consolidate the anti-Engel vote. Bowman's also getting outside support from AOC, the Justice Democrats, and the Working Family's Party, which will partially (though not entirely) off-set Engel's financial edge.

Meanwhile, Engel had a major mic gaffe the other day, when he said that "if he didn't have a primary he wouldn't care" about not being given the opportunity to speak at an anti-police brutality press conference. While the remark is pretty clearly being taken out of context (he was saying the primary is why he cared about being denied a speaking slot, not that the primary is why he cared about police brutality issues), politics isn't fair and Bowman's gained huge momentum off the gaffe.

The other big wild card is how the coronavirus epidemic and anti-police brutality protests will effect the race. Normally, the conventional wisdom is that anything that disrupts traditional campaigning helps the incumbent, because it's the challenger who has to overcome inertia. But in this case, I can very easily see these issues congealing into a generic anti-status quo sentiment among Democratic primary voters, a sense that what we have now just isn't working, and that could easily be directed (fairly or not) against an entrenched incumbent like Engel. My gut instinct is that Engel will not benefit from the chaos and uncertainty.

The primary is June 23, and right now I don't really have a prediction. Let's see what develops.

Some Nuanced Thoughts on Protecting Jews via Police

NBC News, which as a mainstream media source Is Not Covering Violence Against Jews(tm), has an interesting article up discussing how the Jewish community in New York is assessing calls to increase police presence in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods as a means of combating rising antisemitic violence:

Audrey Sasson, executive director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, or JFREJ, a left-wing "movement to dismantle racism and economic exploitation" based in New York City, said deployment of more police would be an understandable reaction — and one that would worry her.

"Of course, we all need to feel safe. That's fundamental, and there is no arguing with that," Sasson said. "But how do we get there?"

Sasson said that her group is multiracial, as is the Jewish community at large, and that many Jewish people wouldn't feel safer with a greater police presence.  

"Right now, the tools we have for safety [are] more police and more guns," Sasson said, "but the question for me is how can we build other tools?" 

Those tools, according to Sasson and JFREJ, include making sure the Jewish community is in a coalition with other targeted communities, having a better system for reporting violence that doesn't rely so heavily on police, creating community-led transformative justice projects and implementing non-punitive and restorative-oriented approaches to violence. 

Sasson acknowledged that the vision is a long-term one, and she does not discount the desire for more police from people living in fear after "the whole holiday was marked by attacks." [emphasis added -- DS]

This is good, and I dare say snaps my long streak wherein everything I've ever read from JFREJ is neither bad nor good but "meh" (Mazel Tov!). The reason I like it is because:

(a) It does not disparage those Jews who desire police protection in the immediate term, or suggest that it reflects a failure of solidarity on their part to desire this solution;

 (b) It acknowledges that viable alternatives to police protection need to be built -- that is, they do not exist now -- and that this construction project is has a long-term time horizon attached to it.

Those twin acknowledgments are, I think necessary if the critique of "more police" is to have ethical traction. Without them, the objection to more policing sounds like a demand that Jews place our lives in the hand of vague feel-good bromides about "community building" or some such that have all the practical bite of a consciousness-raising bed-in project -- and if we don't accede to the demand we're basically giving into our inner-fascists. I think Sasson is read properly in tandem with Eric Ward:

"You can't tell a community that is being physically assaulted that they can't increase law enforcement response but then offer them nothing in response," Ward said. 

Still, Ward, who has studied anti-Semitism extensively, acknowledged that it's not that simple. 

"We know increased policing brings increased racial profiling," he said, adding that high police presence to protect Jews "is likely to be seen as feeding into black and Jewish tension."

Ward is, I think, making the same point as Sasson, just with the opposite emphasis. Telling Jews "how dare you ask for more police" when there isn't any practical, immediate-term alternative isn't going to be received well, and reasonably so. That's true even though, as Ward also points out, there are real costs to the "increased policing" proposal -- including costs along the very dimension its nominally supposed to help (tamping down on intra-group tensions and hostility). There's legitimate space to critique the "more police" response -- but it has to come with enough humility to acknowledge that there's ample reason to be skeptical of the existence of viable alternatives in the short-term.

Ultimately, my view on this is basically that of Batya Ungar-Sargon: Whatever my intuitions are on the wisdom of this strategy, I should defer to the people on the ground. Of course, the people on the ground will themselves often have divergent takes. But one suspects the consensus that will emerge will lie somewhere in between "abolish the NYPD" and "send in the National Guard."

Ma Vector Roundup

I'm on the job hunt this fall, and "Ma Vector" is my official unofficial callsign (it's a long story).

* * *

Iranian judoka Saeid Mollaei apparently flees to Germany from Japan in an asylum bid. He had been under intense pressure to throw matches in order to avoid facing an Israeli competitor, Sagi Muki, in international tournaments (Muki just became the first Israeli to win a world championship). Mollaei will apparently be eligible to compete in the 2020 Olympics on the "refugee" team.

New York Republicans remove antisemitic video; replace it with antisemitic text.

Contra The Young Turks, and with all due respect to John Delaney, the reason John Delaney "peaked at 2%" starts and ends with "who on earth is John Delaney?"

Several Chinese undergraduate students at Arizona State were denied entry to the United States and deported back to China. This follows on the heels of a Palestinian student at Harvard also being denied entry, reportedly due to political comments by some of his Facebook friends.

Antisemitic beliefs are taking hold in the Evangelical Christian community.

Trump's efforts to gain the support of Jewish voters don't seem to be working -- probably because he doesn't understand what motivates Jewish voters.

Boris Johnson's net approvals as PM are at -6%. Jeremy Corbyn's net approvals are -59%.

What the New York Democratic Primary Results Mean

Well the New York primaries are in the bag, and Andrew Cuomo smoked Cynthia Nixon by a 66/34 margin. The Cuomo-aligned candidates also won the downballot statewide races: Tish James soundly defeated two opponents to win the nomination for Attorney General, and Kathy Hochul held off a very spirited challenge from Jumaane Williams for the Lieutenant Governor's nod.

The news wasn't all bad for progressive challengers -- six of the eight turncoats in the IDC (a group of renegade Democrats who caucused with, and gave control of the state senate to, Republicans) lost last night. And most-scrutinized-state-senate-candidate-in-history Julia Salazar soundly defeated incumbent Martin Dilan (who was not IDC, but was viewed as a relatively conservative figure).

I had registered my predictions for some of these races, and I'd give myself a solid A- on my performance. Sure, "Cuomo will trounce Nixon" and "Felder over Morris" were chalk picks, but I give myself a little more credit for calling Salazar's comfortable win over Dilan (which I've heard described as "stunning" but which I was very confident in). My big miss was underestimating the IDC bloodbath (I set the over/under on IDC losses at "two"), but that's an area I'm happy to be proven wrong.

But enough about me. What are the larger implications of yesterday's results?

1. There really is some genuine anti-Democratic establishment sentiment coursing through the deepest-blue turf.

There have been more than a couple locales where candidates the left has been deeply excited about have won by either knocking off incumbents or beating more establishment-oriented candidates -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the obvious one, along with Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar in Minnesota, and last night Julia Salazar in Brooklyn. All of these races occurred in very similar types of district -- urban, very blue, cosmopolitan, and highly diverse. That's why Salazar's victory didn't surprise me -- her district fit the profile for where candidates like her have done very, very well this cycle.

2. This sentiment, so far, is not translating to Democratic politics on a broader -- statewide or larger -- basis.

While progressive insurgents have certainly won some high-profile successes, they've also been rather limited in scope. This is the flip-side of the "very similar types of district" argument: the left wave hasn't really gotten any momentum outside of these very friendly, urban environments. It's not just that Nixon lost last night -- a Nixon victory was always a long-shot. But it is quite notable that Nixon actually didn't improve on Zephyr Teachout's 2014 performance against Cuomo -- despite garnering a lot more media attention and working in a far more favorable political environment.

This isn't to say progressives haven't notched some victories in statewide races -- Ben Jealous in Maryland and Andrew Gillum in Florida certainly qualify. But Democratic incumbents on a state level -- Senators and Governors -- have had no trouble turning back progressive challengers.

It's important not to overintepret either of the above against each other. On the one hand, there really is a noticeable shift in Democratic politics occurring in the types of locales where Ocasio-Cortez or Salazar are winning. It's more than idiosyncratic, and it's wrong to dismiss it. On the other hand, it is a shift that so far is confined -- it isn't all places or all Democrats (there's an annoying heads-I-win-tails-you-lose quality to some progressive analyses of, e.g., New York, wherein Julia Salazar's victory shows that what the people really want is Democratic Socialism, and Andrew Cuomo's victory shows that the Democratic Party is hard at work suppressing what the people really want, Democratic Socialism).

3. For the most part, primary challengers are doing their job.

My view on primaries is that they should serve two important purposes. First, punish bad guys. And second, push incumbents to adopt better positions. On that score, I'd say that the results in New York were a rousing success.

Start with the latter metric. No, Nixon didn't win, but she absolutely pushed Cuomo to adopt a raft of more liberal positions, and that's almost as much of a victory as if she'd actually assumed office (one could argue that, given Nixon's lack of actual political or administrative experience, it's a better outcome. A savvy political operator like Cuomo pushing progressive policies may well accomplish more than a well-meaning but inexperienced novice like Nixon). That's the thing about establishment politicians -- if the established wisdom shifts, they'll follow right along.

And on the "punishing bad guys" front, the IDC bloodbath is beautiful political justice. Moreover, I do think that Nixon's campaign helped bring attention and energy to that campaign too (notably, while many of the IDC incumbents occupied districts that were of the left-friendly type I identified above, there was more diversity there -- David Valesky lost his Syracuse area seat, for example, and IDC leader Jeffrey Klein represents a mixed district encompassing parts of the Bronx but also Westchester County). Six Democrats who deserved to lose, lost. And I highly doubt the two IDC survivors will return to similar shenanigans in the future.

The interesting thing about primary challenges is that they can win even if they lose. Sometimes, entrenched incumbents need a scare put in them. A close primary fight keeps them honest, and ensures that they stay inline with where Democratic politics are going.

So overall, I consider last night to have been a heartening display. Sure, there are some incumbents who survived when I might've rather watched them go down in flames. But there were some instances of righteous retribution and, perhaps more importantly, those who survived the ordeal will emerge wiser for it. I think 2018 will be a very good year for progressive politics in New York -- in part because of who won, but maybe in large part based on who came to fight.

New York State Politics Quick Picks

New Yorkers go to the polls on Thursday, choosing primary candidates for state races (the federal primaries -- where, famously, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez knocked off Rep. Joe Crowley -- were held on a separate date).

I'm not a New Yorker, but I still will venture some predictions on a couple of races of note. To be clear, these are predictions, not endorsements -- I'm saying who I think will win, not who I'd like to win.

Governor's race (Cuomo vs. Nixon)

I've always been a "hey, all the Democratic candidates are basically fine, so don't sweat it if your guy loses the primary" sort of guy. That was true in the 2008 presidential primary, and it was true in the 2016 presidential primary. Many people think Cuomo has been gearing up for a 2020 run, and if he was somehow nominated .... boy, would that test my commitment to the principle (for the record: yes, if by some Bad Place horror-show we're faced with a Cuomo/Trump race in 2020, vote for Cuomo).

Cuomo is one of my least favorite prominent Democratic pols. He's heavy-handed, he's entirely happy to keep Albany's dysfunctional machine intact so long as he holds its reins, and he's worked to stymie progressive priorities throughout his tenure (his fingerprints are all over the repulsive IDC traitors who gave Republicans control over the State Senate -- more on them in a moment).

The good news is, I think Cuomo has been sufficiently damaged that his 2020 ambitions are dead in the water. The bad news is, I think he's going to win his primary this week. I'm not a huge fan of celebrity candidacies, and at times Cynthia Nixon has sounded more like a speak-and-spell of d'jour lefty talking points than an independent personality. Still, I have no doubt she'd make a competent governor, and given how wretched I find Cuomo that's more than enough to justify casting a ballot in her favor. Plus, some of those rote-repeated talking points are actually pretty good policy!

But Nixon has badly lagged in the polls, and her campaign has never gotten much traction upstate. Backers will point to other prominent polling "misses" recently, e.g., Andrew Gillum in Florida or Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts, where left-wing candidates have blown past expectations in Democratic primaries. But those races either have been (a) open races (Gillum) or (b) single-district elections in deep blue, urban turf (Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez). We haven't seen anti-establishment anger translate into a Democratic incumbent losing statewide yet, and (regrettably) I don't see that changing. Nixon got a late gift with a ill-conceived state party mailer tying her to antisemitism (when even Dov Hikind thinks you've gone too far....), which will only further inflame her base and emphasizes the really grimy nature of the New York Democratic establishment, but I don't think it will be enough.

New York State Senate

A couple of races here have gotten some national attention. The most important, in my eyes, are the challenges to eight former members of the Independent Democratic Conference, a group of breakaway Democrats who until recently caucused with Republicans and gave them control of the state senate (despite a nominal Democratic majority). It was dirty Albany politics at its worst, and in this Trumpist era Democratic primary voters are in no mood for collaborationists. I hope all of them go down, and hard.

Unfortunately, I've seen no polling in these races and the IDC members are scattered among very different districts all across the state. So it's hard to draw any general predictions about whether they'll win or lose. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that a few scalps will be claimed but that most are going to survive. In a sense, it's a shame that these races haven't gotten the attention of a certain other NY state senate race, since a sense of national momentum could've made all the difference. Alas.

Said "other" race, of course, is the ab-so-lutely wild contest where Julia Salazar, a working-class(?) Jewish(?) immigrant(?) democratic socialist (pretty sure on that, one at least for now) is challenging incumbent Martin Dilan. Every other day seems to bring a new revelation, each more nuts than the last (the most recent is that she's about to be outed as a sexual assault survivor which -- not cool, whoever's doing the outing).

Of course, with Salazar getting all the focus, I was left wondering what exactly was the deal with Dilan. He's not, to my surprise, IDC, which was my initial assumption for why he'd be the subject of such intense progressive vitriol. The line I've heard more recently is that Dilan is seen as too close to developers, though I haven't gotten much more details than that.

One might think that all of this negative press might kneecap Salazar's chances. But I think she's going to win, and going to do so handily. Rightly or wrongly, I think Salazar's backers think of this negative press as a smear campaign that targeting a non-establishment progressive, and so if anything it will make them more enthusiastic about her chances. And while I don't think an AOC or Pressley style insurgency can overcome incumbency advantages statewide in New York, the Brooklyn area that Salazar is running is another matter entirely. Plus, Dilan (again, for whatever reason) doesn't seem to be that popular in his district -- his last challenger got 41% against him, and 2018 is shaping up to be a much better year for candidates of Salazar's ilk.

Finally, there's one other New York State Senate race worthy of mention, also falling in the "technically not-IDC" category. That would be incumbent Simcha Felder's contest against challenger Blake Morris. Felder isn't IDC, but only because he caucuses with the Republican Party outright despite nominally running on a Democratic line. That turncoat status was enough for the New York Times to endorse Morris.

Felder represents a heavily Orthodox Jewish district in New York (including Boro Park), and has distinguished himself by fighting against state oversight of Yeshiva education (alongside an otherwise generally conservative, if unremarkable, voting record). Morris, a secular Jew, says he's counting on "secret" Orthodox Jewish opposition to Felder to ride to victory. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to see public signs that a challenger has backing in his community before I predict an upset. I think the Orthodox community will stick with Felder, and he will continue to be a massive thorn in the side of the Democratic caucus in Albany.

Short version:

Cuomo over Nixon

Salazar over Dilan

Felder over Morris

Over/under IDC candidates defeated: Two

The Julia Salazar Questions NO ONE Is Asking

Here at The Debate Link, we don't shy away from the hard questions. The ones on everybody's minds, but few dare ask. The ones other news sources are afraid to tackle.

You might have read Tablet Magazine's expose on Julia Salazar, who has made some waves as a Jewish Latina socialist running for a state senate seat in New York (she's challenging Democratic incumbent Martin Dilan).

The Tablet article makes several revelations. Salazar was not (as she had sometimes claimed) an immigrant (she was born in Miami), and her father was not (as she had sometimes claimed) Jewish (though it does appear that she has other Jewish relatives). In addition, Salazar used to identify a (conservative) Christian, and was a campus leader of CUFI (Christians United for Israel) who was also involved with a host of other pro-Israel organizations (ranging from AIPAC to the World Zionist Organization). Over the course of her college career, she tacked sharply to the left -- moving from CUFI to J Street to Mondoweiss-territory -- and converted to Judaism in the process.

Many people are now asking whether Salazar is "really" Jewish or to what extent she misrepresented her background.

But as I said, here at The Debate Link, we don't deal with the questions "many people" are asking. If those are the questions you want to talk about, go elsewhere. Rather, there are two questions burning a hole in my pocket, whose answers I haven't seen anyone really grappling with publicly.

(1) What is the deal with Martin Dilan?

As noted, Salazar is challenging an incumbent Democrat, Martin Dilan, for his New York State Senate seat. When I read that a progressive challenger getting a lot of enthusiasm for her race against an incumbent Democratic New York State Senator, I just assumed that Dilan was probably a member of the IDC -- a group of renegade Democrats who for the past several years had joined forces with Republicans to give the GOP control of the chamber despite a nominal Democratic majority. The IDC is almost single-handedly responsible for blocking a raft of progressive agenda items in a deep-blue state, and as far as I am concerned they can all burn in a fire. They are the epitome of Democrats who deserve primary challenges.

But it turns out that Dilan wasn't an IDC member. Which raises the question: What exactly has he done to raise progressives' ire so? Of course, it's possible the answer is "nothing" and he's just a target of opportunity. But two years ago, a primary challenger who admitted to beating her son as a teenager still took 41% of the vote against him -- suggesting that there is something going on making him vulnerable. But I haven't heard what it is yet.

In general, I view lawmaking and legislating as a skill, and I'm suspicious of populist waves which treat political experience is a vice and amateurism a virtue (see: "Trump is a businessman, not a regular politician"). Fulminating about out-of-touch politicians on Facebook and sharing articles about bad government actors d'jour is easy; actually writing good laws that are fair and respectful to all relevant stakeholders is really difficult. And the people least likely to meet that difficulty curve are those who effectively deny that the project is hard in the first place. Those sorts become demagogues far more frequently than they become effective agents of legislative change.

In practice, that means that I'm generally averse to primarying out veteran politicians unless the incumbent is significantly underperforming compared to what one could expect from their voter base (occasionally, I think it would be good if a given incumbent got a good scare from a primary but still won -- a situation which makes it very difficult to determine how to cast one's own ballot!).  Basically, if you're doing a fine job and you generally vote the right way, then I think experience should carry the day.

But I don't mean for "fine job" to be an impossible bar to meet, and there are absolutely Democrats who deserve to be primaried into dust. The IDC Democrats are an obvious example, and frankly Andrew Cuomo would be another for me (Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois is yet another). By contrast, I never got a strong answer on what Joe Crowley supposedly did wrong, or the case against Mike Capuano in Massachusetts, other than a vague call for "fresh blood" or "new voices".

So, is Martin Dilan in the set of Democrats that deserves a primary challenge? I have no idea. But I find it weird that, with as much attention as Salazar has gotten even before this story broke, I've yet to see much in the way of discussion about either why he-qua-him should go or should stay.

(2) What does Salazar's evolution on Israel tell us about the CUFI model of engagement with young people?

As the Tablet article notes, it isn't exactly uncommon for young people's political views to evolve sharply while they're in college. Still, it's worth reflecting on how her story interacts with the narrative some on the pro-Israel right are pushing. They claim that the reason young people are growing less attached to, or more overtly critical of, Israel is because they're only being exposed to one side of the story. The problem is biased narratives and indoctrination.

But say what you will about Salazar -- that argument can't work on her. She spent considerable time in her early college days suffused in the best hasbara the right had to offer: there's no way a World Zionist Organization's campus fellow simply wasn't exposed to the claims and arguments that the pro-Israel right wants to promote.

And indeed, it gets worse: the Tablet story indicates that Salazar's conversion moment -- where she really came to second-guess her staunch pro-Israel commitments and began her journey to the left -- came in the course of a CUFI-sponsored trip to Israel.

According to people who knew Salazar at Columbia, and to messages and social media postings, a distinct shift occurred after the CUFI trip. After the official part of the mission ended in August of 2012, Salazar stayed in the region and visited the West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Hebron—where, according to messages from Salazar seen by Tablet, she empathized with the plight of the territory’s Palestinian population and questioned the pro-Israel narrative in which she had once wholeheartedly believed. She appears to have broken off her affiliation with CUFI as soon as she returned to the United States, just before the 2012 fall semester began.

Basically, not only did immersion in CUFI-style Israel advocacy not immunize Salazar from a left-ward shift, it apparently made her more vulnerable to it. And once the bulwark collapsed, it collapsed completely -- she transitioned over a very short period of time from a hard-core Israel lover to a hard-core Israel critic. Right-wingers crowing over Salazar's now-public life journey fail to acknowledge how she's living repudiation of their entire narrative about pro-Israel politics on campus.

There's a lesson here, if pro-Israel stalwarts would care to learn it: Uncritical rightists become uncritical leftists and vice versa. It's David Horowitz syndrome, and we've seen it over and over again. Wallowing in a happy, uncritical pro-Israel narrative doesn't shield young people from anti-Israel sentiments on campus. The further we isolate our youth from serious, critical reckoning with Israel's flaws alongside its virtues, the harder it's going to hurt when reality hits.

* * *

So those are the questions I care about. You want my stance on the ones everyone else is talking about? Well, basically I endorse Batya Ungar-Sargon's take. I could care less about the details of Salazar's Jewish journey. I've known plenty of people who discovered or reconnected with their Jewish heritage in college, not all of whom had a claim on matrilineal descent, and I've never felt it was my business to police an identity they have genuine ties to and claim in good faith (this is on top of my general uneasiness with hard adherence to rules about matrimonial descent; not to mention the very specific point that Jews of Color are far more likely to be the targets of such scrutiny).

But when you run for office, people are going to research the claims you make and the narratives you tell. That's not wrong; that comes with the territory. If you say you are an immigrant, and it turns out you're American born, there's going to be an article on that and you're going to take a few lumps. It's great that young people, some of whom have little prior experience in the public limelight, are now stepping up and running for significant public office. But that's going to come with scrutiny, and when you take that step you can't then hide behind "I'm young, I'm inexperienced, I'm just an average Joe or Joanna from the block" to ward that off.

The fact is that several elements of Julia Salazar's narrative, at least as presented by her campaign, rest on uneasy factual foundations. When you're a private citizen, that's not news. When you're a political candidate, that's very much news, and it's not foul play for a journalist to dig into it.

How About We Declare a Moritorium on Concert-Cancellation Calls?

Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters supports BDS. Consequently, he wants Radiohead to cancel their concert in Israel.

Nassau County, New York has passed legislation opposing BDS. Consequently, some politicians on Long Island want to cancel Pink Floyd's concert at the Nassau Coliseum (the stadium is owned by the county).

While I fully expect 80% of commenters to be delighted by one of these calls while aghast at the censorial suppression of the other, put me in the camp of not supporting cancelling concerts as a means of grinding political axes.

An Eruv in the Hamptons

Lest you thought that the "Jews call everything anti-Semitic" defense of obvious anti-Semitism was limited to the Israel context, check out these remarks by an activist opposing the construction of an eruv in the Hamptons:

The Forward felt compelled to ask whether [anti-eruv activist Jack] O'Dwyer thought some of his more inflammatory comments might get construed as anti-Semitic.

“I’m not going to fall for that,” he said. “I don’t feel like answering questions about whether I’m a bigot against Jews. That’s like asking, ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ They throw it [the anti-Semitic charge] around too much. Nobody believes it anymore.”

With that in mind, Jack, any final words for your Orthodox Jewish neighbors?

“This is America. This is not Israel. This is a rotten thing, for religion to lie its head off and sue a town. Get that stuff off our telephone poles. Go back to where you belong. You don’t belong in the Hamptons with that illogical superstition. That’s my message.”

Also, while I have often joked that half of Orthodox Jewish scholarship is imposing atextual onerous burdens on the community and the other coming up with increasingly clever loopholes to get around them, it really doesn't make sense to me this narrative that the eruv allows Orthodox Jews to "break" Jewish law. Obviously it doesn't -- Jewish law restricts certain activities (on the Sabbath) in locations which are not enclosed by the eruv. It's part of the law, it's not a breach of it (which is why it's probably a good idea for non-Jews not to tell Jews what their religious obligations are, but that ship has long since sailed).

Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

The township of Southampton, New York, recently denied a request by the local Jewish community to put up an Eruv. For those of you who don't know, an Eruv is an enclosure, generally made through wire or string, which permits Orthodox Jews to do certain activities on Shabbat that would otherwise be forbidden to them (the fiction is that within the Eruv one has one cohesive "space", so carrying objects is characterized as carrying them within the Eruv, rather than between, say, two houses). I generally support accommodations such as these -- they cost little, and signal respect and accommodation toward minority communities. At the same time, American law is generally does not require such accommodations -- it is generally a legislative prerogative as to whether to grant or withhold the accommodation, and don't need to give much of a reason why. While the federal government and some states (I don't know if New York is one) have heightened protections for religious minorities, the baseline is basically that so long as the motive itself isn't unconstitutional (such as hostility towards a particular faith) and isn't wholly arbitrary or capricious, a decision to deny even a relatively minor accommodation such as this would stand.

So basically, Southampton is playing the game on easy. Just give a reason that isn't utterly ludicrous and doesn't openly flout the Constitution. You can do it right?

The zoning board had ruled that the eruv — PVC poles on 15 of Southampton Township’s telephone poles — would “alter the essential character of the neighborhood.”

In addition, the board took theological issue with the concept of the eruv itself, calling it a “loophole” that is “motivated by the personal desire … to be freed from the proscriptions of Jewish law,” the New York Post reported.

The "change the character of the neighborhood" argument ... I dunno. It might fly, given the deference that "arbitrary and capricious" implies. But the second argument about an eruv being a theological "loophole" is a huge mistake by the city that may doom their defense strategy.

It's not that their theology is wrong per se -- I've often joked that Orthodox Jews devote half their creative energies to coming up with ever-more restrictive religious proscriptions, and the other half to inventing increasingly creative ways to circumvent them. The problem, rather, is that they were doing theology at all. And that is a huge First Amendment no-no. Perhaps the clearest and most obvious Establishment Clause violation is the state taking it upon themselves to decide what tenets are valid aspects of a religious faith and which ones are "loopholes."

Without that statement, I'd guess Southampton would have had a fighting chance in court. With it -- good luck.