A Democratic upset in Connecticut — but Israel was not a factor
Progressive policy ambitions meet practical realities as Americans weigh costs and consequences.
A 14-term congressman just got run out of his own primary, and the headline writers want us to believe Israel had nothing to do with it. Fine, maybe Bronin ran a sharper local campaign, maybe Larson looked tired after two decades in Hartford's seat. But AIPAC backed the incumbent and lost anyway, and that's now happening often enough that pretending it's a coincidence every single time starts to look like the real spin.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
(JTA) — Luke Bronin scored a decisive victory over longtime Rep. John Larson in Connecticut’s Democratic primary Tuesday, marking another defeat for AIPAC which had backed the 14-term congressman. The pro-Israel lobby group is increasingly viewed as politically toxic in Democratic primaries across the country, with several progressive candidates notching victories after making opposition to...
The post A Democratic upset in Connecticut — but Israel was not a factor appeared first on The Forward .
Original source:
Read at The ForwardHow We See It
New Republican Times Editorial Board
A 14-term congressman just got run out of his own primary, and the headline writers want us to believe Israel had nothing to do with it. Fine, maybe Bronin ran a sharper local campaign, maybe Larson looked tired after two decades in Hartford's seat. But AIPAC backed the incumbent and lost anyway, and that's now happening often enough that pretending it's a coincidence every single time starts to look like the real spin.
This is the pattern Democrats keep hoping nobody notices. A pro-Israel group spends money and calls it neutral, a progressive challenger wins and the party insists the lobby group's endorsement was irrelevant. It happened in New York, it's happened in Missouri, and now Connecticut gets added to the list. At some point the "it wasn't about Israel" explanation stops being analysis and starts being damage control for a party that doesn't want to admit its base has moved somewhere its leadership isn't comfortable following.
We're not AIPAC's cheerleaders and we don't need to be to see what's happening here. A bipartisan, pro-Israel consensus that held for generations is cracking apart on one side of the aisle, primary by primary, and the people losing those primaries are the ones who didn't get the memo in time. Larson didn't do anything wrong by taking AIPAC's support. He just didn't realize how radioactive that support had become with the people who actually show up to vote in a Democratic primary.
None of this means Republicans get to relax. A hollowed-out pro-Israel coalition in one party eventually becomes everyone's problem, because support for an ally shouldn't be a partisan football that flips with whichever faction wins the intra-party fight that week. Connecticut Democrats just showed which faction is winning theirs.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.