• 3 Posts
  • 227 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
cake
Cake day: March 20th, 2024

help-circle






  • 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.








  • I thinking Bowman might have missed the Overton window in his district:

    Bowman’s troubles started last fall, when he began speaking out in the days after Oct. 7 as one of Congress’s leading critics of Israel’s war with Hamas. His stand — for a cease-fire and against American military aid — galvanized younger Democrats and the party’s left flank. But in a heavily Jewish district, it also helped foment a backlash that led Jewish leaders to recruit a formidable primary challenger, George Latimer; prompted a pro-Israel lobby to pump a record-shattering $15 million into the race; and eventually lit a match under old tensions over race, class and ideology.

    Source

    Link to donate to Bowman’s campaign

    Edit: After thinking about this some more I feel like this is a great example of what makes being a politician so hard and why sometimes taking the stand on right side of history can make things worse.

    Bowman obviously wants to do the right thing and end the Gaza invasion, so he spoke out publicly against it. He doesn’t seem to understand his constituency though, and as a result there’s a good chance he’s going to lose his seat at the table.

    Unfortunately his speaking out publucly doesn’t really seem to have moved the needle towards improving the situation in Gaza.

    So by speaking out without understanding his constituents he might be losing his seat, we citizens of the United States are potentially losing one vote for progressive issues, we’re potentially gaining a vote for aggressive pro-Isreali causes, and the invasion of Gaza rolls on without even noticing.

    So was Bowman’s sacrifice worth it? I guess we’ll see in November.


  • Lol, good news is that both of us are doing the same amount to stop the invasion of Gaza right now. However, I’m advocating for deescalation in the future and harm reduction. Maybe even a Palestinian state of their own. You on the other hand are advocating for more genocide and an escalation of the conflict, complete with Israeli condos on the beach in Gaza.

    A fun fact about me, I’m also opposed to the Uyghur genocide being carried put by China, as well as the Ukrainian and Rohingya genocides being directly enabled by China. Curiously you only seem to be opposed to genocide if it’s a political liability for Joe Biden and can be used to get Trump elected. I wonder why that is.