Conservatives are making a concerted effort into turning Ilhan and Rashida into "The Other"The NY Post, like many right-wing propaganda outlets, was on the attack last week. Except they're introducing a new "villain" to their readers. THey're hardly giving up on their crusade to destroy AOC but now they can go back and forth between her and Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Ilhan had been serving in the Minnesota state legislature-- having beaten an entrenched establishment Democrat in the primary-- when Keith Ellison decided to run for state Attorney General, leaving his Minneapolis congressional seat open. She won the 6-person primary with 48.2%, her closest opponent 18 points behind her. In the general election she was elected with a landslide, 267,703 (78.0%) to 74,440 (21.7%). For those wondering, her district is mostly white and just 15.5% black. Rashida mentioned to the NY Times recently that "It is disappointing that some of my colleagues are feeding into the hate and division and mislabeling me to ignite fear." It might be worth remembering that, although all the districts have approximately the same population, on the same day 267,703 voters pulled the lever for her, this is how many voters pulled the lever for these much better-known members of Congress, all of whom have been extremely critical of Ilhan. Interesting that she attracted so many more voters than any of them-- and more than double the number of some of her worst and most vicious critics.
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- 131,113• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- 213,796• Jim Clyburn (D-SC)- 144,765• Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)- 180,376• Ben Ray Luján (D-NM)- 155,201• Steve Scalise (R-LA)- 192,555• Liz Cheney (R-WY)- 127,963• Lee Zeldin (R-NY)- 139,027• Eliot Engel (D-NY)- 182,044• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)- 101,823• Donna Shalala (D-FL)- 130,743• Louie Gohmert (R-TX)- 168,165• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 169,546• Peter King (R-NY)- 128,078• Seth Moulton (New Dem-MA)- 217,703• John Garamendi (D-CA)- 134,875• Devin Nunes (R-CA)- 117,243• John Katko (R-NY)- 136,920• Dean Phillips (New Dem-MN)- 202,404• Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)- 139,571• Jerry Nadler (D-NY)- 173,095• Ted Deutch (D-FL)- 184,634
Fellow freshman Max Rose was the first Democrat to attack her, although on the same day, Democraps Josh Gottheimer and Elaine Luria also weighed in with nasty, self-serving comments. I can't remember which Republican backbencher started circulating the letter to throw her off the House Foreign Affairs Committee-- although Louie Gohmert has since made it a personal jihad. I do recall that it was Long Island asshat Lee Zeldin who introduced a resolution (HR 72), which has 93 GOP cosponsors, the 3 of the original 5 co-spnsors being notorious Islamaphobes and bigots, Jody Hice (GA), Gym Jordan (OH) and Matt Gaetz (FL). The resolution calls out Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan by name, explicitly and dishonestly trying to connect them to antisemitic views that neither of them hold or condone.When Ilhan was Trevor Noah's guest on The Last Show last week, she said that when she talks "about places like Saudi Arabia or Israel or even now with Venezuela, I'm not criticizing the people. I'm not criticizing their faith, I'm not criticizing their way of life. What I'm criticizing is what's happening at the moment, and I want for there to be accountability so that the government, that administration, that regime can do better."Yesterday Trita Parsi and Stephen Wertheim warned in an OpEd that Democratic party elites silence Ilhan Omar at their peril, noting that Ilhan's "foreign policy views are far more in line with voters than the disconnected party establishment."
This week, Democrats plunged into two controversies that portend danger for the party as the 2020 election season begins. Both centered on freshman representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who, not coincidentally, came to America as a Somali refugee and is now one of the two first Muslim women in Congress. Absent an open debate about the party’s values on foreign policy, Democrats are hurtling toward an election more divisive than the one in 2016.First, on Monday, Omar criticized the influence of pro-Israel lobbyists on Capitol Hill, tweeting that Congress’s stance was “all about the Benjamins”. She was swiftly rebuked by the party leadership in tandem with Republicans, prompting her to apologize. Then, less than 48 hours later, Omar grilled America’s new envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, over his well-documented material support for multiple Central American governments that committed mass killings and genocide in the 1980s. She also questioned his credibility, noting that Abrams had pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress as part of his participation in the Iran-Contra scandal.How did Democratic elites respond? Several pounced again-- to defend the Trump administration’s backer of death squads against Omar’s pointed questioning. Kelly Magsamen, a senior official at the Center for American Progress, defended Abrams on Twitter as a “fierce advocate for human rights and democracy”. Likewise, Nicholas Burns, a 27-year diplomat who most recently advised former secretary of state John Kerry, praised Abrams as a “devoted public servant.” “It’s time to build bridges in America,” Burns wrote, “and not tear people down.”If Democratic leaders were incredulous at Omar’s statements, rank-and-file Democrats were just as incredulous at their party leaders. Why, many asked, is it routine to criticize the influence of NRA money but almost forbidden to question the influence of Aipac money? On top of that, how could Trump’s neocon criminal be lauded as some sort of ally while Omar was treated as a pariah? A Twitter torrent caused Magsamen to delete her tweet and apologize.Personalities aside, however, the episode is charged with significance for the Democratic party as a whole. Omar is not going away. She represents the party’s younger generation, a more diverse and progressive cohort that came of age in the war on terror. In the election of 2016, such voters balked at Hillary Clinton’s hawkish record and her courting of Never Trump neoconservatives. Now the divide is only wider and more entrenched. Democrats need to have a real conversation, immediately, about the party’s values and goals in foreign policy. Squelch it now and watch it resurge in 2020, with Trump the beneficiary.“We share goals,” Magsamen wrote of Abrams. Do we? The outrage over her claim proved its falsity. What goals Democrats wish to promote in the world is now an open question, not settled dictum that thinktankers can impose from Washington. The Democratic base is no longer deferential, especially not when it is told that it has some obvious affinity with the man who covered up one of the bloodiest massacres in Latin American history, and went on to push the Iraq war inside the George W Bush administration.Just what are the goals, and values, of those who have implemented decades of fruitless forever war and then close ranks when their worst members are asked accurate and relevant questions? The American people are wondering. The manifestations are everywhere, among young people in particular. Start with the sacred cow of American exceptionalism: millennials are the first age group to split evenly on whether the US is the world’s greatest country or no greater than others. They are increasingly ready to reckon with America’s past actions and confront hard choices going forward.Young Democrats are not likely to agree that one violent misdeed after another is somehow acceptable as long as it is performed by the US or in the name of democracy or humanitarianism. Those were the rationales, now revived in defense of Abrams, that produced impunity for the Iraq war, a disastrous war of aggression. Ordinary citizens consistently display more skepticism of military intervention than do foreign policy elites. They are pushing their representatives to express the goal of peace. The election of Omar herself reflects this sentiment. And as a result of grassroots mobilization, the House this week, driven by progressives like Representative Ro Khanna, passed historic legislation to end US support for the Saudi war in Yemen.The shift in the Democratic base is not limited to one episode. Democrats increasingly favor cutting the defense budget and imposing restraint on America’s military power. While elites assume that the US must maintain global military superiority as a matter of course, less than half of millennials deem it to be a very important goal. That is the lowest support on record, continuing a steady erosion since the second world war. Will political leaders engage the rising generation’s doubts, or will they insist that armed domination is a self-evident virtue for a country that is hurting at home and often spreads violence abroad?On the Israel-Palestine conflict, it was Omar, more than her party elders, who represented the values of Democratic voters when she criticized the influence of money in politics and applied the point to America’s virtually unconditional support for Israel. The overwhelming majority of Democrats, about 82%, now say the US should lean toward neither Israel nor Palestinians. Even more dramatically, 56% of Democrats favor imposing sanctions or harsher measures against Israel if its settlements keep expanding. The mounting disaffection with Israel comes as the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, scorned Barack Obama and embraces Trump and other authoritarians. Yet Democratic leaders leapt to denounce Omar, giving her no benefit of the doubt for a poorly worded tweet. Critics must take care not to play into anti-Semitic tropes, but concern about lobbyist influence is legitimate and poised to intensify.Democratic voters seek genuine alternatives, not the continuation of a one-party DC elite that assumes its right to rule and rules badly to boot. But the Democratic establishment is moving in the opposite direction. It has chosen to “build bridges,” all right-- with the neoconservatives most directly responsible for calamitous policies and most diametrically opposed to the base. This decision has now culminated in the defense of criminals like Abrams who embody both the worst of American foreign policy and the impunity of those who make it.More important is the bridge that is not being built. Years after neocons have been exposed to lack a popular constituency, actual voters in the party are being shut out and talked down to, as exemplified in the badgering of Omar. What are the progressives who put Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and dozens of others into office to conclude about party leaders who would rather spurn them to make common cause with architects of the war on terror? Why are some in the party prioritizing bridge-building to washed-up neocons (in the Trump administration, no less) and not to new, mobilized voters?
Earlier, Nora Barrow-Friedman wrote for In These Times that "Republicans and Democrats alike are happy to throw Omar-- a Black, Muslim refugee woman who has garnered significant popularity for her unapologetic progressive politics-- under the bus. However, by slamming the freshman representative, Pelosi, Schumer and the entire Democratic party revealed precisely what Omar pointed out: AIPAC, like other enormous lobby groups, wields its power by pushing politicians to protect their interests and silencing those who refuse to cower." Trump was quick to throw the divisive fuel he's so famous for on the fire he found he could exploit by demanding she resign.Oops... I almost forgot why I started writing this post... that stupid NY Post story by José Cárdenas, a neo-fascist former George W. Bush operative in Latin America and an Elliott Abrams defender. He called Ilhan's rough questioning of Abrams-- certainly a war criminal as well as an integral part of the American foreign policy establishment-- "a cheap attempt to discredit" him. It doesn't take much to discredit him. Wikipedia does it without batting an eye. In the intro to his page they noted that he's "considered a neoconservative" and "is is best known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, which led to his conviction in 1991 on two misdemeanor counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress. He was later pardoned by George H.W. Bush. During George W. Bush's first term, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs... [and] was a key architect behind the Iraq War." Wikipedia also makes the point that so many status quo pols were so upset to hear Ilhan say out loud in an official hearing: "In early 1982, when reports of the El Mozote massacre of hundreds of civilians by the military in El Salvador began appearing in U.S. media, Abrams told a Senate committee that the reports of hundreds of deaths at El Mozote "were not credible," and that "it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas." The massacre had come at a time when the Reagan administration was attempting to bolster the human rights image of the Salvadoran military. Abrams implied that reports of a massacre were simply FMLN propaganda and denounced U.S. investigative reports of the massacre as misleading. In March 1993, the Salvadoran Truth Commission reported that over 500 civilians were 'deliberately and systematically' executed in El Mozote in December 1981 by forces affiliated with the Salvadoran government." Read the whole page if you don't know who this character actually is. He should certainly be rotting in a prison cell, not be treated with deference by political leaders, especially not by Democrats.Cárdenas' puke-worthy piece in The Post ends with this doozy about the war criminal who Ilhan dared to question in Congress: "Elliott Abrams’ record stands on its own. His only transgression is never having genuflected at the altar of the radical left, especially on Latin America. And the choicest irony of all is that the scorn they try to heap on him is not due to his failures, but his successes." In response, I'd like to end this post not with Cárdenas' deceitful and deranged words but with a request for DWT readers to consider tapping on the "Worthy Incumbents" ActBlue thermometer on the right and contributing to Ilhan Omar's reelection campaign. Expect that AIPAC and their allies will try to do to her exactly what they've done to other progressives who have dared to question Israel-Palestine policy-- from Republican Senator Chuck Percy (IL) to African American Democrats in the House, Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Earl Hilliard (D-AL).
