cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/42784
In a historic vote, 75% of Senate Democrats backed an effort to block weapons to Israel. The resolutions failed, but the vote was the latest sign of Democrats’ growing consensus against aid to Israel, as support for the country hits an all-time low.
From Mondoweiss via This RSS Feed.
Voting for something good only when we know that it will never pass 😊
In other words 25% of Dems voted to continue arming Israel
If Dems held complete unanimous control of the senate it would miraculously become 51-49 in Israel’s favor and plenty of Democrats would “have doubts” and maybe AOC would start crying again in the other chamber
While everyone will correctly point out the structures in the Democratic party that prevent good shit from happening, there’s another important side to this: many indivdual Democrats are afraid of the massive anti-Israel sentiment among the US public, especially their traditional voter base. That is a meaningful indicator of where popular will and rage are headed and a problem for the Dems that they will not be able to resolve without a dramatic structural break (that I doubt they’re capable of carrying out).
I agree with this sentiment across all aspects of the Democratic Party. They are ill-equipped to make the drastic changes internally that are required, even if they wanted to.
This is something that I try to argue with my liberal friends about. It always results in them calling me too idealistic and acting like “leftists” expect change overnight. When really I’m just trying to make them understand that you cannot cure this problem from inside the party.
Yes, progress is slow, but most of the slow progress we see happen along party lines is just placating by the elites. The changes we need still don’t feel like they are transpiring at any rate of speed.
I think there is value in the US-American Left using the electoral system to force the issue. We know from theory that a pro-capitalism bourgeois party will no be able to do something good. Liberal voters, who do largely agree with us on topics like the support for Israel and healthcare reform, do not understand this. If they read theory they wouldn’t be liberals.
There is a strong argument to gas up the Democrats with anti-zionist soc-dem (or better) candidates, just so they can prove on paper where they stand. Many here were radicalized by Bernie getting crushed by the Democratic Party (twice). The Democratic party is not the path to success (of course, of course!), but they must be politicked with as a prerequisite for actual progress, whether that is a via a militant left movement, a DemSoc third party with anti-imperialist characteristics (most likely IMO), or a collapse and reform of the Democratic party (unlikely, but not off the table IMO).
This is the typical ‘rotating villain’ play from the Democrats. The party instructs certain Democrats to vote against the bill, while the majority vote for the bill, to give the illusion that they actually wanted it to pass. If the party wanted to block arms to Israel, it would issue real consequences for party members who voted against the bill.
Dems don’t hold majority right now so even if 100% of them voted for the arms embargo it still would not pass. Those 25% of Dems who voted against it are real true blue Zionists speaking their truth. If anything this is the opposite of rotating villain, rotating hero - where Zionist Dems get to pretend they are the good guys while knowing there’s no chance of it passing. Of those 75% of Democrat Senators that voted for this, probably half would never have done so of it has a chance of passing
They need to maintain the perspective that “this is a nuanced issue.” Otherwise they’d have to have principles in the long run.
If it was just a party line vote then that would make Republicans look bad to their own electoral base, and Democrats are also interested in protecting the Republican party from backlash and ensuring they don’t get blown out too badly in the Midterms.
The worst-case scenario for Dems is that they win too much during the Midterms and have to actually do stuff again.
If it was just a party line vote then that would make Republicans look bad to their own electoral base
No it wouldn’t, something like 85%+ of Republicans support Israel and believe arabs and muslims are terrorists. The loud rightwing fringe minority faction composed of Tucker and Jones are just that, a loud minority without any real power. Republican voters love war, they love genocide, don’t let them pretend otherwise it’s bullshit. The only demographic that could swap from Republican to Democrat are centrist neocons who also love Israel, war and genocide. The tucker/jones types have nowhere to else to go, they aren’t going to go to Democrats.
We have not really had a reckoning with the fact that the most fascistic, murderous, warmonger and zionist political group are the mainstream “center”. It’s the respectable Classical Liberals.
I’m not seeing 85% - I’m seeing 38% of Republicans want the US to take neither side, 62% believe Israel has a positive role in the Middle East, and the closest to your number is the 72% support military aid for Israel (which I suspect is just Republicans supporting military Keynesianism). It’s also falling thanks to the war with Iran and rising gas prices (because Republicans don’t care about Palestinians, but they absolutely care about being unable to afford to fill their trucks).
As for it being the center, not really? Independents are actually turning on Israel, it’s a 50/50 issue for them.
Democrats need to make sure there is no alternative.
I think it’s still notable that we’re seeing pro-israel politics having to be a rotating villain thing rather than a “fuck you, we support israel no matter what” thing, its becoming increasingly poisonous to support Israel at all
And as usual, nothing changed.
The Democrats are only ever performative. The only thing that could reform them is a purge.
We need someone with civility, decorum and respect for the rule of law to send guns to israel
The resolutions would fail even if the democrats controlled 100% of the government
I will never believe any Progressives are serious until they start talking about splitting the party.
I don’t believe anyone calling themselves a socialist if they’re a democrat
“Ah if it wasn’t for some few bad apples, we could have pretended to have a semblance of self preservation as a party, oh well”It’s easy to say shit when the rotating villains got your back
will these 40 senators depose schumer regime? no? theatrics
Dick Durbin, [REDACTED] Chuck Schumer and you will be reincarnated as a lotus flower
I guarantee you this wouldn’t have happened under Harris lmao
Yes dems have no soul and will never break from capital etc etc but this is actually a huge shift from the 5 or so senators who would vote similarly before. It’ll be interesting to see how dems are going to navigate this political climate where they need to support zionism for the bag but will be punished for it by electorate if they do so too openly.
Most likely they’ll just do the thing they’ve been setting up for a while: they’ll vote for Israel whenever it matters but loudly in public will say vague things that could possibly mean that they don’t support them, and then insist that everybody ignore their actions and only look at their empty words.
Similar to how some EU states operate. It does open more room for bds when the state is less hostile to antizionist sentiment.
Could someone well-versed in occidental democracy enlighten me how a system can produce failing resolutions with 75% support?
It’s 75% of Democrats who are currently not a majority.
It’s 75% of one party that doesn’t have a majority even if it was 100
Now that they are no longer in danger of accidentally winning an election, they’ll happily do an empty performance to try and trick the people into believing that they still have souls.
