There has already been a lot of analysis around Bowman’s defeat, a lot of which is devoted to complexifying this event. It wasn’t just his hostility toward Israel, the sophisticates insist. Bowman was out of step with his district on bread-and-butter issues. He voted against Biden’s infrastructure bill. The fire-alarm incident was indicative of his poor judgement and a penchant for scene-chewing theatrics. All stipulated. But let’s be honest: It was his anti-Israel (verging on pro-Hamas) stance wot done it.
Bowman went down to a 17-point defeat because he picked a fight with his own voters, tried to impose his own unpopular moral framework on an unwilling electorate, and suffered the consequences. He made himself into a noxious avatar of the most unsympathetic constituencies in the country, and his voters rejected him for it. Those who want to muddy the waters do so in service to their own intellects, perhaps, but also to obscure the rather clear lessons that Bowman’s loss might convey to other Democrats.
The party can tell itself whatever fables it likes, but Bowman’s fate is a clear cautionary tale about the dangers of succumbing to the anti-Israel monomania that has consumed the progressive movement in America.
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