A group of progressive Democrats in Congress, referred to as “the squad”, has drawn the ire of AIPAC. This is in response to their “criticism of Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza following the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis by Hamas”.
This is detailed in The Squad Is About to Fight for Its Political Life .
AIPAC is now tripling their budget for defeating “squad” members. “In their general elections?”, you might ask. No, AIPAC is not that stupid. This money will go towards primary challenges.
In the 2022 midterms, the Israel lobby became the largest single-issue outside spender in Democratic primaries, pouring in nearly $30 million via the super PAC the United Democracy Project, and millions more via the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC. It was an astronomical amount of money, mostly directed at knocking progressives out of the primaries, largely in open and redrawn seats. Despite there being fewer vacancies in 2024, that money figure is expected to at least triple.
While Voter’s Revenge(VR) voteslinger posses can target Congress critters for either general or primary elections, if they’re smart, they will focus their efforts moreso on the primary. If voters don’t disrupt the the electoral process early enough, they are typically left with a choice between a donor-base chosen Democrat and a donor-base chosen Republican. It’s basically too late to get a disruptive, reformist minded person elected in that election cycle, either of the Democratic or Republican brand.
VR is a neutral tool, in that it could be used by opponents on any given issue (in opposing posses, of course). It is also neutral in that it can be used stupidly or smartly; and more punitively (as originally envisioned) or even positively, as a sort of push poll. I will write about this last scenario in a future blog post.
Note: while this blog post emphasizes actions relevant to what is called the voteslinger role in Voter’s Revenge, a large part of the power of the AIPAC lobby also derives from what I’ll call training and obedience actions that are more in the realm of the wrangler role in Voter’s Revenge. See Israel Lobby Techniques Could/Should be Appropriated Into (mostly) Wrangler Actions, and a note on Political Game Theory (sketch) , especially the vpro documentary at the bottom of the page.