Eoin Higgins / Common
Dreams
A right-wing AIPAC-affiliated
group is airing ads targeting Sen. Bernie Sanders in Iowa in an attempt to stop
the increasing success of his presidential campaign days before the state’s
voters caucus to kick off the 2020 Democratic primary.
The Democratic Majority for
Israel, a group tied to AIPAC, sponsored the ad.
“This is dishonest,
disgusting, and discrediting,” said Sanders surrogate James Zogby, founder of
the Arab-American Institute.
This is dishonest, disgusting,
& discrediting of @DemMaj4Israel. They
want to attack @BernieSanders cuz
he’s balanced on Israel/Palestine, but can’t cuz Dems don’t support their view.
So they use “too old, heart attack, socialist” canards. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/us/politics/bernie-sanders-attack-ads.amp.html …
The Democratic Majority for
Israel was created in
January 2019 as an arm of AIPAC to address the Democratic Party’s move toward
supporting Palestinian rights, said progressive Jewish advocacy group
IfNotNow’s founder Emily Mayer.
“AIPAC created the Democratic
Majority for Israel because they know they’re losing ground in the Democratic
Party,” said Mayer. “The vast majority of Democrats agree that our country
should not give a blank check to Israel if the Israeli government continues the
violence of the occupation and to deny Palestinians basic freedom and dignity.”
In the commercial, which
begins airing across Iowa Wednesday, a number of Iowans express their hesitance
at supporting the Vermont senator’s bid for a number of reasons, including a
heart attack Sanders suffered in October.
“The ad raises serious
questions about his electability in their own words,” the Democratic Majority
for Israel’s leader, pollster Mark Mellman, told Politico.
“Health is one of the things that people raised. But in general people say they
like Bernie Sanders, they respect him but they say he can’t win.”
As progressive magazine Current
Affairs pointed
out, centering the argument against a candidate on the candidate’s
likeability and well-respected status isn’t a recipe for success.
“It’s funny that even ATTACK
ADS against Bernie include people saying ‘I like Bernie, I think he has great
ideas,'” the magazine tweeted. “If your opponents say this about you, you are
winning.”
By focusing on Sanders’
electability, the Democratic Majority for Israel commercial conspicuously
avoids hitting the senator on the merits of the group’s main message. That’s
because the Democratic electorate has largely stepped away from rigid support
of Israel and more toward support for Palestinian rights, Mayer said in a
statement Tuesday evening.
“The ads don’t focus on any of
the AIPAC-front group’s foreign policy positions because they know they are
increasingly out-of-touch with Democratic voters, so they have to hide behind
tired talking points about electability instead,” said Mayer.
Researcher Andrew Perez blasted the
attack on Sanders as dishonest and unacceptable on the merits.
“A consultant for health
insurers and pharmaceutical interests using a front group named ‘Democratic
Majority for Israel’ to attack the first potential Jewish presidential nominee
is phenomenally low and should be universally condemned,” said Perez.
Sanders himself hit back
against the ad blitz and reports that the Democratic establishment is targeting
his campaign in a video posted online Tuesday night.
“It’s no secret that we’re
taking on the political establishment and the big money interests, who are now
running attack ads against us in Iowa,” Sanders said in a tweet. “But we have
the people, and our grassroots movement will prevail.”
It's no secret that we're
taking on the political establishment and the big money interests, who are now
running attack ads against us in Iowa. But we have the people, and our grassroots
movement will prevail.
As Common Dreams reported on
Monday, the Democratic Majority for Israel is one of a number of groups trying
to stop the Sanders campaign.
Sanders surrogate filmmaker
Michael Moore warned the senator’s supporters that the road was going to get
difficult.
“The knives are out,” said
Moore.
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