AIPAC = Biggest Loser This Election

Thanks to Matt Stoller of OpenLeft we already know who lost the 08 elections: right wing supporters of Israel who actually harm it by preventing serious action to end the occupation. Yes, we are talking about the pro-McCain, pro-settler, aging, tired, lumbering beast known as AIPAC.

Right-wing ethnic lobbies have taken a total beating this cycle.  In South Florida, all three right-wing Republicans who based their politics on a hardline against Castro are being challenged for the first time by Democrats who have changed the subject to the economy.  Al Wynn got crunched by progressive Donna Edwards, and many entrenched corporate CBC members got primary challengers.  But the biggest loser of the cycle is AIPAC and its orbit of right-wing allies (like Abe Foxman's Anti-Defamation League).  These groups largely supported Bush in 2004 and Lieberman in 2006, using charges of antisemitism against the progressive organizations like Moveon and the blogs.  This fierce conservative offensive was finally stopped in intellectual circles by the acknowledgment of a powerful and reactionary existence of an 'Israel lobby', whose interests in starting another conflict with Iran ran directly counter to the interests of most Jews.

But it's not only that AIPAC is doing poorly; it's that J-Street is doing an amazing job:

A counter-organization, J Street, emerged, and it looks like 37 of their candidates are going to be sitting in Congress next year.  Right-wing older Jews went after Obama with a vengeance, both in the primary and the general, and used every trick in the book, going so far as to argue that Obama would somehow bring forth another holocaust.  Other organizations, like JewsVote, used celebrities like Sarah Silverman to reach out to younger Jews, and none of the standard propagandizing from McCain worked.  Finally, the mystique of AIPAC as an unstoppable force has been punctured.

This is good news. I'm a big fan of J-Street, in part because they have three qualities that distinguish them from other efforts to mobilize the pro-peace Jewish sentiment.

• They set themselves up as explicitly political, allowing them to play hill politics as the core of their activity, rather than trying to toothlessly "educate" any and all Congresscritters.
• They flex muscles by raising money, not by bringing representatives of the Israeli peace camp, who - viewed through the lens of the past - have no real impact on U.S. politics.
• Liberated from the need to deal with chapters and in-person organizing activities, they focused on online activities and did it better than anyone else due entirely to competence and proficiency. (They have not done anything new/crazy with software that wasn't available to other groups.)

It's good to see Stoller take a lead in the pile on. AIPAC is in for what I hope is a hellish 8 year period. May it's back be broken, allowing J-Street to emerge as the consensus voice for what is and isn't pro-Israel. Israel's future my depend on it.