4 August 26
Voting Out Of Spite
In November 2018 I went to the national convention of Reconstructing Judaism, which is the organization behind the Jewish denomination I am involved with, Reconstructionism. On the last day of the convention, there was a keynote talk by Andy Levin who was and is an active member of his Reconstructionist congregation in Michigan and who had just been elected to Congress for his first time. It was a good talk, full of hope and ideas and progressive values.
His tenure in Congress lasted four years. In 2022 he was primaried out of office. Running against him was Haley Stevens who had received 4.5 million dollars in funding from AIPAC. They were opposed to Levin because in Levin’s words: “AIPAC can’t stand the idea that I am the clearest, strongest Jewish voice in Congress standing for a simple proposition: that there is no way to have a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people unless we achieve the political and human rights of the Palestinian people.”
Today Haley Stevens is running in a primary to be Michigan senator against Abdel El-Sayed. El-Sayed is a progressive, Stevens is a moderate. Stevens continues to receive AIPAC money, with about $30 million flowing into her campaign. But AIPAC is now a dirty word among Democratic voters, and Stevens has been trailing badly in the polls. She has also been ramping up the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry in her campaign. (There are far too many politicians in the Democratic Party who are bigoted in that way).
I find it really rich that Stevens who is not Jewish is claiming the mantle of defending the interests of Jewish Americans when she vindictively primaried Levin in 2022.
There are strategic reasons for voting for Stevens — she polls better against the Republican nominee in the general election than El-Sayed — but were I in Michigan, I would vote for El-Sayed out of spite.
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