Even Wolf Blitzer Is Baffled by John Fetterman's Pro-Israel Obsession
The Pennsylvania senator fumed and fulminated about Abdul El-Sayed's Michigan win, leaving his CNN and Daily Show hosts to mop up the mess. In Maine, new polling shows Susan Collins is in for a fight.
On this day in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. A pillar of LBJ’s Great Society reforms, it is now all but demolished by a far-right Supreme Court determined to help Republicans diminish the influence of Black voters. Read Zeteo’s deep-dive into the VRA.
Good morning! Martin here, delighted as ever to bring you the political news you need on this fine Thursday morning. Another summer weekend is in sight, but we’re keeping our eyes on the prize.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we consider a couple of monumentally embarrassing media hits by Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, a man particularly put out by the rise of the progressive left but himself left on the ropes by Wolf Blitzer of CNN, of all people, when it comes to the matter of Israel and its waning place in Democratic politics. We also look to Maine, where new polling shows progressive Troy Jackson leading GOP Senator Susan Collins, and take in another interminable day in Donald Trump’s off-again, on-again war with Iran. Let’s dive in.
Fetterman’s Weird, Weird ‘Red Line’
For a measure of the sheer absurdity of Senator John Fetterman’s display on CNN after Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan win was confirmed, consider this: interviewer Wolf Blitzer, a man once employed by AIPAC, reduced the Pennsylvania Democrat to incoherence by simply asking why he has made support for Israel his “red line,” to the extent of threatening to leave his party if pro-Palestinian voices continue to surge.
“Well,” said Fetterman, “I’ve said this like if the Democratic Party adds that into the platform, if they say we become a party that will never vote for aid for Israel, or if we will define Israel as the aggressor, or that that’s the problem in the region, so then that would force me to reconsider that.”
Such a defection could determine control of the Senate. So Blitzer pressed: “One issue alone, just Israel. If the Democratic platform upcoming were to say some anti-Israel stuff, you would leave?”
“Well,” said Fetterman, “that’s become the defining, that’s become the you know really the defining litmus in this race, I mean, if you’ve been following the Michigan race, it was AIPAC, AIPAC, AIPAC, AIPAC. I mean, that really made that the center of that race and all the other races across our country.”
“AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby organization,” Blitzer clarified, of the group that spent more than $30 million to back Rep. Haley Stevens, the centrist Democrat El-Sayed defeated, and is now considering spending millions more to boost Mike Rogers, the Republican El-Sayed will face at the polls. “Why is Israel, another country, your red line right now? This is what your critics are saying, rather than a domestic issue that impacts Americans’ everyday lives?”
Fetterman’s answer… didn’t convince.