Will This Be AIPAC’s Biggest Defeat – Ever?
Prem was on hand in Michigan to witness the nail-biter between Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens, which appears to have gone down as an astonishing failure for AIPAC.
On this day in 1965, CBS News showed footage of U.S. Marines burning the village of Cam Na, near Da Nang in Vietnam. Revulsion over the images fueled opposition to the war – which dragged on for nearly a decade.
Good morning! Prem here, reporting to you from Michigan after a dramatic evening – where a grueling and eventful Democratic primary campaign came to a titillating close. I was at the Abdul El-Sayed election party in Detroit, where the results were not called by one network, NBC, until after we all had left! (AP and others are still saying the race is too close to call.) On that note…
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ AIPAC seems to have failed in its most expensive undertaking yet. Plus, alleged abuser Max Miller’s appearance on CNN went horribly, and Donald Trump’s agriculture secretary took a victory lap over the administration depriving families of food.
AIPAC Your Bags
DETROIT, Michigan – $30 million. That’s how much the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent trying to help Congresswoman Haley Stevens beat the pro-Palestine Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary.
And the pro-Israel lobby’s election spending – along with several other moneyed interests that altogether spent a total of $60 million to help Stevens – seems to have failed. Stupendously.
Tuesday night was a long one, as was early Wednesday morning. The primary race was ultimately much tighter than recent polling had indicated. In the end, though, El-Sayed appears to have pulled it off. NBC News called the race for El-Sayed just before 2am ET. Other major news organizations, including AP, are still saying the race is too close to call. Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the Senate primary last month, quickly endorsed El-Sayed.
El-Sayed recently compared himself on a call with supporters to “David” fighting “Goliath,” meaning AIPAC and the establishment.