So is American political system being run by "money" under the guise of "democracy"?
Take the right position on Israel and you can raise 1/4 million, Senate candidate is advised
Philip Weiss on July 30, 2014
Michelle Nunn
Everyone’s sending this around today. It’s part of a fundraising memo for Michelle Nunn’s campaign for Senate in Georgia, published at Vox. Say the right thing on Israel and you can raise a quarter-million dollars.
Matthew Yglesias says we all know about this, but journalists are inhibited to describe the importance of this money because it’s an “anti-semitic trope.”To anyone who’s familiar with Democratic Party fundraising — particularly for non-incumbent underdogs, who typically have trouble raising money — this won’t be too surprising.
Jewish donors are very important to Democratic Party finances, some of these donors have strongly held hawkish views on Israel, and the financial clout of AIPAC is the stuff of legend. At the same time, talk of rich Jews throwing their financial muscle around to influence policy in favor of Israel touches far too many anti-semitic tropes to be regularly mentioned in political discourse. But the concrete world of political fundraising doesn’t leave a ton of time for beating around the bush, so we get a little window here into how it looks to the finance people: if Nunn wants to maximize her donations, she needs to take the right stance.
Right. Everyone knows it, no one can talk about it. It’s been estimated that on the Democratic side at the congressional level on up, Jews account for half to two-thirds of the funding.
Now here is the same story told in a different way. Tim Mak at the Daily Beast asked some leftleaning congress-people why they weren’t reflecting the grassroots outrage over Gaza:
Democrats, when asked a question about Israeli operations in Gaza, had two standard responses: irritation, or else a statement of their broad support of Israel, without going into specifics. It was as if the very mention of Israel turned the question into a hostile interview.
“Look, man, I’m a politician, with multiple constituencies. Why should I alienate one just so that you can write a story?” Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison angrily told The Daily Beast. Ellison, a stalwart progressive, was the first Muslim-American elected to Congress….
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a darling of the left who identifies as a democratic socialist, was curt. His tone changed suddenly when the topic shifted from the Veterans Administration bill that he had been shepherding through Congress to Israel’s operation in Gaza.
“That’s not where my mind is right now,” he told the Beast.
Democratic Rep. Sandy Levin said he was on his way to a meeting and didn’t have time to discuss the issue. (He did, however, stop for another reporter, who asked about transportation funding.)
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/positi...e-advised.html
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Originally Posted by ctiger2
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