- reverse pyromania
- Posts
- DNC/Gaza
Something odd happened at the DNC meeting in Minnesota on Tuesday. Here’s what I’ve gathered from reading news reports:
DNC Chair Ken Martin introduced a resolution that called for a ceasefire in Gaza, humanitarian aid, etc. That resolution passed.
Allison Minnerly, a 26 year-old DNC member from Florida, introduced. resolution calling for a total arms embargo for Israel. That resolution failed.
Martin then withdrew his resolution and said he’d appoint a “committee or task force” to further study the Gaza situation.
Here’s the NOTUS (basically, Politico interns, but you need a free subscription) report on what happened. Here’s a the Middle East Eye’s report on it.
“The Martin resolution passed. The bad one failed,” said Brian Romick, president and CEO of the Democratic Majority for Israel. “The Democratic Party for 75 years has been a pro-Israel party, and I don’t think anything that happened in that room changed that.”
Perhaps there’s a majority of Democrats who support Israel, but there’s certainly nothing like a majority who support the genocide in Gaza. Here’s the latest polling I could find:
Six in 10 voters (60 percent) oppose the United States sending more military aid to Israel for their efforts in the war with Hamas, while 32 percent support it.
This is the highest level of opposition and lowest level of support for the United States sending more military aid to Israel since Quinnipiac University first asked this question of registered voters on November 2, 2023, in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
In today's poll, Democrats (75 - 18 percent) and independents (66 - 27 percent) oppose sending more military aid to Israel for their efforts in the war with Hamas, while Republicans (56 - 37 percent) support it.
This is not an isolated poll — there are many showing that Democratic support of the war in Gaza hovers around high single and low double digits.
So, contra what the head of the Democratic Majority for Israel says, the Martin resolution is the bare minimum of what the vast majority of Democrats want. The resolution introduced by a 26 year-old DNC member, the one that would halt all military aid to Israel, is closer to what the majority of Democrats support.
Martin’s action is puzzling. The DNC could have left their meeting with a pretty decent anti-genocide resolution on their record. Either Martin is sincerely trying to work towards a better resolution to the Gaza issue by appointing a committee, or he’s just kicking the can down the road.
Either way, at some point, a group that thinks that the “bad one” is an Israeli arms embargo is going to be disappointed, because my guess it that a vast majority of the Democratic base would support it. A non-binding resolution falling short of an embargo, one passed at the August meeting of the DNC over a year before the next election, seems to me like a good time to start ripping off the band-aid of Israel/Gaza. I guess Martin doesn’t agree, so we’re just going to limp along, pissing off the vast majority of the Democratic base.
Reply