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Henry

Oh come on man. It’s definitely true that people can exaggerate AIPAC’s impact, but if your metric is % of total spending in federal elections, that would mean that no one interest group is “that much.” Millions of dollars in single primaries is a *ton*!

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Jonathan Bernstein

Well, yes, groups the size of AIPAC aren't "that much." They can be big players in a handful of the hundreds of federal elections each cycle, or minor players in lots of them. That's not nothing, but it's far less influence than people attribute to highly publicized PACs.

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1 прямых ответов · 8 сообщений

Henry

I guess my issue is that people seem to be a lot more prickly about AIPAC than they are about e.g. the gun lobby. Like, it's also inaccurate to say that the gun lobby controls Washington. As with AIPAC, the people receiving money from the gun lobby probably aren't switching their opinions for money.

Ответ для Henry
Henry

But the point people are making is that the amount of money being spent tilts the playing field towards a stance they consider immoral, sometimes quite dramatically. I think it's totally fine to make that point with respect to any issue that attracts this volume of spending.

Ответ для Henry
Henry

I recognize people are especially sensitive wrt AIPAC because it can get trope-y. But, at the same time, if people are talking about AIPAC in exactly the same way they talk about other money in politics, I frankly think that's totally in bounds.

Ответ для Henry
Henry

To be clear, I believe in free speech, pro-Israel spenders should be judged and regulated in exactly the same way as other political spenders. But this talking point that AIPAC is a rounding error is just wrong. If the money didn't influence Washington it wouldn't get spent.

Ответ для Henry
Jonathan Bernstein

Oh, sure; that's what I said to start. It's totally fine to dislike AIPAC or to pressure candidates not to take $$ from it. I should add: Or to judge candidates by who donates to them. And I'm not saying it has zero effect - just that the effects of any campaign spending tend to be overstated.

Ответ для Jonathan Bernstein
Henry

I guess I broadly agree that, on a national scale, their effects are often overstated. But in terms of individual primaries that are already competitive, huge spending from AIPAC/DMFI/etc. can absolutely be decisive. There aren't many such primaries in any one cycle, but over time they add up.

Ответ для Henry
Henry

I would characterize this race, Haley Stevens's earlier primary against Andy Levin, IL-08 this year, among many others as such. That's an impressive resume, no doubt envied by other groups! These groups are good at finding races where they can influence the outcome and then doing so.

Ответ для Henry
Henry

In the aggregate, over multiple cycles, I think these groups' influence is somewhere between puppetmaster of American politics and completely unremarkable, is what I'm saying. I think they are fairly characterized as one of the stronger, though not the only, interest groups influencing D primaries.