Who is Jamaal Bowman's wife, Melissa Oppenheimer? - "Bowman lost the Democratic primary to Westchester County Executive George Latimer. His loss also marks the first time a "squad" member is ousted from the House."
Jamaal Bowman, Jews are not victims - "Only a month after Hamas’s horrific massacre, Bowman was already calling for a ceasefire and defending this call as “uplifting deeply what it actually means to be Jewish.” (Bowman is not Jewish, deeply or otherwise.) A few days later, in a newly unearthed social-media video, Bowman derided reports of Hamas raping Israeli women and beheading babies a “lie” and “propaganda.” He also has the ignominious honor of losing the left-wing lobby J Street’s endorsement—not an easy feat for your run-of-the-mill anti-Israel liberal—for calling Israel’s military operation in Gaza “genocide.” This background makes Bowman’s Purim post bad enough. It takes a special kind of hubris—or chutzpah—to praise the Jewish people’s survival centuries ago while undermining their survival today. It also takes a special kind of ignorance... Predictably, a well-meaning but ill-informed staffer will get his Jewish symbols messed up (sorry, Mike Pence) or swap one Jewish holiday for another (ahem, Marjorie Taylor Greene). These are harmless faux pas worth a chuckle or two. Bowman’s post was neither a faux pas nor well-meaning. It is a complete misunderstanding of the holiday of Purim and Jewish history. Combined with his persistent criticism of Israel, it is a mockery of the holiday and Israel’s age-old fight to survive in the face of dogged antisemitism."
It’s Not Just AIPAC: How Jamaal Bowman Alienated Voters Who Once Supported Him - "while he would have undoubtedly fared better if he were not up against an avalanche of super PAC money, his problems predate the lopsided advertising blitz. Bowman, 48, was trailing Latimer, 70, by 17 percentage points in early April, before advertising began... The Latimer campaign’s own internal polling in January, reviewed by HuffPost, was somewhere in between those two surveys, showing the county executive ahead by 10 points... Bowman’s support in the district, which includes a sliver of the northeastern Bronx and all of lower Westchester County — a mix of diverse working-class cities and leafy, affluent suburbs — has been tenuous from the moment he won in 2020. His vote against the bipartisan infrastructure bill in 2021 and his pulling of the fire alarm in Congress this past September further undermined his standing with many moderate-to-liberal Democrats... “I was always having to be his defender,” said Danielle Tagger-Epstein, chair of the Rye City Democratic Committee and a Bowman donor as recently as January 2023. “And I could no longer defend his behavior.” Before Oct. 7, Tagger-Epstein had been frustrated with Bowman’s failure to follow through on her efforts to arrange conversations with her rabbi and other Jewish friends, as well as his July 2023 decision not to attend Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s speech to Congress. (Bowman cited Herzog’s failure to do more to protect Palestinian human rights; however, critics note that Herzog is a figurehead rather than a political leader.)... “He’s really his own worst enemy,” added a J Street activist who requested anonymity to protect their relationship with Bowman in the event of his victory. The voter, who sees AIPAC as bad for both U.S. political integrity and Israel’s long-term interests, lost patience with Bowman’s most anti-Israel comments and stances after defending the congressman to the person’s coreligionists for so many years. “He created alliances that shouldn’t be created. I shouldn’t be allying with an AIPAC candidate,” the J Street activist said. A New York Democratic strategist supportive of Bowman’s bid had a similar assessment... Bowman, who was first elected in 2020, won reelection easily in 2022. But he benefited greatly from his opponents’ inability to unite behind a single challenger: Westchester County legislators Vedat Gashi and Catherine Parker, who both ran against him, split the anti-Bowman vote. As a result, his margin of victory obscured the simmering frustration with him among registered Democrats. Bowman would only receive 54% of the total ballots cast. It’s the kind of thin majority that might have served as a warning about the precariousness of his standing in the district... Bowman declined to vote for a nonbinding resolution condemning Hamas on the grounds it failed to address “the urgent need for de-escalation” amid growing Palestinian civilian casualties. Speaking at a pro-Palestinian rally in White Plains, New York, in November, he even called allegations of sexual assault during the Hamas attack unsubstantiated “propaganda.” Bowman repudiated those claims in late March when a video of his comments emerged, but the quote has made it into AIPAC’s digital ads. Bowman has also taken heat from some Jewish voters for what many see as a lack of emotional sensitivity. Although he attended a rally for the victims of Oct. 7 in Washington and has met with the families of Israeli hostages, Jewish constituents noticed Bowman’s absence at the numerous local community vigils for the Israeli dead and hostages following Oct. 7, even as he made impassioned appearances at pro-Palestine rallies... But Bowman retains a significant core of support from progressive Jews affiliated with the left-wing group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which counts 500 members in the district, and Jewish Voice for Peace, a smaller group that is explicitly anti-Zionist... By late January 2024, J Street had had enough of Bowman and withdrew its endorsement. The last straws for the organization were Bowman embracing the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza and his praise for controversial anti-Israel scholar Norman Finkelstein at a rally in Yonkers, New York, where Finkelstein had also appeared, according to people familiar with J Street’s thinking. (Bowman subsequently expressed regret for praising Finkelstein, who initially likened the Oct. 7 attack to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during WWII and said it “warms every fiber of my soul.”)... Bowman continues to sound less and less like Israel’s progressive supporters — the kinds of people who are favorable to tough measures like conditioning aid yet still ardently support the idea of a Jewish country. In a recent podcast interview, for example, he characterized U.S. support for Israel as a gesture of solidarity for “another settler colonial project.”... As a middle school principal, Bowman dabbled in 9/11 conspiracy theories and honored a convicted cop killer on the walls of his school. It also emerged that Bowman had declined to condemn the inclusion of Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam and a rabid antisemite, in a Black history mural in the district, even as he clarified that he disagrees with Farrakhan’s antisemitism... “The Israeli effort to find a dance partner in the Arab world has been hard to find — ’67 war, ’73 War, intifada,” Latimer said. “Now you have a very conservative Israel government — how shocked am I at that? The progressive Israeli governments never got enough cooperation to move forward.”"
Whataboutism is good when it pushes the left wing agenda
So much for all Jews being unconditionally pro-Israel
Jamaal Bowman Rally: Profane, Antisemitic - "While complaining about AIPAC’s efforts to unseat him, Jamaal Bowman stomped up and down a stage shouting profanities while trying to get the crowd worked up in favor of its allegedly persecuted representative... There’s not much more embarrassing than seeing a grown man try his hand at WWE-style stump speeches while whining about his political opponents’ successfully fundraising on all the stupid things he has said and done in the past... The reality is that Bowman is a maliciously stupid man, incapable of understanding cause and effect, who has to be protected by cagier leftists like AOC and Bernie Sanders, who’ve been stumping for him. AIPAC is powerful because Americans overwhelmingly support Israel, just as gun-rights groups are powerful because many Americans believe in the right to bear arms. What leftists like Bowman fail to realize is that these groups are not astroturfed as many of their progressive counterparts are. These organizations are active forms of widely held views — they occur naturally, and Congress responds to majority support far more than it does to any one lobbyist because smart politicians gauge American priorities and at least pay lip service to them."
`Squad' Rep. Jamaal Bowman accuses pro-Israel group of racism - "“That is why AIPAC’s [ American Israel Public Affairs Committee] is coming after us, coming after us with hate, coming after us with bullying, intimidation, and fear. You should see what they’re doing in my district,” Bowman said during a virtual town hall meeting on Monday. After he claimed AIPAC members are lying about his record and calling him antisemitic, Bowman said, “They don’t like my style, I’m a little too radical, I’m a member of the ‘Squad.’ They want to call me the N-word, but they know they can’t get away with that, so they say everything else.”... He’s accused Israel of “genocide” in the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of the Jewish state... A recent poll claimed Latimer led Bowman by 17 points — 52% to 35% — among Democratic primary voters. The survey was conducted by the pro-Latimer group Democratic Majority for Israel. Bowman’s campaign dismissed the poll as rubbish."
From April. Asking accountability of black people is racism
So much for rubbish
Will DiBugno on X - "George Latimer has a little over 6,000 Twitter followers. Jamaal Bowman has a little over 360K Another reminder that Twitter isn’t real life."
Libs of TikTok on X - "Jamaal Bowman randomly yells during his concession speech. He seems totally normal and stable. Can’t imagine why he lost"
Hannah Toth on X - "“For the many not the money” The campaign slogan of a bartender who is miraculously now worth $29 million since entering office….by totally natural causes of course 🙄"
Bowman Descends Into Lunacy - "Bowman has turned against funding for Iron Dome—a purely defensive system—and the Abraham Accords, which expanded normalization with the Arab world and increased Jewish integration in formerly hostile countries. He is against every instrument of peace and every expression of American allyship with our fellow democracy... Temperament-wise, Bowman is volatile. He was recently censured—a rather serious reprimand in the House—for trying to disrupt congressional business by pulling a fire alarm and then lying about it, even though the whole fiasco was on video. (Does Jamaal Bowman not think Congress has security cameras?) As Bowman spins out, he keeps losing backers, such as the left-wing J Street and the progressive erstwhile ally Mondaire Jones. And so he has doubled down on whoever’s left in his camp, which he assumes to be exclusively made up of rabid anti-Semites. His rhetoric has become indistinguishable from that of the Ayatollah Khamenei. Recently he was caught on video saying to a crowd of supporters: “Because I am fighting against genocide, I am being attacked by the Zionist regime we call AIPAC.” A conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, Bowman can be seen ranting that the documented rape of Israelis on Oct. 7 by Hamas is made-up “propaganda.” Yesterday, Jewish Insider revealed that in 2022, as Bowman began alienating every Jewish constituent he could find, he texted a local Jewish community leader: “Do you have pics of us? So I can show the world I’m friends with Jewish People.” That Jewish leader declined to provide such a photo because, he said, “I don’t want to be his court Jew.” In fact, tokenism is a recurring problem with Bowman. He delusionally insists “Thank God I still have a lot of support within the Jewish community,” but he means the As-a-Jewish community... Ironically, many Jews in his old district have now been placed in the district represented by Ritchie Torres, one of the most unflinchingly dependable allies the Jewish community has had in Congress in a very long time. Naturally, then, Bowman spends increasing amounts of time attacking Torres. Bowman specifically accused Torres of cozying up to the Jewish community in a cynical bid for power, neither the first nor the last time Torres will be subject to insidious dog whistles for his crime of standing against anti-Semitism—which at the moment, in progressive circles, requires actual courage."
Jamaal Bowman accused of treating Jews like 'tokens' after asking for pic 'to show the world I'm friends with Jewish people' - "“Bowman tokenizes the Jewish people. Bowman went from bad to worse,” Morgenstern said. Morgenstern said Bowman not only burned bridges with Jewish leaders in the district, he rarely made an effort to establish any connections in the first place. “We tried to meet with him. We made the appointment — and then he cancelled,” Morgenstern said... He also forwarded a letter to The Post he sent to Bowman in 2021, blasting the congressman for saying Israel was murdering “black and brown” Palestinians. “Conflating this age-old conflict with racially charged rhetoric is a betrayal of our entire community, stoking anti-semitic sentiment against Jews and making all of us feel unsafe in our own district,” he said."
Squad Gives 21 Fire Alarm Salute For Their Fallen Comrade Jamaal Bowman | Babylon Bee - "According to sources, Bowman has privately speculated that he lost against his primary challenge because he just didn't hate the Jews quite enough. Jamaal Bowman is survived by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Greg Casar, Summer Lee, and Delia Ramirez."
Vince Langman on X - "If you're having a bad day, here's a 90-second video of AOC crying about that anti-semite racist Jamaal Bowman losing his primary by 20 points 😂😂😂😂😂😂"
AG on X - "Hilarious. Remember when Bowman’s allies, especially in the media, claimed it was racist for Latimer to say Bowman was too focused on representing Dearborn and San Francisco instead of his own district? In Bowman’s post-election speech, he highlights what the “Muslim community” in San Francisco and Dearborn did for him in the race he lost by 17 points."
Ben Shapiro on X - "Jamaal Bowman got his ass kicked because he is a clownish moron who stans for Hamas and doesn’t know how doors work. You can blame AIPAC all you want, but his constituents despised him. Intersectional radicalism is a hell of a drug, and the comedown is brutal."
Meme - Drew Paviou @DrewPavlou: "Jamaal Bowman lost because he was TOO Zionist!! Real communism has never been tried"
Kshama Sawant: "Squad member @JamaalBowmanNY's defeat is a cautionary tale for the Left, and certainly for socialists, about what can happen when leaders break their promises to the working class. Bowman voted to fund the Israeli state's Iron Dome project. With the rest of Squad, he voted to block railroad workers' strike & refused to fight for the $15 wage or Medicare for All. Working people are fed up with being sold out. We need a party of our own, rooted in fighting mass movements."
Meme - Mikel Jollett @Mikel_Jollett: "Bowman was down by 17 points in March, before AIPAC spent a dime. He was down by 17 points three weeks ago, after the ads aired. He then lost by 17. Framing this as some deep, dark conspiracy involving Jews and and money is, uh, a choice."
Latimer Defeats Bowman in Record-Setting NY Primary Shaped by Gaza War - Bloomberg - "He and his supporters will “continue to fight the evils of capitalism, militarism and racism. That is who we are. That is who we are going to continue to be.”... “This race has shown just how impactful everyday people can be to transform our political system. One single middle school principal is such a threat to right wing power, to corporate mega donors, and to AIPAC’s influence,” Usamah Andrabi, a spokesman for the progressive group Justice Democrats, said Tuesday. “It shows now more than ever how strong our progressive movement is.” Bowman’s standing may have been hurt by his sometimes bizarre behavior. He authored blog posts that appeared to give credence to 9/11 conspiracy theories. Last year he was charged with a misdemeanor after pulling a fire alarm in the US Capitol building as members of Congress were attempting to cast a vote. And his recent rally with Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders was held in the South Bronx, which isn’t in his district. “It’s very hard for an incumbent to lose. And Congressman Bowman did everything possible” to make that happen, J.C. Polanco, a political analyst and professor of ethnic and race studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, said in an interview before the race was called. “His team committed incredible political malpractice.”"
Clearly, conservatives who talk about Communism are paranoid far right conspiracy theorists who have fallen prey to misinformation. Meanwhile left wingers can continue to spread their conspiracy theories