Bush more or less disappeared from St. Louis to lead a life in Washington after winning her first race in 2020, and people back home noticed.
I remember not long ago, in mid June, the only story anyone wanted to talk about was the defeat of “Squad” member Jamaal Bowman in his New York Democratic primary. I certainly made great sport of Bowman’s career — it was impossible as a writer not to be a little sad to see a source of such endless content extinguished — and even after he got defenestrated by his own voters due to his post-October 7 journey down madman’s row, it seemed like the “Squad backlash” narrative would at least continue to simmer over the next week or so.
And then Joe Biden strode out onto a debate stage in Georgia two days later, and everyone promptly forgot Jamaal Bowman even existed.
So I apologize for being late to the Cori Bush party, folks, but it’s been a truly wild July: The president doesn’t always drop out of his own reelection campaign due to mental incapacity after his opponent has been shot in the head on television, after all. And I otherwise wouldn’t have missed out, for observers had long pegged the Missouri representative — and Squad member — as being extremely vulnerable in her primary to St. Louis County prosecutor Wes Bell; her thumping came as no surprise by the time August had rolled around.
The editors have already done a fine — and appropriately savage — job of celebrating Bush’s political demise, for it was well-earned. But there is a key point that remains to be made about the loss — namely how it is quite distinguishable from Bowman’s. Yes, they were both antisemitic Squad members, and AIPAC also invested real money in defeating both. But they were not defeated for the same reasons.
Bowman primarily represented suburban Westchester County, N.Y. — a constituency with a sizable number of very angry Jewish Democrats personally invested in removing Bowman because of his anti-Israeli antics. When AIPAC and other political opponents hit Bowman in ads and mailers, they went straight at his vulgar antisemitic rhetoric and praise for Hamas, because it was obviously top of mind for so many of the voters in that race, Jewish or otherwise.
Meanwhile Cori Bush’s district is overwhelmingly urban and African-American — not the profile of a voter base that historically likes to turf out its own incumbents. So what happened here? Bush did not lose her race because of her antisemitism (which AIPAC’s advertising rarely touched upon); she lost because she abandoned her district and displayed contempt for her voters. As NR’s editorial points out, Bush’s history of antics stretches back to even before her 2020 arrival in Washington, D.C. — we’re talking about a woman so self-important that she protested outside the Democratic National Convention in the midst of her first campaign! — but what truly alienated her from her district was her vote against Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan back in late 2021 — because her pet “woke” racial projects were not inserted into it. She retained the endorsement of the construction and trade unions in her district in 2022 only because she lacked a credible challenger. This year, nearly all of them defected.
Bush more or less disappeared from St. Louis to lead a life in Washington after winning her first race in 2020, and people back home noticed: She became increasingly unwilling to meet with constituents (skipping town-hall meetings and events) and evinced far more interest in seeking publicity and TV exposure from any camera willing to tolerate her. Cori Bush ended her electoral career on Tuesday with a foul-mouthed rant about AIPAC, promising “I’m coming to tear your kingdom down” like some bloodshot-eyed messianic sociopath. But the irony of it all is her loss had nothing to with the Jews — it came about because she failed to tend to the home fire, and it finally winked out.