What Left-Wing Democrats Haven’t Learned From Defeat

If those on the left wing of the Democratic Party hope to exercise power and bend the national party to their will, they might try to stifle any self-righteousness and learn different lessons from Representative Jamaal Bowman’s defeat. In a primary earlier this week, the soon-to-be-former member of Congress from New York took less than 42 percent of the vote—finishing 17 points behind the winner, Westchester County Executive George Latimer.

Bowman remained curiously unreflective about his varied missteps, particularly his decision to center attacks on Israel in a district with a significant population of liberal Jewish voters whose sympathies for that country run deep. Last November, he addressed a pro-Palestine rally and insisted that there was “no evidence” Hamas attackers had raped Israeli women. That, he said, was an Israeli “lie.” It was a stunning moment, not least because the last week—seven months later—did Bowman finally offer a brief apology for those remarks.