Failing
to learn from the humiliating losses of the last election,
establishment Democrats continue to cater to their oligarchical
donors while rejecting the party’s progressive base and its future.
By
Whitney Webb
Part
3 - Perez’s campaign for DNC chair was straight out of the Clinton
playbook
Perez’s commitment to Clinton-esque campaign
strategies was made evident by his own recent campaign for DNC chair.
Just like Perez had once helped Clinton play the “race card” in
casting a majority of Sanders supporters as “white,” Perez’s
campaign for DNC chair benefited from a vicious smear campaign
against his opponent, Ellison, in which Ellison, a Muslim, was
accused of being anti-Semitic.
This attack on Ellison was launched by the largest
funder of both the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign,
Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban. Ellison’s track record as
a “measured critic” of Israel’s occupation of Palestine is
clearly at odds with the views of Saban, who has stated, “I’m
a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.”
Just a few weeks after Ellison launched his bid for DNC
chair, Saban called Ellison “an anti-Semite and anti-Israel
individual,” adding that Ellison’s election “would be a
disaster for the relationship between the Jewish community and the
Democratic Party.” Saban’s influence within the establishment
wing cannot be understated, having donated $2.4 million to the
Clintons’ various campaigns and more than $15 million to the
Clinton Foundation. He also donated $7 million to the construction of
the DNC’s headquarters in 2001.
Following Saban’s invective, Jewish groups began to
announce that they had become “uncomfortable” with the prospect
of Ellison as DNC chair. Some even remarked that the last thing the
Democrats needed to attract Rust Belt voters was to elect a black
Muslim as the face of the party, despite the fact that Ellison was
born in Detroit and raised in the Rust Belt.
Notable Jewish Democrats, such as Harvard law professor
Alan Dershowitz, vowed to abandon the party were Ellison to become
the next DNC chair. Dershowitz cited Ellison’s allegedly “long
history of sordid association with anti-Semitism” as the
motivating factor for his not-so-veiled threat. Even though Ellison
had the support of over 300 rabbis and Jewish community leaders along
with several establishment Democrats coming to his defense, he was
unable to shake off the barrage of accusations.
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