Lost in a number of startling upsets for Republicans last night is the sad fact that other terrible people on the ballot won. The biggest losers in a wave of deplorables: Jews and the #MeToo movement.
Anti-Semites from both parties prevailed last night, most notably Republican Rep. Steve King and Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, both first time national candidates from Minnesota. While King always flirted with nationalism and hard stances on immigration, he spent the latter end of the midterm season publicly endorsing, retweeting, and cavorting with white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee himself disavowed King’s descent into outright anti-Semitism and racism, yet King still scraped by with re-election.
Omar and Tlaib have been feted in the national news media for becoming the first Muslim women in Congress, gracing the cover of magazines and becoming the subjects of glowing profiles. However, omitted from all of that oozing reporting is the inconvenient truth that Omar and Tlaib are about as anti-Semitic as King.
Tlaib has embraced a one-state solution and denying the Jews their right to a sovereign nation. “Separate but equal does not work,” she said in an interview, citing her Palestinian heritage as her rationale. (Funny how fellow Rep. Justin Amash, who is largely isolationist on foreign policy, has never used his Palestinian heritage as a scapegoat; Amash publicly supports a two-state solution.)
Like King, the company Tlaib keeps gives the lie to her intentions. In 2014, she headlined a BDS rally with a fellow speaker, Dawud Walid, a flagrant anti-Semite who has blamed the “wrath of Allah” on “the Jews.” Tlaib is also a friend of Linda Sarsour and an admirer of Rasmea Odeh, an anti-Semitic terrorist.
Omar’s rhetoric is far more openly unhinged on the matter. In 2014, Omar tweeted, “Israel has hypnotizes the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” This year she called Israel an “apartheid regime.”
Yet all three won last night, to limited media outrage if any at all.
The #MeToo movement also faced a blow in the election of Tony Cardenas to Congress and the election of Keith Ellison, Omar’s predecessor, as Minnesota attorney general.
Cardenas faces a lawsuit that he drugged and sexually assaulted a teenager in 2007, with a Los Angeles Superior Court deeming that a “meritorious basis” case exists for the case to go froward. The California Democrat sailed to election as national Democrats like Nancy Pelosi remained silent on the issue, even as demonstrators called on Cardenas to resign.
Ellison has been accused of domestic violence by an ex-girlfriend, Karen Monahan, who has multiple contemporaneous, corroborating witnesses, medical notes documenting her distress after the abuse, and CNN report which found that in her mention that Ellison physically assaulted her, Ellison did not refute her version of events. National Democrats stood by Ellison. He is now the state’s attorney general, responsible for granting — or denying — justice to victims of abuse and assault.
Let’s not forget the anti-Semitism and violence against women condoned by voters yesterday, and just how much further as a society we still have to go.
