The Reasons Jamaal Bowman Lost, Part 2: Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush Came To Power Differently But Their Stylistic Similariites Led To Their Primary Defeats

 

 

Like Jamaal Bowman Cori Bush, who represented Missouri’s 1^st District is a member of ‘The Squad.” Like Bowman Bush was elected to the House in 2020. And like Bowman, Bush lost in her primary to challenger Wesley Bell. The margin was not as dramatic as in the case of Bowman’s defeat – Bush lost by six percentage points to Bowman’s double-digit margin – but the fact remains Bush is the second member of ‘The Squad’ to lose to a primary challenger this cycle.

There are critical differences between Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. The most critical one is that unlike Bowman, and indeed the rest of the Squad who all have their districts in heavily blue states, Bush represents Missouri, a heavily red state. It has not been carried by the Democrats in a Presidential election this century and it remains highly unlikely that it will for the foreseeable future. The Governor and Senators of the state are both Republican and in 2018, not even the huge voter turnout was able to save three-term incumbent Claire McAskill to losing to Josh Hawley. And of the eight congressional seats Missouri has, only two are held by Democrats of which only Bush and Emanuel Cleaver are the sole Democratic representatives. Bush’s district, which covers St. Louis, is heavily Democratic.

Unlike Bowman Bush attempted to run for Congress previously. In 2018, she described herself as ‘an insurgent candidate’ and was endorsed by the Justice Democrats. Her campaign was featured in the Documentary Knock Down The House which center on four Justice Democrats running. Her campaign against Lacy Clay, the current representative of the District, went badly. Clay beat her by nearly twenty points. She had also run for Democratic primary in the Senate two year’s earlier and finished a distant second to Jason Kander.

The third time was the charm – by a hair. She ran against Clay again, and this time she was endorsed by almost everybody in the progressive circle including Bowman. She managed to beat Lacy Clay, who’d represented the district for ten terms and whose family had been St. Louis politics for more than half a century. Her margin was just over three percent and in one of the most heavily Democratic districts in the country won with 78 percent of the vote.

Despite her and Bowman’s victories the 2020 election had a clear sign that the left – and honestly all of America – missed in hindsight. The 2020 election was clearly more of a mandate against Trump and his handling of Covid then it was one for the Democrats and certainly the Progressives. At a Congressional level the Democrats underperformed Biden, running more than two  million and a half votes behind him nationwide while the Republicans gained fourteen seats in the House of Representatives. It was the first time since 2004 the GOP had made gains in the House during a Presidential election year. No Republican incumbent was defeated for reelection and thirteen incumbent Democrats lost. This led to the smallest Democratic majority since 1942. They also underperformed in the Senate, failing to flip several seats that were considered competitive and only getting a majority due to the Georgia run-off elections two months later. The Democrats had underperformed  incredibly at a Congressional level, nearly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

So given that  the Democrats narrow majorities in both houses of Congress and her own controversies throughout her own career, the prudent course for Bush would have been to exercise caution. But immediately after she was sworn in she posted a photo on Twitter of herself with the six current members of the Squad and the caption ‘SQUAD UP’

Then hours after January 6^th, Bush introduced a resolution to remove every Republican who supported attempts to overturn the 2020 election from the House. This resolution, to be very clear, had absolutely no chance of being passed in Congress or carried out if it was. It wasn’t clear how ‘removal’ would work: impeachment or expelling and either was a long, drawn out process for a single Congressman or Senator much less all of them and in either case, it would require two-thirds of either House which would no doubt mean in many cases the ‘conspirators’ would have to vote to remove themselves. It was a purely performative gesture – which is exactly why Bush made it. Performative gestures are what the Squad contribute to the dialogue. They are there to move fast and break things, which is not how democracy is supposed to function.

In November Bush, along with Bowman,  was one of six House Democrats to break with their party and vote against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act because it was not accompanied by the Build Back Better Act. As I mentioned before the main reason for this argument was because Biden had committed the cardinal sin of ‘compromising’ with Joe Manchin. Progressives as we know are the only people who think half a loaf is worse than nothing which is the only logic by which Bell and Bowman voted against the bill.

Yet even that paled to what by then had become a glaring hypocrisy in regard to Bush’s own background. For her career as an activist Bush had been one of the biggest advocates for the ‘defund the police’ movement. But by August of her first year in Congress she was already spending tens of thousands of dollars on personal security for herself. When she was challenged by this on August 5^th, her reaction was simple – and mind-boggling: “I get to be here to do the work, so suck it up – and defunding the police has to happen.”  By 2021 calls to defund the police had become unpopular and some cities who shifted funding away from law enforcement reversed course. Bush stuck with her position, despite the challenges to public safety in her district and a federal investigation into the money she was spending on private security – that her husband was providing.

All of this just led to the perfect storm that began after October 7^th. Like Bowman, the Jewish community locally had viewed her with skepticism along with her associations with people with anti-Semitic views. But rather than engage with Jewish community leaders, Bush ignored them, meeting with them only once after four years in office. Numerous organizations made requests for her time  and Bush’s response was glib “my trick to dealing with groups with whom (I) disagree is to simply ignore their calls.” Even after Bell emerged as a challenger against her, Bush continued to double down on her rhetoric, equating the Middle East to her own actions as an activist.

Political talent, as a Missouri columnist wrote in the aftermath of Bush’s defeat last night is rooted in dexterity: “to appeal to a wide variety of constituencies without significant internal contradictions…Candidates with dexterity are not only able to expand their base, but in some cases can neutralize or even convert key individuals and groups who once constituted significant obstacles…It doesn’t mean you lack convictions…it means you have the ability to frame those convictions in different settings, to emphasize certain issues in certain venues; to adopt a demeanor suitable for the group, yet without seeming like a chameleon.”

This behavior, natural to the long term survival of the elected politician, is anathema to extremists on both sides of the political aisle and historically, progressives have had less ability to do so than conservatives. As I’ve repeatedly written and will continue to write, the left believes that it is not their job to change their views but the rest of the world to change theirs to meet them. This is certainly true in the case of Bush, who chose to hug tighter base rather than court those who might have voted for her. As with Bowman, that was a huge part of why she lost yesterday.

Bush spent much of the days leading up to the campaign insisted that her opponent was trying to buy her seat, insisting that if voters were still in line when the polls were closed to stay in line. Bowman was one of those who made fundraising calls for her referring to her as a ‘powerful truth teller’.

There were no signs in Bush’s ‘concession speech’ that she was humbled by her loss. “One thing I don’t do is go away,” she said. She was the only Democratic incumbent who faced a primary challenge who lost last night but I have little doubt that, like with so many defeated progressives, her reaction will be to put the blame anywhere but themselves. Like Bowman, she did as much to bring about her primary defeat as anyone else. I’m certain Bowman never told her that when he signed on to help her.