If it's a day ending in "day," there's a candidate looking to exploit Democratic base Hamasnik sentiment to edge out an establishment Democrat somewhere in America.
But the Democratic primary in Massachusetts' sixth district– which will determine who occupies the seat in January, with a Cook D+11 partisan rating– has seen one of the more jaw-dropping instances with candidate Tram Nguyen executing an Olympic Gold-level flip flop on the issue of Gaza, and alleged genocide there, that would make 2008-era Mitt Romney blush.
Yesterday afternoon, the Hamasnik group "AIPAC Tracker" announced its endorsement of Nguyen.
Minutes later, Nguyen tweeted her thanks and compared the Israeli government to Vietnam's communist regime, which she fled as a child:
This was a rehash of the line Nguyen deployed back on August 13, when she tweeted that "As someone who fled an authoritarian regime, I know the devastating human cost of violence and displacement,"
Nguyen added, "The genocide in Gaza must come to an end. It's time to stop writing blank checks for forever wars."
All of her Gaza positioning seems to have helped bank an endorsement from Squad member, Rep. Ayanna Pressley:
But here's the rub: Nguyen used to be about as anti-Hamas, and AIPAC-aligned as, well, Republican Senator and arch-neoconservative hawk Tom Cotton.
As Hamas-sympathetic lefty writer Ryan Grim pointed out, "In January, in a questionnaire she filled out for Mass Peace Action, Tram Nguyen said that an arms embargo on Israel would result in Palestinians committing genocide against Israelis. Now in August she is supporting exactly that arms embargo."
Record scratch.
As lefty investigative outlet Sludge previously noted, "an AIPAC-linked super PAC has spent $450k boosting MA-06 Dem candidate Tram Nguyen..."
That was observed after Nguyen's shift toward the Young Turks default position began– but likely hinged on her prior comments, as reported by Grim.
What's behind the movement? Nguyen looking for any possible edge to best Biden White House staffer Dan Koh in the district being vacated by Rep. Seth Moulton.
Nguyen's prior comments have left lots of the "Gaza genocide" crowd on X doubtful of her commitment to the cause.
Nonetheless, this is all another sad reminder that the quickest route to banking a victory in a blue state Democratic primary these days is to line up with Hamasniks and reject any pro-Israel support– even if it's helped to get you where you already were in the campaign.
And that says nothing good about the state of the current Democratic Party.
As a side note, the issue with Vietnam's regime isn't that it's "authoritarian." It's its communist status, which within Nguyen's lifetime including her period in Vietnam, went well beyond the harshness of government seen in, say, the majority of 1980's era Latin America. Vietnam had literal reeducation camps, and some people were held in them for eighteen years following the end of the Vietnam War. That would, by the way, be years after Nguyen exited her country of birth, and whatever one thinks of Prime Minister Netanyahu, it's quite something to compare the Israeli government to that particular regime.
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