Whatever problems the Post Office is having, they haven’t slowed the torrent of anti-Ilhan Omar/pro-Antone Melton-Meaux clogging our mail slot here in the beating heart of the Fifth District. In sheer total mass the accumulating pulp is approaching the heft and gloss of that Restoration Hardware catalogue. Post-primary, the printers handling all this stuff will be kicking back in Cabo for a month.
The cash for attacking Omar is believed to be coming from “bundlers” associated with pro-Israel lobbies, committees and such, as well as Republicans eager to paint Omar’s high-profile immigrant, female, Muslim “radicalism” as a political loser and swap her out for something more mainstream. At this moment I’m not certain if either or both is true. But the size and sophistication of the effort to take out a young, first-term Congresswoman is both extraordinary and more than a little repellent.
I’ve rolled my eyes more than a few times over the past two years at the way Omar has said things as well as moves she’s busted in the context of her squirrely personal melodramas.
IMHO there’s a prima donna factor involved there, as well as, ironically, a tone of entitlement. At the risk of stepping out into the minefield of sexism, what I’ve seen with Omar is not unlike what I’ve seen countless times with other young, female celebrities. Being successful and good-looking buys you a lot of space in modern America. It can go to your head.
That said, I had no second-thoughts about checking her name and mailing in my ballot for her. Having yet to meet the perfect politician, my attitude is that Omar deserves another term, at least to tidy up her personal life and refine her message discipline. You never want to set the bar for comparison as low as utter fools and frauds such as Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, Thomas Massie, Ted Yoho, Matt Gaetz and a dozen other trolls in the Republican caucus. But if they, (mostly sewage-spewing white guys), can hang around DC year after year, Ms. Omar — who may be self-involved but isn’t stupid — deserves at least one more term.
Frankly, I like Omar’s style of in-your-face “radicalism”, and I’m not all that bothered that she hasn’t stuck a sock in it and waited ten years to step up and say what’s on her mind. Despite what Breitbart and OANN and FoxNews are forever hyper-ventilating over, Omar and the rest of the all-female, “ethnic” Squad are hardly on the verge of enacting Sharia Law in ‘Murica, grabbing our guns and forcing us to live on a diet of kale and seaweed.
They remain distinctly minority voices … but with unusual potency in the age of social media.
Far from being detrimental, the noise Omar and the others are making, both impudent and imprudent to the ears of sclerotic institutions like the Star Tribune editorial page, is actually healthy for a functioning democracy. And absolutely vital to one like we have today, which is being rotted out from within by an enormous cast of shameless, homogeneous charlatans. (You want eye-rolling? Zoom me any time the Strib natters on about the anodyne values of “reaching across the aisle”, “consensus-building” and “pragmatism.”)
I don’t know if Nancy Pelosi has ever had a kind of Mother Hen chat with Omar. But certainly someone explained to her the hellfire she’d face if she dropped so much as a syllable of negativity about America’s carte blanche commitment to “Israel”, which is synonymous with “Benjamin Netanyahu” as far as too many Americans are concerned. Netanyahu is as flagrantly corrupt as Donald Trump, and as long as his kind holds power in Israel we need someone with a high Congressional profile asking, “Exactly what in hell are we doing here?”
Ms. Omar is hardly a bashful flower. She likes the stage and the lights. No one will confuse her with quiet, plodding Marty Sabo. And that’s good. This is a wildly different time.
The Squad is .92% of the current Congress. The GOP’s Orwellian-named Freedom Caucus is nine times as large, and none of them are enduring a flash flood of attack cash during their primary campaign.
Stylistically and tactically Omar has things to learn. And if she doesn’t, her 2022 race may be a different story. But right now she’s a valuable voice because she’s unique and because she won’t quietly relent to brute tradition.
The Fifth District can live with that just fine.
Thank you again, Brian. I agree with you!!
Thx, Mary.
We lived in your district before we moved to Florida and were proud to vote for Keith Ellison, another person who often ruffled feathers. We would have voted for Omar happily. Especially compared to our Florida Rep who has spent the last three plus years pretending Donald Trump doesn’t exist — our rep is one of those spineless republicans who is letting trump get away with murder. We need rowdy voices like Omar’s. We need some legislators who raise hell and kick ass — as long as they are smart, pay attention to facts, listen to voices other than their own, analyze, and work from a core set of beliefs beyond their own advancement. You go, Ilhan!
I pity the Florida Man representing your district.
This is a Spotty winner.
I disagree. I voted for Antone. Ilhan just does not impress me as particularly intelligent, and Antone has the same basic set of policies with what appears to be far more personal integrity. I expect that he will be more effective at getting things done (even though he might not get under the skin of the Trumpists quite as much).
The only qualm I have about voting for Antone is that it might make the Trumpists happy if she loses. That does bother me a bit, but as someone who feels that people who vote for Trump because he causes the libs to get their undies in a bundle are shortsighted, well, I don’t want to be shortsighted as well.
And all the money pouring in also kind of upsets me, and I understand that many of the people who are supporting Antone financially probably don’t like his politics at all (they just hate Ilhan more), and I don’t like being associated with them, but still, I think that Antone is the better person for the job. And, besides, I was sort of hoping that Kobach might just win his primary last week (and so get another Dem Senate seat in KY!).
But if Ilhan wins the primary, I will certainly be voting for her in the general election, and, like you, Brian, I’ll be hoping that she pulls her act together over the next 2 years.
If it weren’t for this fake virus thing I’d make you buy me a beer at Salut!
If these were ordinary times, you might have a valid argument. I don’t live in the 5th CD, so my comments are gratuitous, but since money from outside the district has been poured into it, here’s my “two cents worth”:
Don’t ignore what’s obvious. Our political system is terminally corrupt; the Trump regime is steadily shredding whatever was left of our Constitutional separation of powers, bringing us to the brink of dictatorship—and a second term for the maggot will leave us like the Romans under Caligula, still with the form of a republic but who’s kidding?
Every single electoral contest this year must be evaluated in the context of the mortal struggle for America’s–and the biosphere’s–very existence. That’s what’s at stake. The symbolism of Rep. Omar versus Trump and all that he embodies, transcends everything else. A defeat for Omar becomes a national story of a win for Trump. A win for Trump, right now, is exactly what he needs to reverse the field. What rationale justifies handing Trump the biggest political boost that he can’t procure by his own effort? I just don’t know what sort of “things” you expect your Representative to “get done.” None of them can possibly be as important as trying to resist the reality of tyranny. Rep. Omar can be and should be held accountable for her follies and her real errors like acting as a tool of Turkish genocide deniers. Just not this year, when everything across the entire political spectrum must of necessity be refracted through the lens of our nation’s and our planet’s critical moment of life-or-death decision. The boost to Trump if Omar loses will tilt the table so strongly, will be touted as a signal of backlash, that the political benefit nationally to the Know-nothing party will totally eclipse any remote chance that the new freshman DFL congressthing would get to Washington in January and find himself empowered to somehow “get things done” for the home folks. I mean no disrespect to the challenger. But the avalanche of campaign money coming to his cause from rightist sources speaks louder than anything else. His failure to reject and disavow such backing stands in contrast to the principled stands of true progressives like Paul Wellstone or Russ Feingold. His triumph in today’s primary election would assuredly get ONE THING done—restore morale and momentum to Trump’s popular base as he maneuvers to suppress voting, consolidate personal power, and perpetuate his empire of corruption.
The idea of all that Antone cash propping up a Trump claim of victory over “Muslim radicals” stuck in my mind, too. Now that you’ve won, Mam, choose your words and fights more wisely.
As someone who is Sephardic on my mother’s side, Ilhan’s comments about “the Benjamins” concern me, as did reports of her meeting with the Jewish community after the first round of those comments. Althoughly the comments were not blatantly anti-Semitic, they didn’t need to be. People tuned in to the appropriate wavelength picked up on the tropes.
Most people with ties to the Jewish community are watching with apprehension as anti-Semitism continues to grow on the Left. This is happening on campuses, social media, and in public spaces. I’m not just talking about the BDS movement (which not all Jews consider to be anti-Semitic) — I am talking about posters and images that mimic the ugliest stereotypes from the 1930s, and verbal (and sometimes physical) attacks on Jews in political and academic settings.
Antone did graduate work in Hebrew studies as part of his theology training, and delivered a Dvar Torah at a Jewish Community Relations Council meeting in Saint Paul several years ago. His attitude toward the Jewish community is respectful and friendly, in contrast to Ilhan’s thinly veiled contempt. People wondering why those living outside the district might contribute to Antone’s campaign might want to consider that for many of us Ilhan exhibits attitudes that are a grave cause for worry.
Well, as a guy who spent four months planting and picking grapefruit and baling straw on a kibbutz, I have no problem being a resolute defender of Israel. My problem is that I wish Netanyahu and the country’s medieval religious conservatives had the same appreciation of democracy. Omar’s glibnesss and lack of specifcity in comments about Israel caused her needless torment. But as I say, a high(-ish) profile critic of carte blanche support for Netanyahu offers at least some counterweight to the usual blind allegiance.