At 2 a.m. Michigan time early Wednesday morning, NBC projected that AIPAC's preferred candidate was on her way to look for a new job. US Rep. Haley Stevens' defeat in Michigan's Democratic Senate primary is the last nail in AIPAC's coffin. The once-feared Israel lobby is sinking, along with Israel, like a stone in American public opinion. Despite sixty-to-one spending against Abdul El-Sayed, Stevens couldn't keep her head above water. AIPAC and its Israel-first billionaire funders turned Michigan into the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in American history and lost anyway.

Just think about it for a second: a PAC that backs a conservative candidate who champions tax cuts for billionaires in one congressional district while simultaneously bankrolling a liberal, like Stevens, who wants to tax the wealthy in another is not advancing a coherent American political interest. If the only principle uniting those otherwise incongruent endorsements is unwavering support for Israel, then the PAC is driven not by a domestic ideology or constituency, but by a foreign policy agenda.

Now, after spending millions to elect a Democrat, Stevens, AIPAC is all but certain to pour millions more into backing Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate, in November—not for the sake of Michiganders or Americans, but for Israel. That is the essence of AIPAC: partisan differences are irrelevant so long as the candidate serves Tel Aviv's interests.

The Democratic establishment squandered its remaining credibility kowtowing to AIPAC, the most powerful foreign lobby, widening the chasm between the Democratic base and its leadership. AIPAC funding and endorsements from Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer and Gretchen Whitmer carried little weight in Democratic primaries.

Ask Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York. Ask Dan Goldman, also of New York. Ask Diana DeGette, a 15-term Colorado congresswoman who represented Denver since Bill Clinton's first term. All three lost their seats in the same six weeks, and all three— and despite AIPAC backing—lost for the same reason: they stood with Israel, or wouldn't say the word "genocide," while their own voters had moved on without them. In Michigan, the Democratic establishment's endorsements, and its push to have State Senator Mallory McMorrow drop from the race to consolidate the anti-El-Sayed "Democratic" vote, failed on its face. This is further evidence that the party's base and its leadership are living in two different universes when it comes to Israel.

For seven decades, unconditional support for Israel was table stakes in Democratic politics; the safe position that kept Israel-first billionaires and AIPAC's money flowing and primary challengers away. That math has broken. Staying quiet while Gaza starves and burns is now one of the fastest ways for a Democrat to lose an election.

Espaillat had AIPAC's backing when Darializa Avila Chevalier, a former organizer of Columbia University's Gaza encampment, beat him in New York's 13th District. Goldman, who refused throughout his campaign to call Israel's conduct in Gaza a genocide, lost to fellow New Yorker Brad Lander, a Jewish candidate and the city's well known comprtoller who ran explicitly against Goldman's Israel record. Then came DeGette, a Congressional Progressive Caucus stalwart, unseated by 29-year-old Democratic socialist Melat Kiros despite a late injection of AIPAC-linked outside spending........

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