NEWTON, Mass.—Rep. Jake Auchincloss spent some of his time and energy Monday night trying to dispel concerns from voters about a takeover of his party by the Democratic Socialists of America.
"We’re talking about 1 percent of primaries. One percent," he said to a standing-room-only crowd of many hundreds at a synagogue here, mentioning recent DSA wins in New York City and Colorado. "Let’s not overindex to a couple of primaries in the media capital of the world."
Yet on the vote he was there to defend—a July 15 vote for the Massie amendment to withhold $3.3 billion in foreign military financing for Israel—Auchincloss himself had joined about half of the House Democrats in taking the same position as the most extreme far-left members—Summer Lee, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Maxine Waters, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The amendment was sponsored by a Republican from Kentucky, Thomas Massie, who was defeated in a primary after repeatedly crossing President Trump and who Auchincloss himself acknowledged ran "a re-election campaign that featured antisemitic tropes."
President Trump marvels regularly at how the Senate Democratic leader, Charles Schumer of New York, who used to be pro-Israel, has become "like a Palestinian." Auchincloss is lower profile than Schumer and much younger (Schumer graduated Harvard College in 1971 and Auchincloss in 2010), but on the basis of Auchincloss’s performance Monday night, it’s pretty much the same pathetic story. The press will try to spin it as how Netanyahu lost America, but one can just as easily see it as the tale of how the Democrats ditched the Jews.
Auchincloss, a Marine veteran who was raised Jewish and whose mother, Dr. Laurie Glimcher, was CEO of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, had amassed a reputation as something of a pro-Israel moderate since winning election in 2020 to a seat that had been held by Joe Kennedy III and before that by Barney Frank. The district includes Newton, Brookline, and Sharon Massachusetts, which are dense with Jewish schools, congregations, bakeries, old age-homes and butcher shops.
The appearance at Temple Emanuel, a large and prosperous congregation that is part of the religiously centrist Conservative movement of Judaism, featured Auchincloss blaming Israel for what he called an illegal war against Iran in which 18 Americans have been killed.
"Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump, they did cook up this catastrophic war together," Auchincloss said, ignoring that Iran has been at war against America for 47 years. "Netanyahu zoomed into the situation room and made a direct pitch to the president."
He said the Iran war featured some of the same problems he saw in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—"groupthink," "sunk cost bias." In other statements and appearances, he’s added the Vietnam War to the list. "I see all of the same mistakes being made," he said.
Auchincloss acknowledged that support for Israel among Democrats is "getting shaky," but insisted that he himself still supports a qualitative military edge for Israel and American diplomatic backing for the Jewish state. He said he supports the Abraham Accords. He tried to downplay the significance of his vote on the grounds that even Prime Minister Netanyahu has said he wants to eliminate U.S. military aid to Israel when the ten-year memorandum of understanding reached with President Obama expires. He said he doesn’t favor an embargo on U.S. arms sales to Israel, but in the context of the war, he wanted to say, "we’re not paying for it, the American taxpayer."
The flaws in the logic came out in the question and answer session. Auchincloss told Michael Segal, a member of the congregation, that he supported continued aid to Jordan.
One audience member announced "We feel abandoned. What do you say to the liberal Jews who are feeling lost?" Auchincloss told them to get involved in state and local politics, not just federal contests.
To a Newton-born U.S.-Israel dual citizen who said Auchincloss’s vote made her less safe, the congressman bristled: "I’m a United States member of Congress," implying that she was somehow suggesting he should put Israel first. "I want our ally Israel to be able to defend itself. Defend itself."
One audience member asked how Auchincloss proposed instead to deal with Iran and its nuclear threat. He did not answer. No one at all mentioned the pro-democracy protesters—30,000? 50,000?—murdered by the Iranian regime. No one asked what message the rest of the world, from Tehran to Taiwan, might draw from the suggestion that America would abandon Jerusalem.
One of the most telling moments in the evening came when the former vice chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, Tom Mountain, rose after Auchincloss’s initial remarks and attempted to offer a Republican response. He was ejected by a trio of security guards.
Not that long ago, if a Massachusetts Democratic member of Congress in a heavily Jewish district threw Israel under the bus, he might expect a public rebuke from a Republican politician such as Governor Mitt Romney or Governor Charlie Baker or Senator Scott Brown. Yet Massachusetts has become functionally a one-party state.
Instead of Republican-Democratic political competition, the main political action now consists of liberals versus progressives, the descendants of the Michael Dukakis-Ted Kennedy-Paul Tsongas Democratic Party against the radical teachers union communist-Hamasniks-Zohran Mamdani types. The moderates see a primary threat from the left as a much bigger danger than a challenge from a Republican. Everyone remembers Ayanna Pressley defeating Rep. Michael Capuano in a 2018 Democratic primary. Some of it is race- and gender-driven but a lot of it is ideological.
It took years after Vietnam for the Democrats to embrace the use of military force in Bosnia and Kosovo. Even then, during the Clinton years, the action against Al Qaeda was perfunctory enough that it was insufficient to avert the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
Auchincloss offered up the analysis that the Iranian revolution "rests on the idea of martyrdom … They want to die." Better them than us. Observing the approach of congressional Democrats toward U.S. national security policy, you can see why Ayatollah Auchincloss is so perceptive about at least that particular dynamic.