How Obama Out-Muscled Aipac

Senator Richard Durbin is on a long list of Democrats who have dismayed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The same Richard Durbin who owes his political career to Aipac. In 1982, Aipac members supported Durbin, then an obscure college professor, against Paul Findley’s campaign for reelection to the House as retribution for Findley’s outspoken advocacy on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 2015, Durbin not only supported the president’s Iran agreement against Aipac’s wishes, he also helped organize his fellow Democrats to defend it. “He has been a great disappointment to the pro-Israel community,” says Morris Amitay, a former executive director of Aipac.

Other disappointments include Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House minority whip, who led this year’s Aipac-funded trip of House Democratic freshmen to Israel; and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who was an early sponsor of Iran sanctions legislation when he got to Congress. Earlier in the summer, Aipac’s leaders believed it was possible to win the support of red state Democratic senators such as Montana’s Jon Tester, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp. (Republicans didn’t need to be persuaded to vote against Obama.) In the end, all of those Democrats supported the Iran agreement, and even helped block a vote on a resolution in the Senate to formally disapprove it.