About a decade ago, with the Iraq War fading as a source of Democratic infighting, the party ramped up its efforts to recruit veterans and national-security professionals as candidates for office as a bulwark against its more radical members gaining too much control over the party.
Few epitomized this new Responsible Adult Democrat as much as Seth Moulton, the Marine recruited for a successful 2014 primary challenge against a scandal-plagued Massachusetts liberal named John Tierney. Moulton won, and was deemed the template for a the national-service Democrats.
Moulton is now running for Senate in Massachusetts, attempting to do to incumbent Democrat Ed Markey what he did in 2014 to Tierney. Unfortunately, in the interim years Moulton lost his bid to remake the Democrats in his image and is now remaking his own career in the far-left’s image.
Moulton 2026: If You Can’t Beat ’Em, Join ’Em.
Moulton has a new pinned tweet—meaning it’s the first thing he wants you to see when you visit his feed: “I am returning AIPAC donations and refusing to accept any donations or support from them. The FEC filing I made yesterday reflects that we are returning donations.”
Although anti-Israel folks have long ascribed supernatural powers to the veteran pro-Israel group, more moderate Democrats have resisted joining the false and gratuitous attacks on Jewish supporters of Israel. No more. Moulton has put out a statement that begins “I’m a supporter of Israel’s right to exist, but…”—a sign that nothing good will follow those words.
The anti-AIPAC movement has found success on the left but it is not limited to that side of the aisle. The far left and far right—the latter of whom have failed to replicate the left’s success in making AIPAC toxic politically—have for some time been pushing for the American organization to be forced to register as a foreign agent. Progressives and white nationalists have united behind the trope of the “disloyal Jew.” The foreign-agent campaign also has its roots in a conspiracy theory holding that the Israelis assassinated John F. Kennedy because the president had shared these activists’ suspicions of Jewish money.
Moulton, it should be noted, is not the first national-security Democrat to cannonball into this pool of nonsense. In 2018, Elissa Slotkin was elected to a Michigan congressional seat. Slotkin is a veteran of the CIA and the Defense Department with a focus on Middle East affairs. Last year, she successfully ran for U.S. Senate. She is also Jewish, so one would think she would be more sensitive to Elders of Zion-style conspiracy theories. Alas, when Sen. Slotkin appeared for an interview with far-left anti-Zionists in July and was asked directly whether AIPAC ought to be forced to register as an agent of a foreign government working on behalf of the Jewish state, Slotkin responded: “I don’t know the answer to that. I think that I know plenty of people who think they should.”
Here we have a Jewish former CIA employee feeding the flames of a global Jewish conspiracy theory. So Seth Moulton is in good company; which is to say, he is in bad company.
Winking at these conspiracy theorists is all the rage among Democratic officeholders with higher aspirations. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California progressive who mostly talks about Jeffrey Epstein when he’s not badmouthing AIPAC, is likely to run for president in the next cycle. Yet to Khanna’s credit, his hatred of AIPAC and his desire to capitalize on his base’s suspicions of the group haven’t stopped him from at least slapping down the claim that AIPAC should register as a foreign agent.
“They’re American citizens,” Khanna has said. “If you’re an American citizen and you’re articulating a point of view, that’s your right. … They’re American citizens. They’re lobbying for their interests. They’re lobbying for the Netanyahu government’s interests because they think that’s what benefits America.”
Unfortunately, Khanna made that statement in an interview with an anti-Zionist filmmaker for a video including anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists such as Ian Carroll. Khanna also repeats in the video the debunked lie about Israel’s supposed intentional starvation of civilians.
Khanna posted a clip of the video on his Twitter account. The video he posted begins with Carroll saying to the camera: “Ninety-three out of 100 U.S. senators were taking money from a group that represents a foreign government and foreign interests in order to operate our government on behalf of someone else,” as a Star of David in American flag colors appears on screen.
So the best Democrats can do is a congressman who says AIPAC isn’t a foreign agent but then posts on social media a video of a Holocaust distortionist explicitly saying that AIPAC is the agent of a foreign government?
As a dedicated progressive, Khanna can be expected to wade into these extremist waters. But Moulton, like Slotkin, was supposed to stand athwart the screeching Jew-baiters and conspiracist slop-artists. That he believes he needs them in order to win a Senate seat is an ominous sign for the direction of American politics.
