Sometimes it’s really hard to keep track of it all, as we consider what motivates our leadership and what we can reasonably expect from Democrats. Matt, that wild, meshuga guy, gives a terrific primer that’s clear and direct. Get ready, blogmates, we’re takin’ on the big leagues now:

You see, both Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton are considering switching their vote on Bolton, and there’s probably a bunch of Senators who will follow them. Schumer in particular has been awful, publicly saying that there will probably be no filibuster of Bolton. So here we have a clear progressive electoral victory over the most right-wing Democrat, combined with a horrible year for Bush and a clearly disastrous foreign policy, and yet his nominee to the UN has an easier path to nomination. Why would Democrats even consider ratifying Bush’s foreign policy through Bolton?

Many of you will not like this answer, just as I didn’t like discovering it, but the reality is that right-wing wealthy neoconservatives whose pet project is Israel are the ones who are forcing the Democrats to the right. After 9/11, a special breed of incredibly wealthy coastal elites that I call ’Bloomberg Democrats’ after their desire to have Michael Bloomberg run on a third party Presidential unity ticket went sharply to the right in their foreign policy thinking. Lieberman is part of this group, always supportive of Israeli hawkishness, but whose fearful instincts were unleashed by 9/11. Torture, lies, dead soldiers, a collapse of American moral authority - all of these pale in comparison to Islamofascism, but it’s cool, because they are pro-choice and made a lot of money. That’s the type.

While originally distinct from the main branch of neoconservatives whose focus was Iraq, the Bloomberg Democrats have gradually conflated their sympathies towards Israel with a bloody desire to get rid of the American ’honest broker’ status in the Middle East, and have become fully integrated into the neoconservative mainstream. While once they were just pro-Israel as I am, like many progressive Jews I moved left, while Bloomberg Democrats have graduated to become full-fledged neoconservative sociopaths. Even as the Israeli public itself is no longer particularly enthusiastic about its Lebanese incursion, AIPAC’s hold on Congress prevents any real discussion of American Israeli interests in any context but that of Israel getting 100% blind support for anything it wants to do, even if what it wants to do is spy on America. It’s the ’with us or against us’ mindset.

This neocon PAC money is incredibly pervasive among both parties, and that it’s now being used to push Bolton significantly changes the battle lines of his renomination. Israel wasn’t a factor in Bolton’s first nomination; now Bolton and Israel are seen as the same thing, and the AIPAC neocons have moved in their artillery behind his nomination. Schumer’s amazingly successful DSCC fundraising has come at least in some part from this neoconservative money, and Senator Clinton is making the rounds. Her latest fundraiser was with Norpac, a neoconservative Israel-focused PAC that has lent support to Bush/Cheney ’04, Rick Santorum, Jon Kyl, Mike Ferguson, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Steny Hoyer, Conrad Burns, Bob Menendez, and Nancy Pelosi. Even though you might think that the Lieberman defeat would embolden the Democrats, the Bolton fight and the Lieberman loss have been linked together explicitly by neo-conservative PACs, and prominent orthodox right-wing Jewish leaders are calling on Jews to abandon the Democratic Party for being insufficiently supportive of Israel’s failed war in Lebanon.

The sad hijacking of Jewish political activism by right-wing neoconservative crazies is complete. If you’re not with Lieberman, if you’re not with Bolton, if you’re not with the far right of the Israeli political spectrum, you’re not pro-Israel. I have to say, it’s pretty frustrating. Every time I find a political obstacle to a more progressive American posture abroad, it seems like there’s another more hidden and intractable one behind it. It’s shocking to me that there are no effective progressive Jewish groups focusing on foreign policy. The only ones I’ve seen are pathetic, wonkified, and largely unwilling to deal with the reality of a crazy domestic right-wing leadership structure.

Anyway, with the war in Lebanon ending and Lieberman’s defeat showing that there’s a political constituency for a sane multi-lateral approach to foreign policy, the Democratic Party has a real opportunity on its hands to stake out a progressive foreign policy path. That starts with Bolton. Or rather, Bolton will show which Democrats really understand what Connecticut Democrats were trying to say, and which ones are only listening, despite all the populist outrage in the hinterland, to the Beltway elite.

There’s more and plenty of livelinks in the post. Good job, Matt. Always valuable to remind us of who are the important friends of the party.