The Washington Post eventually came to its senses, but not before all the wrong people saw how it characterized the race to replace former Representative Eric Swalwell in California: “AIPAC has a new target to exert influence over Democrats.”
A far more neutral headline subsequently took its place, but the original is instructive. The actual candidates in the race were, to the reporters and editors who crafted it, immaterial. They weren’t even rendered one-dimensional caricatures, players in the political press’s solipsistic morality play. They were erased. So, too, were the voters of California’s 14th district. In their place was a contest of power between one lobby — and a mob boss of a lobby, at that — and the Democratic Party, a unified entity beset by malign outside forces.
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