Democrats’ shameful refusal to fund the Pentagon is making AOC the heart of the party

Credit Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with embodying the lunacy that has Democrats united against funding the US military: She claimed this week that the National Defense Authorization Act poses “an existential threat to American sovereignty and democracy” because it would “merge parts of our military with the Israel Defense Forces.”

Insane: The bill’s Section 219 simply OKs military cooperation on cybersecurity, tech joint exercises and so on; the Pentagon has similar accords with nations from Canada to India.

But paranoid Israel-bashing now dominates the Democratic Party, so much so that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries didn’t dare whip Democratic votes against last week’s proposed amendment to zero out US aid to Israel, which more than half of House Dems proceeded to support.

More broadly, the party’s uniting around opposing President Trump on everything, so much so that Senate Dems will use the filibuster to block the Defense bill, forcing Republicans to use the arcane “reconciliation” procedures to simply get the Pentagon through the next few months of the Iran war.

Thus the House, after passing the NDAA, also moved a Republicans-only $95 billion spending resolution that begins the reconciliation process — a figure that may grow to cover some defense-modernization needs.

But that process won’t finish until mid-September at the earliest, and is sure to feature a host of other proposed amendments designed to please Dems hard-left base, with lots more speeches implying that Benjamin Netanyahu is using Jewish mind-control powers to make Trump do his bidding.

Yes, Trump should be doing a better job of explaining his war strategy and selling it to the public — but it’s simply disgraceful for Democrats to block Defense funding while enemy fire is killing US service members in the Middle East.

Again, they’re blocking both emergency funds for the Iran war and the larger Defense bill for the year that they had agreed on with Republicans before their base’s anti-war fever reached a new peak.

All of it, with an eye on causing chaos in advance of November’s elections — even as their posturing in Washington feeds the hard left’s drive to knock off more-moderate Democrats in the primaries.

We keep urging sane Dems to fight back against the lefties, yet Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer keep appeasing them and saving all their fire for Trump and the GOP.

If they keep this up, AOC will soon be the heart of the party and maybe even its 2028 nominee.