Bernie Sanders is boy­cotting the annu­al Amer­i­can Israel Pub­lic Affairs Com­mit­tee (AIPAC) con­fer­ence. So is Eliz­a­beth War­ren. Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar aren’t show­ing up either.

But there’s one Demo­c­rat who is attend­ing the March 1 to 3 con­fer­ence: bil­lion­aire and for­mer New York City May­or Michael Bloomberg. (Update: fol­low­ing pub­li­ca­tion, AIPAC announced that Joe Biden will deliv­er a video mes­sage to the conference.)

Bloomberg may be alone among his Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial cohort in going to the Israel lobby’s annu­al con­fab, but he’ll fit right in: The event will fea­ture speech­es by oth­er right-wing Islam­o­phobes and defend­ers of Israeli apartheid. He’ll feel at home at AIPAC because Bloomberg him­self has a long record of reflex­ive sup­port for the Israeli state and Islam­o­pho­bia — qual­i­ties that the AIPAC audi­ence eats up.

There is one big prob­lem for Bloomberg, how­ev­er, with his AIPAC appear­ance. It’s only the lat­est exam­ple of how thor­ough­ly out of touch the may­or is with the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty base, which is increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal of U.S. sup­port for Israel as it descends deep­er into per­ma­nent mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion of the Pales­tini­ans and per­ma­nent apartheid rule over them. A Data for Progress poll pub­lished last year found that 67% of respon­dents who vot­ed for Democ­rats in the 2018 midterms sup­port­ed reduc­ing mil­i­tary aid to Israel because of Israel’s poor human rights record. A 2018 poll con­duct­ed by the Economist/​YouGov found that 37% of Amer­i­cans con­sid­er Israel an ally, a fig­ure down from the 47% that saw Israel as a friend in 2015. What’s more, peo­ple of col­or, a core part of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic base, are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to view Israel in a neg­a­tive light. Accord­ing to the poll, 43% of white peo­ple see Israel as an ally, while 22% of Lat­inx and 19% of Black peo­ple do.

To under­stand why the for­mer New York mayor’s nat­ur­al vot­ing base is more AIPAC than pro­gres­sive, it helps to start with Bloomberg’s his­to­ry of sup­port for Israel no mat­ter what the coun­try does.

The most telling exam­ple of this came in 2014, when Israel launched a pun­ish­ing air and ground assault on the Gaza Strip, the Mediter­ranean coastal enclave already reel­ing from an Israeli block­ade that dec­i­mat­ed its econ­o­my. As Israeli war­planes wiped out entire Pales­tin­ian fam­i­lies and, even­tu­al­ly, killed over 500 chil­dren, Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants launched rock­ets at Tel Aviv, forc­ing the U.S. Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion to sus­pend Amer­i­can flights to Israel.

Bloomberg, how­ev­er, want­ed to sup­port Israel so bad as it immis­er­at­ed the Pales­tini­ans of Gaza that he flew on an Israeli airline’s flight to Israel. As he tweet­ed at the time, he want­ed ​“to show sup­port for Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Israel’s ​“right to defend itself” appar­ent­ly includ­ed fir­ing artillery shells at chil­dren tak­ing refuge in a UN school in Gaza one week lat­er, an attack that killed 20 civil­ians and prompt­ed UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ban Ki-Moon to say, ​“Noth­ing is more shame­ful than attack­ing sleep­ing children.”

In ear­ly August 2014, Bloomberg was asked about the inci­dent by CBS reporter Norah O’Donnell. His response was a mas­ter-class in Israeli talk­ing points: He blamed Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant groups for the deaths of Pales­tin­ian chil­dren because the mil­i­tants ​“hide among the inno­cent,” even though there was no evi­dence Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants were fir­ing at Israel at the time from the school, accord­ing to a Human Rights Watch inves­ti­ga­tion. Bloomberg also said ​“Israel can­not have a pro­por­tion­al response if peo­ple are fir­ing rock­ets at their cit­i­zens,” a talk­ing point evinc­ing bla­tant dis­re­gard for inter­na­tion­al law, which pro­hibits dis­pro­por­tion­ate mil­i­tary attacks dur­ing conflict.

In addi­tion to his defense of Israel’s bloody assault on Gaza, Bloomberg will fit right in with the AIPAC crowd for anoth­er rea­son. This year’s AIPAC con­fer­ence, as in past years, will fea­ture vir­u­lent anti-Mus­lim big­ots, among them Myles Holmes, a Chris­t­ian pas­tor who once wrote on Twit­ter that Amer­i­cans should wake up the dan­ger of becom­ing a ​“sharia-com­pli­ant” coun­try — a dog whis­tle to the Islam­o­pho­bic move­ment that spreads the false claim that Mus­lims want to impose reli­gious law in the Unit­ed States. Anoth­er fea­tured AIPAC speak­er will be Ser­bian Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dar Vučić, who once said, after the 1995 Sre­breni­ca geno­cide of 8,000 Bosn­ian Mus­lims, ​“You kill one Serb and we will kill 100 Muslims.”

Bloomberg doesn’t express his own anti-Mus­lim big­otry in such crude terms, but as may­or of New York, he did over­see a New York Police Depart­ment pro­gram of sur­veil­lance based on the big­ot­ed assump­tion that places where Mus­lims con­gre­gate are places where ter­ror­ist attacks will be planned out. That pro­gram of map­ping the New York Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion was mod­eled on Israel’s own occu­pa­tion of the West Bank.

The com­pa­ny Bloomberg keeps at the AIPAC con­fer­ence and his own defens­es of immoral Israeli con­duct may be good for the AIPAC crowd, but it’s dis­gust­ing to a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty base that is com­mit­ted to social jus­tice. And this base dis­agrees with Bloomberg on Israel, espe­cial­ly his insis­tence that he will nev­er con­di­tion the mas­sive mil­i­tary aid pack­age the U.S. gives to Israel on changes in behav­ior like stop­ping the block­ade of Gaza or halt­ing ille­gal set­tle­ment build­ing on Pales­tin­ian land.

When the bil­lion­aire Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date steps up to the stage at the AIPAC con­fab and deliv­ers the usu­al bro­mides prais­ing Israel, he will almost cer­tain­ly get applause from an audi­ence used to can­di­dates falling over them­selves to voice sup­port for Israel.

But he shouldn’t be sur­prised by the reac­tion of pro­gres­sives out­side of the AIPAC con­fer­ence. Israel’s far-right gov­ern­ment and the lob­by that sup­ports it are fast los­ing sup­port among the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty base. Bloomberg’s love for Israel as it con­tin­ues its bru­tal record of bomb­ing Gaza and impris­on­ing an entire pop­u­la­tion there is not going to win him many votes from the base of the par­ty he’s run­ning to lead.