On April 15, the United States Senate voted on two resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders to block nearly half a billion dollars in military bulldozers and bombs bound for Israel. The resolutions failed.

But what stays with me is not the outcome. It is the company one of my senators chose to keep.

Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal was one of only seven Democrats who crossed party lines to help Republicans defeat the bulldozer resolution. He did so while 40 of his 47 Democratic colleagues voted the other way — including moderates and longtime Israel supporters like Adam Schiff, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar.

Forty senators in his own caucus decided they could not sign off. Blumenthal could.

These were not symbolic resolutions. The equipment in question includes the D9 armored bulldozer — a Caterpillar machine retrofitted for military use, weighing more than 60 tons, capable of flattening multi-story buildings in minutes. Such bulldozers have been used to demolish homes and civilian infrastructure across Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, in operations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented in detail. The Sanders resolutions were grounded in existing law — the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act — and asked a straightforward question: should the United States continue supplying equipment being used in ways that violate international human rights standards?

The second resolution targeted an almost $152 million sale of 1,000-pound bombs — the same class of munition whose use in densely populated areas of Gaza and Lebanon has been tied to mass civilian casualties by international observers. Thirty-six Democrats voted to block that sale. Blumenthal, again, did not. He was one of only seven Democrats in the entire caucus to oppose both resolutions — not a close call on one vote, but a consistent choice to stay on the wrong side of his party, and his constituents, twice in a single evening.

A majority of his own party answered no. He did not. And he did so at a moment when support for unconditional military aid to Israel has collapsed — among Democrats, independents, and a growing number of Jewish Americans. Recent Gallup and Pew polling shows Democratic voters opposing further military aid by decisive margins. The base of the party has moved. Senator Blumenthal has not.

I am a lifelong Democrat. I believed Senator Blumenthal was a voice for working families and a defender of civil rights — a man whose record reflected our values. Which is exactly why his vote on Wednesday feels like a betrayal. Not just of the voters who sent him to Washington, but of the basic principle that a senator’s vote should reflect the moral judgment of his constituents.

Every dollar this country sends abroad carries a moral signature. Senator Blumenthal affixed ours to bulldozers and bombs.

Joseph Luciano lives in Bridgeport.