The Democratic party is in dire need of a mutiny.
Top leaders at the party’s helm are unprepared to navigate the political sea change about Israel. Last week, nearly half of House Democrats voted to block $3.3bn in weaponry and other aid to that country. A recent New York Times poll found that 74% of Democratic voters “opposed providing additional economic and military support to Israel, including large majorities in all age groups”.
Such polling numbers are not new. But the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and his Senate counterpart, Chuck Schumer, still follow an old playbook of unwavering service to Israel. The moral bankruptcy amounts to political malpractice, as voters tend to bypass a party with leadership they see as lacking a moral compass.
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The day before 103 House Democrats ignored his guidance, Jeffries sent out a “dear colleague” letter filled with the kind of pro-Israel rhetoric that has worn transparently thin. The amendment to cut off aid, he claimed, “would restrict our country’s ability to confront Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations in the region who are sworn enemies of both the United States and Israel”.
But Nancy Pelosi’s vote for the weapons cutoff was a weathervane for how drastically the Democratic winds have swung away from Israel. Consider the former speaker’s remarkable words at an Israeli-American Council conference in 2018: “I have said to people when they ask me: if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it aid – our cooperation – with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”
Fears of being slandered as antisemitic have routinely made automatic support for Israel seem safest. Now, while Aipac and other Israel-backing operations with deep pockets remain menacing, the dramatic shift in public attitudes toward Israel has notably reduced their intimidating power.
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Worries about alienating big donors have been palpable at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), where financial woes are a huge concern. The business model of courting megadonors has a grim logic when the party leadership is so uninspiring to grassroots Democrats.
No one can make a credible case that Jeffries and Schumer, or the DNC chair, Ken Martin, for that matter, have been inspirational. A major factor in their inability to inspire has been failure to engage with the genuine moral anguish felt by so many Americans about their country’s complicity in genocide.
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Last month, a UN commission concluded that genocide is continuing, with Israeli forces intentionally targeting children in Gaza. “A significant body of research by legal and rights experts has concluded that Israel is intent on destroying Palestinians, including analyses by UN investigators, rights bodies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars worldwide,” the Guardian reported as this summer began.
The incapacity of Jeffries, Schumer and Martin to meaningfully address such realities has mired the party deeper in its leadership crisis. That crisis could hamper turnout needed to win the midterm elections this fall, and very likely will come into full view by the time the presidential primary campaign begins in earnest early next year.
In the near term, when the DNC convenes in mid-August for its last meeting before the midterms, the gathering is apt to be a scene of subdued discord about the party’s out-of-step leadership and Martin’s continual deep-sixing of the Israel issue within the committee. Its 450 members have maintained a long tradition of complying with the chair’s wishes.
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That the DNC’s culture is akin to the atmosphere of a corporation was just underscored by the news that DNC officials are being asked to sign nondisclosure agreements. A co-chair of the DNC’s national finance team described the move as “consistent with standard practice in the corporate world”.
Defenders of the party leadership’s pro-Israel stance do not acknowledge the moral imperative of ending US support for what can fairly be called a genocidal state. But polling is clear that such denial won’t fly with the Democratic base. The timeworn verbiage being deployed by the party’s House and Senate leaders is functioning within a self-referential closed loop that has lost credibility with voters.
Revulsion at Donald Trump might bring Democrats appreciable success in the midterm elections. But Israel apologism, continuing to stream out of the offices of the House and Senate minority leaders, is a wet blanket on a party that should be vibrant.
Looking ahead at the field of likely contenders for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, all but a few have merely updated the standard political double-talk about Israel. The lane is now clearer than ever for a candidate to run with a full-throated anti-establishment campaign, dispensing with equivocation and mobilizing the progressive grassroots with positions that include an end to US support for genocide.
