Do Democrats have an antisemitism problem? There was a time, maybe two years ago, when it felt like we heard about this topic a lot. At the time there were pro-Hamas students camping out on elite college campuses and people inside the party were nervous about it. It wasn't always clear that the protests were limited to anti-Zionism. Chanting "from the river to the sea" seems to go a bit beyond objections to Benjamin Netanyahu.
But as time went on it became clear that the campus antisemitism wasn't limited to the campus. A significant percentage of the Democratic party base had adopted the same views. And surprisingly, it feels to me like we hear about it less often now. Of course that's not to say we don't hear about it at all. Axios had a story last month:
A growing number of Jewish Democrats tell Axios they feel shunned — like unwelcome strangers in their own party...
Polls show support for Israel's government — for decades a matter of bipartisan agreement in the U.S. — has fallen sharply among Democrats.
As voters' opinions on Israel have shifted, the party's left wing has become more accepting of associating with people who have made conspiratorial or controversial comments about Jews and Israelis...
"Jews are starting to feel scared again," said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), who's Jewish. He said Jewish voters are beginning to leave the Democratic Party but that it's not yet a "mass exodus."
Earlier this month CNN had a follow-up. Even left-wing Jews are starting to be worried about where this is all headed.
Rep. Becca Balint helped Sen. Bernie Sanders craft and lead efforts to cut US arms sales to Israel, wrote an op-ed calling Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” and has stood proudly with fellow progressives for two decades. But Balint was wincing last week as she stood on the steps of the Capitol, recounting the warning she gave her congressional staff.
“I know at some point there will be a day of reckoning, because I still believe that Jews should have a homeland,” the Vermont Democrat told CNN. “There will be people, I think some of my own supporters, who will turn on me, because I still believe in a two-state solution. I still do. I still believe that Israel should be safe and secure. I believe that the Palestinians have been so ill-treated for so long and deserve a safe and secure homeland. I do not believe Israel should be dismantled.”
Balint described being “shaken to my core” watching the video of Scott Wiener, the California state senator running for retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s seat, recently being hounded out of a transgender rights event with angry shouts including, “You stopped being queer the moment you started supporting Israel, you piece of sh*t!”
That approach to Israel is becoming the norm for team blue. Being pro-Israel is considered unacceptable.
An ascendant faction of the left argues there’s no such thing anymore as “progressive except for Palestine” — a phrase that took off in the years following Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack and the ensuing war in Gaza — and sees opposition to Israel as a Democratic litmus test.
In some parts of the country, Jewish Democrats' commitment to the party is already being tested.
Joel Tauber has been through many an election in his 92 years. And, with the exception of “one out of 100 times,” he’s always backed a Democrat — something even more important in the current midterm cycle, he believes...
But Tauber is a Michigan resident, and the state’s upcoming U.S. Senate primary is making him deeply uneasy...
“I’d sit it out,” he said, of the general election. Of El-Sayed, he said, “There’s no way that I could vote for him.”
Some Jewish Democratic leaders in the state are prepared to go even further. Several prominent Metro Detroit Jews who have traditionally fundraised for Democrats are also planning fundraisers for the presumptive GOP nominee, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, as a “hedge.” Others are planning to help him if El-Sayed wins the Democratic nomination, one Jew who is close to the Stevens campaign told JTA.
Meanwhile, the person who is probably the most outspoken pro-Israel Democrat is Sen. Fetterman and the left hates him with a white hot passion for it.
Over at the Free Press, John Podhoretz makes the case that there might be an alternate universe where it was the Republican Party that was consumed by antisemitism. It didn't happen, he argues, because Trump set a different tone.
Despite the astonishing amount of attention paid to Carlson and the far-right podcast bros and chicks, whose provocations range from slimy insinuations about double loyalties to outright expressions of Jew-hatred, Republicans overall remain overwhelmingly supportive of Israel and sympathetic to Jewish concerns.
We know this from polling by the Reagan Institute, which found in June that 80 percent of self-identified MAGA Republicans say “Israel’s security matters to U.S. security and prosperity.” MAGA Republicans under the age of 30 are less enthusiastic than their elders. Only 60 percent of them agree with the idea that America should supply Israel with weapons and military hardware. For older Republicans, that number rises to 73 percent...
These voters are overwhelmingly supportive of Trump himself, and therefore inclined to follow his lead on these matters. I suspect that if he had followed a different course—the semi-isolationist course his second vice president has been haltingly seeking to chart—most Republican voters would have followed him there. But Trump is a politician with animal cunning, and a fingertip feel for what the people who love him want to hear from him.
So the philosemitic, pro-Israel path of Trump II is the result of a dynamic interplay between the president and his base. I’m talking about his real base. Not people with microphones who live in cabins in Maine and praise terrorists and say we fought on the wrong side in World War II, or deranged conspiracy theorists perpetually on the verge of suggesting that Erika Kirk had her husband killed.
So for now, it's the Democratic Party that has the biggest antisemitism problem. And the bigger that problem gets the less noteworthy it seems to be to the media. The whole thing reminds me of President Biden's mental decline and the way the media handled that. There were still a few stories, occasionally, but anyone who dared to raise the issue got shouted down from inside and outside the White House. For the most part, the media stuck with the White House line.
Now the same thing is happening with antisemitism. As it becomes more evident, it becomes less noted by the media. Someday, someone will write a tell-all book about just how blatant it was behind the scenes in the Democratic Party. My guess is it's much worse than we've heard.
Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.
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