CNN reports that Democrats who don’t hate Israel are trying to figure out how to avoid getting voted out of office by those who do. Their concern is that progressives’ anti-Israel litmus test is creeping into the mainstream.
Last week, Kristal Ball, the conspiracist host of an internet politics show, berated Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin over her not-vociferous-enough criticism of Israel for a half hour, at one point saying: “I would love to debate you on your healthcare policy… your housing policy, etc. I’m just being really real with you: I don’t really hear what you say if you are still supporting a genocide in Gaza.”
This is non-crazy Democrats’ political problem in a nutshell: The “genocide” lie has gone from opinion to gospel among part of the base. In October of last year, I warned that this was exactly where political anti-Zionism was headed. After a Scottish politician was ousted from his party for disagreeing with the contention that Israel was committing genocide, I wrote of the “genocide” charge: “This is permitted speech, but at what point will it become mandatory speech? In the Scottish National Party, it is not permitted speech to say that Israel isn’t committing genocide. It’s not much of leap from Mason’s expulsion to ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ becoming something like a loyalty oath, the way professing one’s anti-Zionism already is among various university clubs in the U.S.”
And here we are: Democrats who see themselves as moderate in bearing but progressive on policy fear that even sounding reasonable will itself be cause for disqualification among primary voters. The concern is not only for these members’ next election but for the 2028 presidential nominating primaries, which will blare the party’s internal debates for all the world to hear. The nominee’s position on Israel will tell us much about whether the base’s anti-Zionist march can still be stalled.
So I give these Democrats some credit for belatedly understanding the stakes here. Unfortunately, they seem to have settled on a poor strategy. In a lot of ways, the solution they have chosen is what got them into this position in the first place.
Here is how CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere describes the strategy:
“Fearing Zionism could die among Democrats, many party leaders are explicitly breaking with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to stop anti-Israel attitudes from becoming a litmus test for next year’s midterms and the 2028 presidential primaries.”
Not exactly the least-confusing sentence you’ve ever read, is it? “Zionism could die” is a bit dramatic for the moment, but the main idea is that Democrats believe that if they criticize Netanyahu forcefully instead of using the word “Israel,” they can fool primary voters into thinking they are condemning Israel but can then claim not actually to have done so.
Some schemes are too clever by half. This one is simply not clever. And I feel confident in predicting that if Democrats try this, progressive primary voters will absolutely hate them for it.
I’m obviously rooting for Democrats to figure out a way to tamp down the anti-Zionism in their party, especially when it comes to elections. But you convince people with compelling arguments, not word games. In that way, the focus on Netanyahu is part of the reason for the problem, not part of the solution.
There was a period of time when this worked. But it was confined to the presidency of Barack Obama and the increasingly provocative ways the two men would needle each other, most notably Netanyahu’s speech to Congress opposing Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Democrats have been trying to extend the life of this tactic ever since Obama left office, which means it is not a change in strategy at all.
It’s not even new to the war. Democrats have been decrying Netanyahu since soon after Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza began. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and others in the Senate have made this a regular feature of their attempts to block weapons sales to Israel, but it’s not been confined to party leaders. Take, for example, this tweet from Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas: “So long as Netanyahu faces no consequences, even more innocent civilians will face death and starvation.”
That sounds like it could have been from this week. But it’s actually from December of 2023, two months after the war started. This, in other words, has been Democrats’ Plan A. If the party is already out of ideas, the fate they fear is pretty much inevitable.
