Not long ago, the leading candidates of the Democratic party were desperate for a new direction to distinguish themselves from the politics of the past. Now, two new currents offer a way forward. The first is a Leftward drift in attitudes toward Israel. The second is growing opposition to the war on Iran launched by President Trump in conjunction with the Jewish state. Combined, the two trends could pave the way to Democratic renewal.
Start with the first trend. Democratic politicians have come to understand that the base of the party is deserting the Jewish state. The atrocities in Gaza during the war that followed the Oct. 7 attacks resulted in a civilian death toll that has been too much to stomach for anyone on the Left — and for an many on the Right, as well, not least Tucker Carlson.
Now the Israel consensus in the United States, once unified across the two major political parties, has been shattered by Trump’s war in Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relentlessly promoted war; Trump was all too happy to oblige; and as a result, America is mired in a global catastrophe that has been, at least in part, Israel’s making. The poll numbers are disastrous: almost 60% of Democrats and half of independents view Israel negatively, according to an NBC News poll released last week. This is a sharp increase from a few years ago, and it’s highly unlikely that the Jewish state will win back many of these voters, since the young hate the Zionist mission with the greatest intensity. This under-40 cohort will age and carry its views with it, while the more sympathetic middle-aged and elderly will die off.
For many decades, criticism of Israel was the third rail in American politics, but leading Democrats are now unafraid to break with precedent. California Gov. Gavin Newsom calls Israel an “apartheid” state. Ruben Gallego, the Arizona senator, has sworn off donations from the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest pro-Israel lobby, as has Ro Khanna, a progressive lawmaker from California. Last year, JB Pritzker, the billionaire Illinois governor who once sat on the AIPAC board, voiced support for a Senate resolution that would have blocked American arms sales to Israel. Even Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish and may end up the most prominent hawk of the 2028 race, has been sharply critical of Netanyahu.
The second Leftward surging through the Democratic Party, popular opposition to the Iran war, presents the party with a clear opening: Trump ran on opposition to Mideast regime-change wars, but he has now launched a large operation that may soon entail the deployment of ground troops — of which only 7% of voters approve, according to a Reuters poll last week. But it is yet to be determined if the Democrats will capitalize on this opportunity. Opposition to the war has been clear enough, but certain Democrats, especially the older legislative leaders like New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, run the risk of merely stating their opposition on procedural grounds.
When Trump launched the bombing campaign in Iran, Democrats in Congress fumed that they weren’t consulted first. Israel hawks like Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, weren’t necessarily upset that a war with Iran was happening — it was more that it wasn’t sanctioned, that Congress didn’t get its say, as it did when George W. Bush declared war on Iraq. These leaders suggested that if Congress could have signed off on the bombings, perhaps the chaos would have been more palatable.
For Democrats to find a way forward, the party will have to be unequivocally antiwar, in the same way it is moving toward the position, soon to be entirely mainstream, that conditions must be placed on military aid to Israel, if it is to receive any aid at all. The Left will have to move on from lamenting the lack of congressional hearings to a clear and forceful denunciation of the war. Yes, accountability to Congress matters. But as Trump, like the two Republican presidents before him, immolates the Middle East, it’s hardly the main point.
Most crucially, Democrats will have to be the party that is, without question, against all war. MAGA must not outflank the Left on the isolationist front again. The always dubious proposition of a Republican “peace” president has lost credibility, and Democrats must take advantage of it.
The war in Iran is a reminder of just how badly Democrats, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in particular, failed in 2024. Biden, of course, was senile, and never should have run again; Harris was put in the unenviable position of replacing him without having competed for a single primary vote. But then Harris ran one of the worst campaigns in living memory, ducking the media and struggling to articulate any serious domestic policy vision.
When it came to foreign affairs, however, she equivocated less — and the hawkish posture she landed on gave Trump the opening he needed to best her in every swing state. “Make no mistake, as president, I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend American forces and interests from Iran and Iran-backed terrorists, and I will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” Harris said in October 2024, in a call with Jewish voters. “Diplomacy is my preferred path to that end, but all options are on the table.”
“For Democrats to find a way forward, the party will have to be unequivocally anti-war.”
All options are on the table sounds an awful lot like what’s happening now. Granted, Harris is not unstable like Trump, and the odds are far lower that as president, she would have launched such a controversial military operation. Yet it was rhetoric like this that allowed Trump and his followers to hustle to Harris’s Left and promise voters that MAGA, with its vow to put America first and end foreign entanglements, would be the less risky option. When Stephen Miller, in November 2024, posted that “Trump said warmongering neocons love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight themselves,” and that “Kamala = WWIII. Trump = Peace,” plenty of Americans believed him. It was a lie, but one the Democrats allowed to pass unchallenged, especially as Harris campaigned with Liz Cheney, an unreconstructed neoconservative who celebrated her father’s legacy.
The new generation of Democratic politicians is wiser than Harris. Despite an onslaught of scandal related to an alleged Nazi tattoo (since removed), Graham Platner, a proudly Left-wing oyster farmer, has been a fundraising juggernaut who could very well knock out Schumer’s preferred candidate, Gov. Janet Mills, in a primary race for Republican Sen. Susan Collins’s Maine seat. Platner is an Iraq War veteran who is unapologetically against the war in Iran. He has a fierce, compelling antiwar message that may well launch him to victory. Speaking with a CNN reporter recently, Platner likened Trump’s Iran bombing and troop deployments to Iraq. “We find ourselves here with another war that should not be happening, that is resulting in destruction and horror — all frankly on the taxpayers’ dime,” he said. “That is money that should be spent here in the United States on schools, on hospitals, on infrastructure.”
“Won’t that leave troops in harm’s way, if you vote to defund this operation?” the reporter asked. “No,” Platner said, “because the troops should just not be in harm’s way. End the war. Bring people home. Stop bombing. We can end it.”
That’s all that needs to be said. Stop bombing, bring home the troops. If Democrats can distill this message plainly — if the party can equivocate less, and avoid the traps Harris laid for it in 2024 — it can quickly outflank a GOP defined by Donald Trump. Few wars in modern American history have been more unpopular at the outset than the bombing of Iran, and voters will only sour further on the conflict as energy prices remain high and the economy stagnates. Unlike in the aughts, today Democrats will take little political risk in being antiwar. During the Iraq War, politicians had to contend with the long shadow of 9/11. They had to beat back accusations of hating America or not sufficiently supporting the troops. They had to, like past generations of liberals, worry about red-baiting, and fend off implications that a belief in civil liberties or pacifism meant they wanted to comfort the enemy within.
Now all they have to do is speak like Platner. Stop killing — and stop wasting money. If Democrats truly want to be the party of peace, their future is plenty bright.
