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Strategies & Market Trends : World Outlook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (48439)	10/22/2025 1:32:23 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 48732

Suddenly, Democratic Politicians Are Running Away From AIPAC For decades, Democratic politicians, particularly those running for Senate or president, have emphasized their support of Israel and commitment to maintaining strong U.S.-Israel ties, in part to woo pro-Israel center-left donors and activists. Now, we are seeing a new litmus test on Israeli-Palestinian issues: Many Democratic pundits and activists, particularly progressives, are demanding politicians rebuke Israel’s actions over the last two years and adopt a more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These progressives say they don’t want to support candidates unless those politicians declare that Israel’s recent actions are a genocide, disavow AIPAC, and pledge to condition U.S. military and diplomatic support on the Israelis treating the Palestinians better. This new landscape is creating some awkward moments for Democratic officials. After an August interview on Pod Save America in which he refused to give a clear answer on whether he supported a bill that limited U.S. arms sales to Israel, Pete Buttigieg was criticized so widely that a few days later he backed the legislation. Earlier this month, Mallory McMorrow, a Senate candidate in Michigan, was pressed by activists at a campaign event on the genocide question. She “paused for several seconds, exhaled, and responded, ‘based on the definition, yes,’” according to Politico. Two weeks earlier, when asked about it by Politico, McMorrow had declined to use that term. What’s causing this new dynamic? I see four factors at play. First of all and most importantly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become one of the defining issues of progressive politics. While there have long been people on the left deeply critical of the Israeli government, what’s changed is that the number of Democratic activists and even average voters who are really invested in this issue, on the pro-Palestinian side, has grown dramatically in the wake of the Israeli military offensive in response to the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas. We don’t have great data on this, but I strongly suspect that the percentage of Democrats who are familiar with AIPAC (and have negative opinions about the group) has skyrocketed in the last two years. Second, Israeli-Palestinian issues have become a proxy for a broader divide within the Democratic Party. The 2016 and 2020 primaries split the party along ideological lines. But the early years of the Biden presidency diminished those divides. The center-left, led by Biden, accepted some of the left’s criticisms of Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s economic policies and adopted a more populist approach. At the same time, progressives downplayed abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, reducing police funding, expanding Medicare to all Americans, and other stances that Biden-aligned Democrats argued were too electorally risky. Third, the rise of Zohran Mamdani is reshaping Israeli-Palestinian politics within the party. He won the mayoral primary in New York despite a long record of skepticism about Israel, the city’s sizable Jewish population, and constant accusations that he is antisemitic. Mamdani’s victory has emboldened progressives, who might have backtracked from demanding candidates take Israel-skeptical positions if those proved electorally damaging. If a candidate like that can win a Democratic primary in New York without bowing to the pro-Israel side, it’s likely that such a candidate can win a primary anywhere. Fourth, there’s the exit of Biden. The presence of a firmly pro-Israel figure at the top of the party probably diminished Israel-skeptical sentiments, even as more Democrats became concerned about the war’s direction in 2024. With Biden out of office, fairly establishment-friendly voices, such as the Pod Save America hosts, can criticize the Israeli government without implicitly slamming their party’s incumbent president. Suddenly, Democratic Politicians Are Running Away From AIPAC Also saw that AIPAC is telling donors to give directly to the candidates to avoid their being identified with Israel's political interference activities in the US.