Israel has vaporized Gaza. The Democratic Party may be its next victim.

And many of the party's leaders have been willing partners.

The Democratic Party is our last best chance to counter the fascist takeover in the United States. This is not good news, as the party is very close to extinction as a political brand.

In their giddiest fever dreams, the Democratic Party could not have hallucinated a more ideal political opponent than Donald Trump. A failed former President whose first term was defined by treason, chaos, incompetency, and shrill buffoonery. A mentally unstable sociopath to whom lying is first nature. A preening narcissist who revels in forcing his most loyal followers to repeatedly debase themselves. The scion of a repellant family of grifter hyenas created in his image. The unashamed recipient of two impeachments, 32 felony convictions, and a legal judgment for sexual assault. A fervid fascist who views the mightiest nation on earth only in the context of his personal self. A bigot whose only political platform is vicious racism. An historically unpopular politician so despised that he inspired the two largest mass political protests in American history.

The Democratic Party has gone up against this gift from heaven three times and managed, impossibly, to lose to him twice. In the ten years since he took America down the escalator to the authoritarian basement, Trump has become much more politically powerful. He increased his share of the vote in nearly every demographic (men, women, Blacks, Hispanics, you name it) compared to his 2020 totals. Presidential elections these days are on one level insanely simple. You only have to focus on seven swing states. Trump ran the table in 2024, winning every single one of them.

Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza was a big issue in the 2024 Presidential campaign. For more than a century, Jewish voters have been loyal to the Democratic Party. Seventy percent of Jewish Americans identify as liberal Democrats. No other American ethic group comes even close to that kind of political identity. In return, Democratic politicians have given unwavering support to Israel since its creation. The Democratic Party joined Trump’s MAGA machine in supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The bombs used to kill over 50,00 Palestinians there came from the Biden Administration. Kamala Harris did not support halting those arms shipments to Israel. She refused to allow a Palestinian American to speak at the Democratic convention. By doing so, she put her party at odds with the American electorate, most of whom support a Palestinian state and do not feel positively about Israel. Worse still, she alienated the vast majority of her own base: 69% of Democrats have a negative view of Israel. (Support for Israel by Democrats over fifty has declined by a remarkable 23 points since 2023.) The Democratic Party leadership’s loyalty to Israel cost it a huge opportunity to join most Americans, and two-thirds of its base, by (1) separating itself from Israel’s Gaza policy, (2) countering AIPAC’s use of Republican money to interfere in its own primaries, and (3) allowing MAGA to carry the unpopular banner of genocide alone.

How did Israel respond the Democrats politically risky, unflinching support in the face of worldwide condemnation of its policies?

As Israel began hemorrhaging support in the U.S., the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an American lobbyist group founded by the Israeli government in 1954, became very worried that this shift on Israel inside the Democratic Party could become infectious. So in 2022, the supposedly bipartisan AIPAC decided to fund political candidates for the first time, and it targeted anti-genocide candidates in Democratic primaries in deep-blue states. To raise enough money to have an impact, AIPAC began to align itself with MAGA and its roster of billionaires. Once this happened, AIPAC became a fundraising demon, raising and spending four times as much money as any similar PAC. In 2024, AIPAC poured $100 million into Democratic primaries, most of it donated by Republicans, investing heavily in opponents of two sitting Democratic House members, Cori Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York, who opposed Israel’s policy in Gaza. (The money AIPAC donated to Bowman’s primary opponent set a record for the most spending by an outside group on a single House election ever.) It worked. Both Bush and Bowman lost their seats to Republican challengers. When AIPAC turned around and donated nearly a million dollars to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, he expressed no regret for betraying his own party’s incumbents and the vast majority of its voters, or for making a major, unforced political blunder in an existential election year.

We are all living in the horror show that has followed Trump’s inauguration in January. Tens of thousands of federal employees fired—and then, in many cases, rehired. Innocent people being kidnapped right off of our sidewalks and frog-marched off to foreign gulags with no trial. The scrubbing of any accomplishments by people of color or women from the official governmental history. A war on science and on universities. A lunatic tariff strategy that changes dramatically by the hour. Attacks on our long-time allies and neighbors Canada and Mexico, juxtaposed with professions of admiration for every murderous dictator on the planet.

To those of us in the Resistance, the last six months has been a whirlwind of terror unmatched in American history.

To Trump supporters, this was a President who was actually doing what he promised he would do in his campaign.

To the millions of agnostics and independents who follow the news only vaguely, Trump’s nonstop blizzard of highly publicized executive orders made him seem like the most energetic President since Roosevelt—a stark contrast to Joe Biden’s remote, hoary quietude.

Then came Trump’s barrage of bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s nuclear sites.

This was a huge political gift to a castrated Democratic Party that has literally no power today at the federal level. Only 16% of Americans feel that the U.S. should get involved in a military conflict between Israel and Iran. The American electorate has rarely been so united on a key issue. Trump had promised his supporters for a decade that he would never allow the United States to get involved in another Middle Eastern military misadventures, so the Democrats had finally been handed a wedge issue they could use between Trump and his supporters. And the bombing was quickly followed by official intelligence reports that doubted its effectiveness. In addition, given that Trump was expertly maneuvered into launching those bomb strikes by Israel, the Democratic Party had another ideal political opportunity to separate itself from an Israeli government driving a genocidal campaign in Gaza that is rejected by most Americans and two-thirds of Democrats. Trump’s fascist regime was on the wrong side of this issue, having gone all in with supporting Israel’s methodical slaughter of Palestinians, bombing its enemy Iran, working overtime to label the majority of Americans who oppose the Israeli governments policies as antisemites, and attacking academic freedom in the U.S. under the guise of fighting antisemitism.

All this is part of the context in which New York City, the American metropolis with the largest concentration of Jewish voters, held its Democratic mayoral primary this week.

The favorite candidate in the primary was a senior member of New York’s most famous Democratic and Catholic family and a former Governor. He supported the Israeli actions in Gaza and was backed by the largest Jewish political groups. He rarely campaigned in public. He had the support of the labor unions, and he amassed a war chest three times richer than his nearest competitor.

Another candidate was a little-known thirty-three-year old Indian Muslim naturalized immigrant who founded a Palestinian justice group in college and who had worked as a community housing organizer. He identified as a democratic socialist. His political experience was limited to four years in the New York State Assembly. He not only opposed the Gaza genocide but said publicly that, if mayor, he would arrest Netanyahu should he attempt to visit New York City.

Guess which candidate won, and won decisively?

Zohran Mamdani’s victory would be a rare jolt of positive political news whatever the context, the fact that it was accomplished in a heavily Jewish city does mean that his campaign can serve as a model—certainly in the specific area of how Democratic candidates can successfully oppose Israel’s brutal work in Gaza.

As he campaigned, Mamdani never wavered from his support of the Palestinian people, his characterization of Israel’s Gaza campaign as genocide, or from strongly denouncing antisemitism. Mamdani’s refusal to try to have it both ways on Israel—the standard tactic of mainstream Democratic candidates—was critical because it made him seem far more credible and principled than his competitors, which was a key factor in his victory. The attempts by Cuomo, Democratic Party leaders, and billionaire backers to smear Mamdani as an antisemite backfired.

But Mamdani focused relentlessly on economic issues. He insisted that corporations and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes, that public transportation should be free, that the housing crises be addressed by the construction of new housing and a freeze on rent hikes, and the creation of publicly owned neighborhood grocery stores to ensure that all New Yorkers had access to high-quality food.

Mamdani’s resounding victory exploded several myths long held to be sacrosanct by Democratic Party leaders: support for Israel is not negotiable, socialism is politically toxic, street-level campaigning is less effective than money and name recognition, experience and loyalty trumps youth/energy/charisma, voters are more concerned with higher taxes than the current cost of living, and class is less important to voters than race and gender politics.

Given the scarcity of Democratic election wins, you would think that Democratic leaders would be falling all over themselves congratulating Mamdani and declaring him to be a young, articulate, new star in the party ranks, as Bernie Sanders and AOC did before the election. Instead, many Democrats rushed to attack him.

Former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot (who only received 16% of the vote in her 2023 reelection bid) had this to say: “Leading with ‘Let’s tax the rich’? I don’t think that’s a winning formula.”

"Socialist Zohran Mamdani is too extreme to lead New York City,” warned freshman Representative Laura Gillen of New York. “His entire campaign has been built on unachievable promises and higher taxes, which is the last thing New York needs."

Lawrence Summers, Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary, aired his grave concerns on social media. “I am profoundly alarmed about the future of the (Democratic Party) and the country” because of the New York City results, Summers posted.

Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, warned that Mamdani’s policies are a political problem for the Democratic Party: “His ideas are bad. And his affiliation with the (Democratic Socialists of America) is very dangerous. It’s already being weaponized by the Republicans.” (The same Republicans, it should be noted, who displayed no shame when they painted moderate Barack Obama as a foreign Muslim jihadist.)

Many Democratic leaders, predictably, are working hard to keep their mouths shut. New York’s Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi all demonstrated the remarkable lack of political courage that has made their party so unpopular and refused to say who they will be supporting in New York City’s general election.

But other mainstream Democrats have endorsed Mamdani, including former President Bill Clinton and prominent Jewish Democrats Jerry Nadler and Robert Reich. Veteran Democratic strategist and former Cuomo advisor Lis Smith, said that centrist Democrats are partially to blame for the former governor's loss. “It is baffling that they decided to cast their lot with a disgraced former governor who was run out of office and had no new ideas or inspirational message to offer New Yorkers. Spare us the freak out,” said Smith. “This just seems like the last gasp of the establishment and the affiliated billionaires trying to stop a grassroots moment that, frankly, they helped fuel.”

Democratic activist David Hogg, the founder of the young voter group Leaders We Deserve, was not so subtle, perhaps because he had just been drummed out of his position at the DNC by chairman Ken Martin, who claims to be aggressively courting the youth vote. “The same establishment that is spending millions to destroy Zohran will say in a few months that we need to spend millions on polling and testing to win back young people,” wrote Hogg. “Open your goddamn eyes —it’s free.”

Mamdani senior strategist Morris Katz said it was no mystery why his candidate won. “It’s pretty fucking simple,” Katrz told reporters. “Take on the billionaires who are destroying the economy. Fight for working people. Zohran is a generational talent and that can’t be replicated, but what can be is a politics of courage and authenticity.”

Zohran Mamdani himself had this perspective: “It has been tempting I think for some to claim as if the party has gone too left, when in fact what has occurred for far too long is the abandonment of the same working-class voters who then abandoned this party.”

The Democratic Party is on the ropes and running on fumes. Only 27% of voters have a favorable view of the Party. That is the lowest score in polling history and, most tellingly, 20 points lower than the numbers our historically unpopular President is getting, in case you’re still wondering how the Democrats lost to him. Most of the respondents behind those crushingly dismal numbers are Democrats, most of whom are demanding new, more aggressive leadership and the end of support for Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza.

Mamdani, Bernie Sanders and AOC and other progressives continue to illuminate a path by which a nearly extinct Democratic Party could experience an eleventh-hour revitalization. Trump is helping, too, by turning his back on his promise to his supporters to keep America out of Middle Eastern wars. Perhaps the Democratic leadership will finally realize that letting MAGA be the party of genocide, war, missiles, and death for a change is not only the right course morally, but a very smart political move in the bargain.

If they don’t, their party—and, by extension, our country—are done for.

AIPAC is the biggest source of Republican donors giving to Democratic primaries - POLITICO

'Very Bad Sign for Democracy': AIPAC Has Spent Over $100 Million on 2024 Elections | Common Dreams

Report: AIPAC Spent a Record Amount on the 2024 Election | The New Republic

Mamdani's surprise win reawakens Democrats' internal factions - POLITICO

Mamdani Did All the Things the Establishment Hates. He Won Anyway. | The New Republic

Harris’s Gaza Policy Was a Disaster on Every Level | The Nation

In historic shift, American Muslim and Arab voters desert Democrats

Israel-Hamas war - US Jews' experiences and views | Pew Research Center

Democratic Party's favorability hits record lows in two polls