Op-Ed
With Primary Wins, Progressives Make Clear That Michigan Is Not for Sale
Whatever happens in the remaining primary races, a reckoning is coming for the Democratic Party this November.
By Sam Rosenthal ,
Sam Rosenthal
Sam Rosenthal is the political director at RootsAction and serves on the Democratic Socialists of America’s National Electoral Committee. He was formerly a staffer at Our Revolution and lives in Washington, D.C.
With Primary Wins, Progressives Make Clear That Michigan Is Not for Sale
Whatever happens in the remaining primary races, a reckoning is coming for the Democratic Party this November.
By Sam Rosenthal ,
August 5, 2026
Senator Bernie Sanders is flanked by U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (left) and Congressional candidate Donavan McKinney (right) at a rally in Detroit, Michigan, on May 3, 2026.Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Tuesday night marked another significant battle in the clash between establishment Democrats and insurgent progressives that has come to define the 2026 primary season. After hard-fought battles in Michigan, Missouri, and elsewhere, progressive candidates defied expectations and reams of outside spending to emerge victorious in most of the closely watched races.
In Michigan, insurgent candidate Abdul El-Sayed defeated Democratic establishment favorite, Rep. Haley Stevens. El-Sayed led by about 14,000 votes on Wednesday morning, edging Stevens in the marquee race.
El-Sayed’s victory is the culmination of a remarkable primary campaign that began with him as an outsider candidate who was lagging in the polls in the beginning of the year. Stevens, meanwhile, was the clear establishment pick from the beginning of the race. She held endorsements from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, outgoing Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to lend an air of inevitability to her campaign. Ultimately, though, neither the full-throated backing of the political establishment nor tens of millions of dollars could get Stevens’s candidacy across the finish line.
El-Sayed is now set up for a bruising general election against Republican Mike Rogers, who was narrowly defeated in Michigan’s 2024 senatorial race by Elissa Slotkin. A victory in the general election would make El-Sayed the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Senate.
In the months leading up to the primary, Stevens benefited from record-breaking spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates. AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, dumped more than $30 million into this Senate primary alone. This marked AIPAC’s single biggest spend on an individual race since it became active in primaries near the beginning of this decade. Together, outside groups spent more than $60 million to back Stevens, a 9-to-1 spending advantage over El-Sayed. In dark money-funded ads that ran across the state, Stevens was celebrated for her purported close connection to former President Barack Obama and her pro-manufacturing policies, with no mention of Stevens’s stalwart support of Israel. Other ads alleged, without evidence, that El-Sayed was disrespectful toward women, and painted him as an opponent of the Obamas, and suggested that El-Sayed had helped Donald Trump win in 2024. Stevens’s surrogates on the campaign trail repeated these talking points, bombarding Michigan voters with a false image of El-Sayed as a misogynist and secret right-winger.
The spending, though, became an issue of its own during the race. El-Sayed and his campaign surrogates repeatedly brought up corporate spending, as well as regularly pointing out AIPAC by name, making an effective boogeyman of an organization that, until recent cycles, was rarely directly mentioned by candidates running for office. Stevens’s loss is a major rebuke to AIPAC’s involvement in primary races, and a testament to the erosion of the influence of outside money in general among Democratic primary voters.
Stevens’s loss is a major rebuke to AIPAC’s involvement in primary races, and a testament to the erosion of the influence of outside money in general among Democratic primary voters.
This pattern repeated in House races across the state, too. In Michigan’s 13th congressional district, insurgent Donavan McKinney secured the Democratic nomination against incumbent Shri Thanedar in a safe blue district. Thanedar, a multimillionaire who has bankrolled his own campaigns, was once an adversary of AIPAC and won his seat in the House in 2022 amidst an avalanche of opposition spending from the organization. Once he got to Congress, though, Thanedar substantially moderated his position on U.S. support for Israel and enjoyed millions of dollars in support from AIPAC and its backers in 2024, and again this year.
McKinney, on the other hand, made no secret of his enmity toward Israel’s conduct in Gaza, calling it a “genocide” on his campaign website. That tack, plus his emphasis on affordability and getting big money out of politics, was apparently more than enough for voters to opt for the newcomer over Thanedar. With Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s easy victory in her primary on Tuesday, the entire city of Detroit will now be represented by democratic socialists in Congress, the first major U.S. city where that is the case.
Even in mid-Michigan — outside of the dense, urban areas that have generally been prime targets for progressive insurgents — left-leaning candidate William Lawrence handily topped the field in the race for the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s 7th district. Lawrence, a co-founder of the environmental group the Sunrise Movement, was bludgeoned by a flurry of last-minute outside spending against his candidacy. While he faced candidates with backgrounds that hewed more closely to traditional resumes for public office, his two opponents likely split the moderate vote in the field, allowing Lawrence to win the election with around 44 percent of the vote. His opponents — Bridget Brink, a diplomat and former ambassador to Ukraine under Joe Biden, and Matt Maasdam, a retired Navy SEAL endorsed by Sen. Elissa Slotkin — both collected just under 30 percent of the vote, allowing Lawrence to eke out a win with a simple plurality of the total.
The entire city of Detroit will now be represented by democratic socialists in Congress, the first major U.S. city where that is the case.
Lawrence will now go on to represent the Democratic Party in a swing district general election that the party has eyed as one of its biggest pickup opportunities as it seeks to reclaim the House of Representatives. In a typical cycle, Lawrence would receive some of the highest-profile support from the Democratic Party in an attempt to flip a red seat widely considered a toss-up. Whether his progressive bent will complicate the party’s support for his run is still an open question.
The progressive swing did not sweep across every primary state on Tuesday, though. Missouri’s 1st district saw one of the most dramatic showdowns of the entire primary season, with former Rep. Cori Bush challenging current Rep. Wesley Bell to take back the seat that he won from her in 2024. That year, Bush was a prime target of AIPAC spending, with the group devoting more than $7 million to helping Bell defeat her. Since then, Bell has been a reliable ally to Israel in Congress, and was among the minority group of Democrats who recently voted against slashing aid to Israel.
Once again, AIPAC devoted substantial resources to defending Bell’s seat, spending at least $2 million in campaign ads supporting Bell. In the end, he walked to an easy victory over Bush, with the race called shortly after polls closed. Bush — who was one of the most stalwart progressives in Congress during her tenure — will now spend at least another term in exile, as AIPAC holds on to one of its hardest-won seats.
The mixed results on Tuesday night ensure that the internecine battle between the Democratic Party’s establishment and progressive flanks will continue through the rest of the primary season. August 11 will mark the next opportunity to gauge enthusiasm for each flank among the primary electorate: Democratic socialist Francesca Hong will face off against a field of more establishment-friendly picks in the primary for Wisconsin governor. Hong has established a clear lead in the polls over the last few weeks, and some Democratic Party functionaries are already voicing their anxieties about her ability to win the November general election in a purple state.
Whatever happens in the remaining primary races, a reckoning is coming for the Democratic Party this November. While progressive activists in the party have long been encouraged to form a united front with establishment-friendly Democrats to vote blue when the general election rolls around, the roles have rarely been reversed. Now, though, moderate Democrats will have to decide whether they will stand behind candidates whose positions they have vociferously denounced during the primary cycle. El-Sayed has already begun to draw critical support from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, whose statement included a tacit endorsement by Schumer. It is an encouraging sign for a party that has sometimes let its internal divisions fester long beyond the end of an election.
But El-Sayed will need the full backing of the Democratic Party apparatus to win a statewide election in November. The Democratic Party and its constellation of donors, fundraisers, and surrogates will have to decide whether to back candidates like El-Sayed, McKinney, and Lawrence, even if they are sometimes out of step with party orthodoxy. The 2026 midterms will mark the best opportunity for Democrats to curb Trump’s increasingly erratic and destructive behavior. Whether they capitalize on that opportunity remains to be seen.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Tuesday night marked another significant battle in the clash between establishment Democrats and insurgent progressives that has come to define the 2026 primary season. After hard-fought battles in Michigan, Missouri, and elsewhere, progressive candidates defied expectations and reams of outside spending to emerge victorious in most of the closely watched races.
In Michigan, insurgent candidate Abdul El-Sayed defeated Democratic establishment favorite, Rep. Haley Stevens. El-Sayed led by about 14,000 votes on Wednesday morning, edging Stevens in the marquee race.
El-Sayed’s victory is the culmination of a remarkable primary campaign that began with him as an outsider candidate who was lagging in the polls in the beginning of the year. Stevens, meanwhile, was the clear establishment pick from the beginning of the race. She held endorsements from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, outgoing Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to lend an air of inevitability to her campaign. Ultimately, though, neither the full-throated backing of the political establishment nor tens of millions of dollars could get Stevens’s candidacy across the finish line.
El-Sayed is now set up for a bruising general election against Republican Mike Rogers, who was narrowly defeated in Michigan’s 2024 senatorial race by Elissa Slotkin. A victory in the general election would make El-Sayed the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Senate.
In the months leading up to the primary, Stevens benefited from record-breaking spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates. AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, dumped more than $30 million into this Senate primary alone. This marked AIPAC’s single biggest spend on an individual race since it became active in primaries near the beginning of this decade. Together, outside groups spent more than $60 million to back Stevens, a 9-to-1 spending advantage over El-Sayed. In dark money-funded ads that ran across the state, Stevens was celebrated for her purported close connection to former President Barack Obama and her pro-manufacturing policies, with no mention of Stevens’s stalwart support of Israel. Other ads alleged, without evidence, that El-Sayed was disrespectful toward women, and painted him as an opponent of the Obamas, and suggested that El-Sayed had helped Donald Trump win in 2024. Stevens’s surrogates on the campaign trail repeated these talking points, bombarding Michigan voters with a false image of El-Sayed as a misogynist and secret right-winger.
The spending, though, became an issue of its own during the race. El-Sayed and his campaign surrogates repeatedly brought up corporate spending, as well as regularly pointing out AIPAC by name, making an effective boogeyman of an organization that, until recent cycles, was rarely directly mentioned by candidates running for office. Stevens’s loss is a major rebuke to AIPAC’s involvement in primary races, and a testament to the erosion of the influence of outside money in general among Democratic primary voters.
Stevens’s loss is a major rebuke to AIPAC’s involvement in primary races, and a testament to the erosion of the influence of outside money in general among Democratic primary voters.
This pattern repeated in House races across the state, too. In Michigan’s 13th congressional district, insurgent Donavan McKinney secured the Democratic nomination against incumbent Shri Thanedar in a safe blue district. Thanedar, a multimillionaire who has bankrolled his own campaigns, was once an adversary of AIPAC and won his seat in the House in 2022 amidst an avalanche of opposition spending from the organization. Once he got to Congress, though, Thanedar substantially moderated his position on U.S. support for Israel and enjoyed millions of dollars in support from AIPAC and its backers in 2024, and again this year.
McKinney, on the other hand, made no secret of his enmity toward Israel’s conduct in Gaza, calling it a “genocide” on his campaign website. That tack, plus his emphasis on affordability and getting big money out of politics, was apparently more than enough for voters to opt for the newcomer over Thanedar. With Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s easy victory in her primary on Tuesday, the entire city of Detroit will now be represented by democratic socialists in Congress, the first major U.S. city where that is the case.
Even in mid-Michigan — outside of the dense, urban areas that have generally been prime targets for progressive insurgents — left-leaning candidate William Lawrence handily topped the field in the race for the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s 7th district. Lawrence, a co-founder of the environmental group the Sunrise Movement, was bludgeoned by a flurry of last-minute outside spending against his candidacy. While he faced candidates with backgrounds that hewed more closely to traditional resumes for public office, his two opponents likely split the moderate vote in the field, allowing Lawrence to win the election with around 44 percent of the vote. His opponents — Bridget Brink, a diplomat and former ambassador to Ukraine under Joe Biden, and Matt Maasdam, a retired Navy SEAL endorsed by Sen. Elissa Slotkin — both collected just under 30 percent of the vote, allowing Lawrence to eke out a win with a simple plurality of the total.
The entire city of Detroit will now be represented by democratic socialists in Congress, the first major U.S. city where that is the case.
Lawrence will now go on to represent the Democratic Party in a swing district general election that the party has eyed as one of its biggest pickup opportunities as it seeks to reclaim the House of Representatives. In a typical cycle, Lawrence would receive some of the highest-profile support from the Democratic Party in an attempt to flip a red seat widely considered a toss-up. Whether his progressive bent will complicate the party’s support for his run is still an open question.
The progressive swing did not sweep across every primary state on Tuesday, though. Missouri’s 1st district saw one of the most dramatic showdowns of the entire primary season, with former Rep. Cori Bush challenging current Rep. Wesley Bell to take back the seat that he won from her in 2024. That year, Bush was a prime target of AIPAC spending, with the group devoting more than $7 million to helping Bell defeat her. Since then, Bell has been a reliable ally to Israel in Congress, and was among the minority group of Democrats who recently voted against slashing aid to Israel.
Once again, AIPAC devoted substantial resources to defending Bell’s seat, spending at least $2 million in campaign ads supporting Bell. In the end, he walked to an easy victory over Bush, with the race called shortly after polls closed. Bush — who was one of the most stalwart progressives in Congress during her tenure — will now spend at least another term in exile, as AIPAC holds on to one of its hardest-won seats.
The mixed results on Tuesday night ensure that the internecine battle between the Democratic Party’s establishment and progressive flanks will continue through the rest of the primary season. August 11 will mark the next opportunity to gauge enthusiasm for each flank among the primary electorate: Democratic socialist Francesca Hong will face off against a field of more establishment-friendly picks in the primary for Wisconsin governor. Hong has established a clear lead in the polls over the last few weeks, and some Democratic Party functionaries are already voicing their anxieties about her ability to win the November general election in a purple state.
Whatever happens in the remaining primary races, a reckoning is coming for the Democratic Party this November. While progressive activists in the party have long been encouraged to form a united front with establishment-friendly Democrats to vote blue when the general election rolls around, the roles have rarely been reversed. Now, though, moderate Democrats will have to decide whether they will stand behind candidates whose positions they have vociferously denounced during the primary cycle. El-Sayed has already begun to draw critical support from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, whose statement included a tacit endorsement by Schumer. It is an encouraging sign for a party that has sometimes let its internal divisions fester long beyond the end of an election.
But El-Sayed will need the full backing of the Democratic Party apparatus to win a statewide election in November. The Democratic Party and its constellation of donors, fundraisers, and surrogates will have to decide whether to back candidates like El-Sayed, McKinney, and Lawrence, even if they are sometimes out of step with party orthodoxy. The 2026 midterms will mark the best opportunity for Democrats to curb Trump’s increasingly erratic and destructive behavior. Whether they capitalize on that opportunity remains to be seen.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Sam Rosenthal
Sam Rosenthal is the political director at RootsAction and serves on the Democratic Socialists of America’s National Electoral Committee. He was formerly a staffer at Our Revolution and lives in Washington, D.C.
What we are observing today is not just a minor shift in national American politics. It is a tectonic realignment.
Michigan Democratic Senate primary winner Abdul El-Sayed speaks during a press conference in front of the Spirit of Detroit statue on August 05, 2026 in Detroit, Michigan. Sayed called on Michiganders to unite against Mike Rodgers as well as challenging him to multiple debates.
(Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images)
Jamal Kanj
Aug 05, 2026
Common Dreams
At 2 a.m. Michigan time early Wednesday morning, NBC projected that AIPAC’s preferred candidate was on her way to look for a new job. US Rep. Haley Stevens’ defeat in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary is the last nail in AIPAC’s coffin. The once-feared Israel lobby is sinking, along with Israel, like a stone in American public opinion. Despite sixty-to-one spending against Abdul El-Sayed, Stevens couldn’t keep her head above water. AIPAC and its Israel-first billionaire funders turned Michigan into the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in American history and lost anyway.
Just think about it for a second: a PAC that backs a conservative candidate who champions tax cuts for billionaires in one congressional district while simultaneously bankrolling a liberal, like Stevens, who wants to tax the wealthy in another is not advancing a coherent American political interest. If the only principle uniting those otherwise incongruent endorsements is unwavering support for Israel, then the PAC is driven not by a domestic ideology or constituency, but by a foreign policy agenda.
Now, after spending millions to elect a Democrat, Stevens, AIPAC is all but certain to pour millions more into backing Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate, in November—not for the sake of Michiganders or Americans, but for Israel. That is the essence of AIPAC: partisan differences are irrelevant so long as the candidate serves Tel Aviv’s interests.
The Democratic establishment squandered its remaining credibility kowtowing to AIPAC, the most powerful foreign lobby, widening the chasm between the Democratic base and its leadership. AIPAC funding and endorsements from Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer and Gretchen Whitmer carried little weight in Democratic primaries.
Ask Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York. Ask Dan Goldman, also of New York. Ask Diana DeGette, a 15-term Colorado congresswoman who represented Denver since Bill Clinton’s first term. All three lost their seats in the same six weeks, and all three— and despite AIPAC backing—lost for the same reason: they stood with Israel, or wouldn’t say the word “genocide,” while their own voters had moved on without them. In Michigan, the Democratic establishment’s endorsements, and its push to have State Senator Mallory McMorrow drop from the race to consolidate the anti-El-Sayed “Democratic” vote, failed on its face. This is further evidence that the party’s base and its leadership are living in two different universes when it comes to Israel.
For seven decades, unconditional support for Israel was table stakes in Democratic politics; the safe position that kept Israel-first billionaires and AIPAC’s money flowing and primary challengers away. That math has broken. Staying quiet while Gaza starves and burns is now one of the fastest ways for a Democrat to lose an election.
Espaillat had AIPAC’s backing when Darializa Avila Chevalier, a former organizer of Columbia University’s Gaza encampment, beat him in New York’s 13th District. Goldman, who refused throughout his campaign to call Israel’s conduct in Gaza a genocide, lost to fellow New Yorker Brad Lander, a Jewish candidate and the city’s well known comprtoller who ran explicitly against Goldman’s Israel record. Then came DeGette, a Congressional Progressive Caucus stalwart, unseated by 29-year-old Democratic socialist Melat Kiros despite a late injection of AIPAC-linked outside spending trying to save her. Kiros’ closing message to voters was blunt: reject “corporate PACs like AIPAC” and stop waiting to end what she called the genocide in Palestine. Voters agreed by nearly ten points.
Haley Stevens who once bragged that Israel comes to her in her dreams—turned nightmare in the primary—attempted to sharpen her language criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu, trying to close a gap against El-Sayed. Even Rahm Emanuel, who served in the Israeli army, a man who built his career as one of Israel’s most reliable Democratic defenders and is openly eyeing a 2028 presidential run, stood in Tel Aviv last month and said Netanyahu’s government had driven the country into a dead end, questioning America’s unconditional support for Israel.
The state of Maine offers maybe the starkest proof. After the anti-genocide Senate candidate Graham Platner campaign imploded, half a dozen Democrats jumped in to replace him—and every one of them has had to scramble to prove they’ll carry his opposition to the Gaza war forward, not walk it back. Troy Jackson, the current nominee, attempted to placate the establishment avoiding Israel and Gaza out of his launch speech entirely; by the next day, under visible pressure, he was calling the war “unconscionable” and pledging he’d never vote for taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel. The hopeful Nirav Shah has had to publicly deny taking AIPAC money and commit to opposing all aid to Israel, offensive or defensive, just to hold onto the coalition Platner built. Even Shenna Bellows, was pressed by reporters and rivals alike to say where she stands on Gaza. None of them could afford to look like the old consensus anymore.
The behind-the-curve Republicans are watching and licking their chops, framing these wins as too far left to win in November. The party is even further behind the Democratic establishment in understanding the shift among American voters. Republicans have always been late to catch up with the reality of change in America—from voting rights to women’s rights to LGBTQ+ rights, the GOP has always been a Johnny-come-lately. And the next midterm elections are poised to prove that.
What we are observing today is not just a minor shift in national American politics. It is a tectonic realignment in party politics. It used to be that not groveling to Israel—not making the obligatory photo op wearing yarmulke and tucking a note into the crevices of a wall built under the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, was the political risk. Now it’s staying silent, hedging, or clinging to the old line that gets you ousted, and it’s grassroots movements doing the ousting, defeating outside PACs or pressure groups.
This happened because two years of televised famine, bombed hospitals, murdered children, and a UN commission calling Israel’s conduct genocide changed how American voters see Israel and what they now expect from the leaders who represent them. The politicians who read that shift early, Mamdani, Lander, Avila Chevalier, Kiros, won. The ones who didn’t are now—or soon to be— former members of congress.
The lesson for every Democrat still weighing how much daylight to put between themselves, AIPAC, and Israeli apartheid: the voters have already decided. The only question left is whether the Democratic establishment will catch up with the anti-genocide American voters in time to win the majority in both houses this November.
At 2 a.m. Michigan time early Wednesday morning, NBC projected that AIPAC’s preferred candidate was on her way to look for a new job. US Rep. Haley Stevens’ defeat in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary is the last nail in AIPAC’s coffin. The once-feared Israel lobby is sinking, along with Israel, like a stone in American public opinion. Despite sixty-to-one spending against Abdul El-Sayed, Stevens couldn’t keep her head above water. AIPAC and its Israel-first billionaire funders turned Michigan into the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in American history and lost anyway.
Just think about it for a second: a PAC that backs a conservative candidate who champions tax cuts for billionaires in one congressional district while simultaneously bankrolling a liberal, like Stevens, who wants to tax the wealthy in another is not advancing a coherent American political interest. If the only principle uniting those otherwise incongruent endorsements is unwavering support for Israel, then the PAC is driven not by a domestic ideology or constituency, but by a foreign policy agenda.
Now, after spending millions to elect a Democrat, Stevens, AIPAC is all but certain to pour millions more into backing Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate, in November—not for the sake of Michiganders or Americans, but for Israel. That is the essence of AIPAC: partisan differences are irrelevant so long as the candidate serves Tel Aviv’s interests.
The Democratic establishment squandered its remaining credibility kowtowing to AIPAC, the most powerful foreign lobby, widening the chasm between the Democratic base and its leadership. AIPAC funding and endorsements from Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer and Gretchen Whitmer carried little weight in Democratic primaries.
Ask Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York. Ask Dan Goldman, also of New York. Ask Diana DeGette, a 15-term Colorado congresswoman who represented Denver since Bill Clinton’s first term. All three lost their seats in the same six weeks, and all three— and despite AIPAC backing—lost for the same reason: they stood with Israel, or wouldn’t say the word “genocide,” while their own voters had moved on without them. In Michigan, the Democratic establishment’s endorsements, and its push to have State Senator Mallory McMorrow drop from the race to consolidate the anti-El-Sayed “Democratic” vote, failed on its face. This is further evidence that the party’s base and its leadership are living in two different universes when it comes to Israel.
For seven decades, unconditional support for Israel was table stakes in Democratic politics; the safe position that kept Israel-first billionaires and AIPAC’s money flowing and primary challengers away. That math has broken. Staying quiet while Gaza starves and burns is now one of the fastest ways for a Democrat to lose an election.
Espaillat had AIPAC’s backing when Darializa Avila Chevalier, a former organizer of Columbia University’s Gaza encampment, beat him in New York’s 13th District. Goldman, who refused throughout his campaign to call Israel’s conduct in Gaza a genocide, lost to fellow New Yorker Brad Lander, a Jewish candidate and the city’s well known comprtoller who ran explicitly against Goldman’s Israel record. Then came DeGette, a Congressional Progressive Caucus stalwart, unseated by 29-year-old Democratic socialist Melat Kiros despite a late injection of AIPAC-linked outside spending trying to save her. Kiros’ closing message to voters was blunt: reject “corporate PACs like AIPAC” and stop waiting to end what she called the genocide in Palestine. Voters agreed by nearly ten points.
Haley Stevens who once bragged that Israel comes to her in her dreams—turned nightmare in the primary—attempted to sharpen her language criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu, trying to close a gap against El-Sayed. Even Rahm Emanuel, who served in the Israeli army, a man who built his career as one of Israel’s most reliable Democratic defenders and is openly eyeing a 2028 presidential run, stood in Tel Aviv last month and said Netanyahu’s government had driven the country into a dead end, questioning America’s unconditional support for Israel.
The state of Maine offers maybe the starkest proof. After the anti-genocide Senate candidate Graham Platner campaign imploded, half a dozen Democrats jumped in to replace him—and every one of them has had to scramble to prove they’ll carry his opposition to the Gaza war forward, not walk it back. Troy Jackson, the current nominee, attempted to placate the establishment avoiding Israel and Gaza out of his launch speech entirely; by the next day, under visible pressure, he was calling the war “unconscionable” and pledging he’d never vote for taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel. The hopeful Nirav Shah has had to publicly deny taking AIPAC money and commit to opposing all aid to Israel, offensive or defensive, just to hold onto the coalition Platner built. Even Shenna Bellows, was pressed by reporters and rivals alike to say where she stands on Gaza. None of them could afford to look like the old consensus anymore.
The behind-the-curve Republicans are watching and licking their chops, framing these wins as too far left to win in November. The party is even further behind the Democratic establishment in understanding the shift among American voters. Republicans have always been late to catch up with the reality of change in America—from voting rights to women’s rights to LGBTQ+ rights, the GOP has always been a Johnny-come-lately. And the next midterm elections are poised to prove that.
What we are observing today is not just a minor shift in national American politics. It is a tectonic realignment in party politics. It used to be that not groveling to Israel—not making the obligatory photo op wearing yarmulke and tucking a note into the crevices of a wall built under the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, was the political risk. Now it’s staying silent, hedging, or clinging to the old line that gets you ousted, and it’s grassroots movements doing the ousting, defeating outside PACs or pressure groups.
This happened because two years of televised famine, bombed hospitals, murdered children, and a UN commission calling Israel’s conduct genocide changed how American voters see Israel and what they now expect from the leaders who represent them. The politicians who read that shift early, Mamdani, Lander, Avila Chevalier, Kiros, won. The ones who didn’t are now—or soon to be— former members of congress.
The lesson for every Democrat still weighing how much daylight to put between themselves, AIPAC, and Israeli apartheid: the voters have already decided. The only question left is whether the Democratic establishment will catch up with the anti-genocide American voters in time to win the majority in both houses this November.
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