The Trump era is ending as it began. The chaos of an electoral rout, the confusion of personality with policy, division over wars in the Middle East and the US-Israel relationship – all milled through the digitally enhanced rage of the Republican and Democratic bases and a digitally incentivised media for whom reality is a bad business strategy.
The midterms gave Trump the kind of “shellacking” that Barack Obama received in 2014. The voters’ repudiation of Obama gave advance notice of the greater repudiation of the 2016 presidential elections. If political parties could have a soul, then both Democrats and Republicans are now fighting for its possession. The results of the midterms and the immediate reactions are not “good for the Jews”. Thinly veiled anti-Jewish politics is eating into both parties’ platforms.
It’s normal for a sitting president’s party to lose control of Congress in the midterms. But Vice President JD Vance reacted to the reversal by rejecting his own President’s policies. Without telling the White House, he fired off a rambling and incoherent X post that went off-message and off the reservation.
Vance blamed the Republicans’ defeat on the Iran war (an America-Israeli venture), the cost of living and inflation, a failure to “Put America First” (which implies malignant Israeli and American Jewish influence over foreign policy) and, finally saying it out loud, America’s closeness to Israel.
Vance’s source for that last claim was an anonymous pollster. He turned out to be Mark Mitchell, the ex-head of the very right-leaning pollster Rasmussen Reports. Though Mitchell has been bashing Trump’s foreign policy all year, Vance has reportedly been quietly consulting with him throughout.
The exit polls did not validate Vance’s claims. Trump’s ratings have declined since day one of this term. The Iran war continued the decline at the same rate. The midterms were lost on the second of Vance’s points, the cost of living and inflation. But the Republican nomination for 2028, Vance hopes, can be won by splitting the pro-Israel Evangelicals and rallying alienated young white men.
After the midterms, Vance has no choice but to go against Trump and the party as “America First”. The need to keep that faction inside the Republican tent might explain why Trump announced the end of military aid to Israel. It may rebound on US defence firms, because the aid is earmarked for spending in America, and on America too, because it loosens the leash on Israel. Regardless, it’s a sign that Israel and the broader issue of the place of American Jews in US politics are now wedge issues on the right, just as they have been since the Obama years on the left.
To see where the Republican base is heading, look at the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who won bigly in the midterms. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants and an Israel-hater, became America’s first Muslim senator after cruising to victory against the old-school Republican Mike Rogers.
“Palestinian kids should get to grow up in the land of their forefathers without being murdered by our tax dollars,” El-Sayed said in his victory speech. Six more DSA members from Democrat cities joined the House of Representatives as it swung to the Democrats. They include Darializa Avila Chevalier. The daughter of Dominican immigrants who won by a landslide in New York City, Chevalier was a leader of the encampment at Columbia University. She was so inspired by the pro-Palestine cause that, she says, she converted to Islam. Her response to Trump’s statement on ending military aid to Israel was to call for “a full arms embargo and the Palestinian right of return”.
In Colorado, Melat Kiros became the first Gen Z woman to enter the House. Kiros, an Ethiopian immigrant, rejects Israel’s existence. She has declined to call the June 2025 firebombing of a Gaza hostage vigil in Boulder an antisemitic act. In the attack, Egyptian-born Mohamed Sabry Soliman shouted “Free Palestine” as he threw a Molotov cocktail that killed an 82-year-old woman and injured a dozen more people.
Plenty of moderate Democrats retained their seats, including Pennsylvania’s governor Josh Shapiro and Georgia senator Jon Ossoff. Both would be strong competitors for President in 2028 – but for their Jewishness. A quarter of a century since Joe Lieberman ran as Al Gore’s nominee for Vice President, the Democrats are loyalty-testing Jews like it’s Vienna in the 1890s, and a Republican Vice President is hinting that the Jews are America’s misfortune.
Whoever the next Israeli prime minister is, he has two years to secure Israel against the most hostile Democratic presidency yet. We saw how the Biden administration slow-walked supplies to Israel after October 7. The next Democratic president will threaten a complete cut-off if Israel doesn’t consent to a Palestinian state.
Jewish Americans face a simple choice. The Democratic Party knows what it is: a sectarian alliance that celebrates anti-Jewish conspiracists, looks the other way to Islamist entryism, and sees the marginalisation of Jews in public life as collateral expense of maintaining its coalition.
Jews can continue donating and voting for a party that panders to their enemies, or they can leverage their support in the hope of restoring a Republican Party whose future is now in the balance. The Republicans, whatever else they contain, are still the party of Americanism. Despite the decadence and unreason of US politics, Americanism remains the common creed of civic life. For Jews as for all Americans, it remains Lincoln’s “last, best hope”.
Dominic Green (@DrDominicGreen) is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Examiner and the Critic
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