Affordability was the Democrats’ winning theme in last week’s state and local elections, notably the New York City mayoral race. Their message was that for all of US President Donald Trump’s braggadocio, prices for food, energy, housing, and healthcare are going up along with inflation and unemployment, and we can’t afford it.
The president ridiculed the Democrats’ message, likely because it worked so well for them, and he particularly targeted Zohran Mamdani, the next mayor of New York City. Mamdani is a 34-year-old Muslim immigrant from Uganda, a strident critic of Israel and a supporter of the Palestinian cause. Trump and Republicans want to make him the poster boy for the Democrats in next year’s congressional elections.
The 2026 GOP strategy includes telling Jewish voters that Mamdani is proof that they are no longer welcome in the Democratic Party, and Republicans want to be their new home. That conveniently overlooks landslide victories of pro-Israel moderate Democrats, notably in New Jersey and Virginia.
The New York election had a clear message for Israel as well, about another form of affordability, this one political.
Partisan screams and warnings
Mainstream Jewish organizations fell all over themselves with partisan screams and warnings that New York’s Jews face dire peril when the new city administration takes over – conveniently ignoring the 30 percent of Jewish voters who welcomed the mayor-elect’s progressive positions on domestic issues.
Mamdani did even better with young and progressive Jewish voters despite, or maybe because, he has said he would arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court charging crimes against humanity in the Israel-Hamas War.
The political Right conveniently ignores the shocking rise of antisemitism and a growing affinity for Europe’s neo-Nazi parties in their own ranks. Recent polls reveal a troubling rise of antisemitism among young Evangelicals, whose parents’ generation was among Israel’s most faithful supporters.
The MAGA Right doesn’t uniformly share Trump’s professed love of Israel. It is rife with rising isolationism and anti-Jewish sentiment.
Carlson and a Holocaust-denier
Tucker Carlson's recent podcast interview with Holocaust-denier and Jew-hater Nick Fuentes was widely denounced across the political landscape, forcing Republicans to confront their own antisemitism, something they historically have tried to ignore by portraying it as exclusively on the Left.
Carlson, a Trump friend and popular conservative podcaster in whom many see a broad streak of antisemitism, pushes the replacement theory, which decries all those foreigners, like Jews, coming to take over his white Christian country.
Netanyahu doesn’t seem to have a problem with Republicans’ antisemitic undercurrents. Instead of working to repair strained relations with the Democratic Party, the historical home of over 70% of Jewish voters, he has largely abandoned it as his government spends tens of millions to retain and reinforce the backing of Evangelicals and churchgoers, often portraying Palestinians as anti-Christian, according to a report in Haaretz by Omer Benjakob. The campaign relies heavily on social media influencers.
'I speak Republican'
Netanyahu, who once boasted, “I speak Republican,” reportedly feels the Evangelicals are much easier to deal with than the liberals and Jews who ask too many questions. Especially when it comes to the Palestinians.
The architect of this strategy is Ron Dermer, the Florida-born former Republican operative known as “Bibi’s brain,” who has just presented his resignation as strategic affairs minister. As Netanyahu’s ambassador to Washington, Dermer built close alliances with Republicans and waged political war against Democrats and the Obama administration. His ties to the current administration earned him the sobriquet Trump whisperer.
In the years since Netanyahu was a young diplomat in Washington, the Palestinian cause has won more American sympathy than Israel’s, including among Republicans and Evangelicals, according to Pew Research, a trend that took a quantum leap with Israel’s prolonged war against Gaza.
Rhetoric no guarantee
The US president's strong pro-Israel rhetoric is no guarantee of continued support, especially given the volatile president’s penchant for policy U-turns.
Netanyahu is a bipartisan offender; Republican and Democratic presidents alike have found him arrogant, brash, and untrustworthy. Trump finally ran out of patience with the Israeli leader’s resistance to his Gaza ceasefire plan and told him: “Take it or leave it. And ‘leave it’ means we walk away from you,” according to Aaron David Miller, longtime US peace negotiator.
Trump “lacks much of the emotional investment” in Israel “that has constrained past presidents,” Miller observed, and the president is expanding the focus of US Middle East policy beyond being Israel-centric. On his first foreign trip this year, Trump ignored Israel and went to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
This week, he hosted Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House, the first Syrian head of state ever. Next week, one of his favorites, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is coming by. They are expected to finalize a mutual defense pact, something both Trump and former president Joe Biden once linked to the normalization of Saudi-Israel relations, but no longer. Bibi’s adamant opposition to even discussing a Palestinian path to statehood is the roadblock.
Trump and Erdogan
Trump is also warming his friendship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government has issued arrest warrants for alleged genocide against Netanyahu and other senior Israelis. He appears sympathetic to Turkey’s desire for a role in postwar Gaza, which Netanyahu rejects. Erdogan has been an important backer of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Rebuilding trust with Democrats and American Jewry will require new leadership in Israel. From Capitol Hill to the Jewish communities, people are no longer willing to be patronized and told to send more money and weapons and keep their thoughts to themselves.
The president is likely to resent any future Israeli efforts to repair relations with Democrats; he was furious when Netanyahu phoned to congratulate Biden on his 2020 election victory. “F*** him,” Trump told an Israeli reporter. ”He has made a terrible mistake.”
Nachman Shai, a former Knesset member and diplomat, wrote recently in The Jerusalem Post, “We must rebuild trust between Israel and its friends around the world, a step vital to our existence.”
The road to restoring bipartisan support across the political and personal landscape will be long and difficult, and make no mistake, there will be no return to those not-so-long-ago days of wall-to-wall bipartisan support where the conflict on Capitol Hill was often a matter of who loved Israel more.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.