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These are hard times for Democrats. In 2024, Republicans won control of the White House and both houses of Congress. Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January for the start of his second non-consecutive term, they seem lost. The energy and conviction with which he has pursued his agenda to fundamentally change the federal government and topple the woke leftist control of education has left a leaderless opposition eating his dust.
They are unable to undermine him in the way they did at the start of his first term in 2017, when an anti-Trump “resistance” took to the streets, and acceptance of the conspiracy theories of their Russian collusion hoax put him on the defensive. They can hold onto hope that gaffes like Signalgate will mean more than a tough news cycle or that his tariff policies will fail. But beyond that, all they can do at the moment is engage in pointless theatrics and stunts, such as their silly waving of placards during a presidential address to Congress or the 25-hour Senate filibuster conducted by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) that was unconnected to any legislative objective.
More than that, the 2024 results seemed to indicate a genuine realignment of the electorate, with working-class voters of all races moving toward the Republicans, and Democrats being confined to upper-income credentialed elites and the very poor. If that continues, it's a formula for similar outcomes in the future.
But stasis is antithetical to politics. Any current GOP triumphalism or Democratic depression is, by definition, a transitory phenomenon. Administrations of either party are an economic downturn or some other fiasco that is perceived as indicative of its incompetence (such as the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan that was the turning point for President Joe Biden), away from an inevitable descent into political disaster. As much as most Americans are, regardless of their feelings about the results, still savoring the conclusion of an endless 2024 presidential contest, that means that talk about 2028 has already begun.
That makes the debate about the future direction of a Democratic Party still struggling to understand why they lost in 2024 something about which everyone, including their opponents, should take an interest. That's especially true for Jewish Democrats, who have watched with dismay as their party's intersectional left-wing take control of their electoral base. The question they need to be asking themselves now is whether someone such as the ardently pro-Israel Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the leader of the leftist “Squad,” represents the future of the Democratic Party.
Who will lead?
Many Democrats would probably say now that representing the party's future as a choice between those two idiosyncratic figures is a mistake. AOC wasn't even mentioned in a recent Washington Post list of 12 people who might fill the leadership vacuum at the top of what it described as the “listless vessel” that is the current Democratic Party.
A look at that list would be reassuring to centrist or moderate Democrats, as it is topped by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and includes others, like Fetterman, who would like to be seen as representing an alternative to the faction of the party that has been led in the last decade by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent Socialist from Vermont. They hope that the party's tilt to the left under Biden, and especially during the 2024 campaign, as first the president and then Vice President Kamala Harris tried in vain to appease voters who resented their half-hearted support for Israel, should be seen as a lesson learned that will not be repeated in the future.
They were also probably reassured by a Senate vote on Sanders's latest effort to punish Israel for seeking to defend itself against genocidal Palestinian terrorists since the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The Jewish senator's proposal to block $9 billion in arms sales to Israel was resoundingly rejected by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 83-15.
It is discouraging to think that 15 senators would oppose aiding the Jewish state in the middle of an ongoing conflict with Iran's terrorist proxies. But those who prefer to see the glass as being half-full can point to the fact that this means that the Democratic Senate caucus voted in favor of Israel by a 32-15 margin, even as the GOP was unanimously behind it. Moreover, four of those who voted against Sanders's effort voted in favor of a similar resolution last fall, including Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga). Ossoff came under withering criticism from Georgia's Jewish community for siding against Israel and is facing a potentially tough re-election fight in 2026.
But any assumption that a 2024 post-mortem will incline the Democrats to turn back to the center may be mistaken. By any measure, the energy within the Democratic Party remains with its left-wing base, not its less radical establishment.
Those who voted against Sanders may, while still virtue-signaling their opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and concern for the casualties caused by a war launched by Hamas that most Palestinians support, still want to be perceived as pro-Israel. But it is precisely those more centrist Washington officeholders who are largely the focus of grass-roots anger from Democrats who want their representatives to do anything, no matter how pointless, to vent their rage at Trump.
Moreover, the further assumption that the Democratic Party establishment can, when it wishes to, squelch the party's left, whenever it wants to, may also be mistaken.
That's what happened in February 2020 when Sanders seemed on track to win the Democratic nomination for president after Biden flopped in Iowa and New Hampshire. In the South Carolina primary, however, African-American voters rallied to Biden, and then the other candidates fell into line and withdrew from the race, allowing him to coast to victory while spending the early months of the pandemic and the rest of the year largely hiding in his basement.
A turn against Israel
The Democratic Party of 2025, let alone 2028, is not the same. Most members of Congress may still not wish to be seen as being too far to the left. But their party base, if not all of their voters, has no such qualms. And as far as Israel is concerned, the impact of the post-Oct. 7 war and surge of antisemitism that has swept across the nation have solidified the trend that was already turning the party against Jerusalem.
As the most recent Gallup tracking poll indicates, voters who identify themselves as Democrats have decisively turned against Israel, favoring the Palestinians over Israel by a shocking 59% to 21% margin. By contrast, Republicans favor Israel by 75% to 10%, and independents do so by a smaller margin of 42% to 34%.
Though that means that a majority of Americans remain pro-Israel, it is also a clear sign that figures who might have been deemed out-of-step with the majority of their party's voters only a few years ago can enter the next presidential cycle secure in the knowledge that they speak for the overwhelming majority of Democrats.
And that is where AOC comes in.
It may be hard for many observers to wrap their heads around the idea that someone who has seemed to symbolize 21st-century radicalism is a presidential possibility. As much as it is easy to deride her policy proposals like the “Green New Deal” or the abysmal ignorance about issues like the conflict in the Middle East that she often displays, it would be a mistake to underestimate her political savvy or ability to put herself in a position of influence in a party that has been gradually shifting farther to the left for the last two decades.
Sanders passes the torch
As has been made clear in the last year, Sanders is passing on the leadership of the party's left wing to AOC. The two of them have often campaigned together, and most recently, went on a so-called “fighting oligarchy” tour, where they drew large and enthusiastic crowds in Nevada, Arizona and Colorado.
That has prompted a flurry of articles in liberal and left-wing publications about AOC's 2028 prospects. She has plenty of options.
One is staying in the U.S. House of Representatives and rising in the party's leadership. If the Democrats regain the majority in a now narrowly divided House in the 2026 midterms, then it would give a platform for her ideas while sitting in a safe deep-blue seat.
Another option would be to run for a seat in the Senate in 2028 by challenging Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Beating Schumer, who has continually held public office since January 1975, would be no easy task, even in a Democratic electorate that leans as far to the left as that in New York. But the longtime New York senator, who will be 78 in 2028, is emblematic of the party's failed geriatric leadership to which AOC, who will turn 39 that year, is an obvious antidote. He's also alienated Democrats, who think he's been insufficiently obstructionist toward Trump 2.0 and the pro-Israel community for his attacks on the Jewish state's government since Oct. 7, and his advice to Columbia University that only Republicans care about antisemitic mayhem on its campus.
It's also possible that AOC will conclude that with Sanders's support and an existing Democratic field that at the moment is made up of figures unlikely to capture the nation's imagination, 2028 would be the best time to try for the presidency.
The 'core values' of the Democrats
Those urging her to choose that option were bolstered by a CNN poll that showed that of the leading Democrats, she “best reflects” the “core values” of the party.
That advantage shouldn't intimidate her potential opponents since she topped a list of 26 Democrats with only 10% giving her that title. Still, it is significant that in doing so, she finished ahead of people like former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris, though it's hard to imagine the latter trying again for the presidency after her 2024 debacle. Even more interesting is the fact that Shapiro —the early favorite of pro-Israel moderates —got only 1% in the poll of Democrats while Fetterman received zero support.
As the flurry of flattering articles about her in the liberal press, such as one by New York Times columnist Michelle Cottle and a separate Times news analysis indicates, AOC is widely liked by her fellow congressional Democrats and is working to build bridges with the moderates.
More important than that —and unlike a lot of people on the left who are supposedly smarter than her —AOC deserves credit for trying to downplay the ideological divide in her party. Instead, she is taking a page out of the playbooks of both Sanders and Trump by demanding that the Democrats must give up being the party of the educated class and credentialed elites. Instead, she wants it to go back to its roots as a party that represents working people.
Her ideas, like the radical environmentalism of the Green New Deal, would be terrible for everyone, especially for working-class Americans, since those who aren't privileged rich people would be hurt by abandoning fossil fuels and other measures that benefit the upper classes. The same is true for her support for open borders that depress the wages of lower-income Americans and make housing less affordable. Still, she does understand that the globalist economics pursued by the establishments of both major parties until the advent of Trump have devastated blue-collar voters.
Her undoubted charisma and support that she's always gotten from the liberal press who have helped her go mainstream are formidable advantages heading toward 2028.
It remains to be seen how she would fare in a presidential campaign, however, since the only way to know if a candidate, no matter how popular or well-funded, is ready for prime time is for them to run. And three and a half years away from the 2028 general election, it's unclear how the nation will perceive Trump 2.0, and whether Vice President JD Vance, the current front-runner for the GOP nomination, will stay in Trump's good graces. And that's not taking into account whether Trump is really serious about finding a way to evade the barrier to an unconstitutional third term erected by the 22nd Amendment.
The left wing of the Democratic Party is unlikely, as it did in 2020, to allow the D.C. establishment to stay in power again. The party base's rage at Trump, especially if, unlike in his first term, he proves impervious to attempts to sabotage his administration, will be vented at centrists as much as it will be at Republicans.
A bipartisan consensus is dead
That's bad news for the dwindling number of Democrats like Fetterman, who would like to reassemble the old bipartisan pro-Israel consensus.
AOC is very much in sync with not merely the anti-Israel activism of left-wing Democrats and fellow “Squad” members in the House. She also supports the pro-Hamas mobs on campuses like Columbia University, even as she hedges her bets by saying that she's against antisemitism while denying that her anti-Zionist allies are Jew-haters.
Those who wonder what will happen to the U.S.-Israel relationship or the fight against antisemitism if the Democrats win in 2028 have good reason to worry. As much as the Biden and Obama administrations saw a steep decline in the influence of pro-Israel Democrats, the Democratic Party of the future that AOC represents is one in which they will have virtually no voice at all. Whether or not she runs, or winds up seriously contending for the presidential nomination, a Democratic Party where someone who shares her views can be spoken of as a realistic possibility for 2028 is one that will have abandoned Jewish voters. It will also mean that any hope that Israel hasn't become a partisan issue for the foreseeable future is officially gone.
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Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of Jewish News Syndicate. He's been a JWR contributor since 1998.