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In the wake of New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary in June, there was some doubt as to whether a party that still aspired to represent mainstream voters would rally behind a man who was not only a Socialist but an anti-Zionist. Eight weeks later, not only is it clear that there will be no movement on the part of national or even statewide Democrats to disassociate themselves from his candidacy, but that his position on Israel may well be closer to the mainstream of Democratic officeholders, and perhaps, many voters than his critics think.
The confirmation that Mamdani was not going to be isolated within his party was delivered last week in a column by New York Times political columnist Mara Gay when she broke the news that former President Barack Obama had called the 33-year-old mayoral candidate to offer him encouragement and advice. She reported that other key members of Obamaworld, like political guru David Axelrod, speechwriter Jon Favreau, and political advisor and podcaster Dan Pfeiffer, have also been communicating with top Mamdani advisers. She quoted Axelrod as comparing the Mamdani campaign to the "familiar spirit" of "determined, upbeat optimism" that was needed to inspire the country and relate to working people in Obama's campaigns.
Leave aside the fact that the Mamdani campaign has little appeal to working-class Americans, who, as last year's election results showed, increasingly look to President Donald Trump and the Republicans to represent their interests rather than progressives, who reject their values, and favor globalist economics and illegal immigration. As writer Armin Rosen recently noted in Tablet, the enthusiasm for the Democratic Socialist comes largely from white upper-middle-class or wealthy elites who, insulated from the real world, have bought into the economic and woke social fantasies of the left.
Obama redux
It is a reflection of the fact that the Democratic base does, as Axelrod sensed, see Mamdani's foolish platform of failed Marxist economic fairytales and opposition to a Jewish state as emblematic of a revival of Obama's "hope and change" movement that propelled him to the White House in 2008. The failure of leading Democrats, who remain clueless as to why they lost in 2024, to mount any concerted opposition to Mamdani is itself significant. Still, the legitimacy that the approval of Obama — who remains an iconic figure for Democrats even as the country embraces Trump — gives Mamdani signifies where the party is headed.
It should be remembered that Obama had to at least pretend to be a friend of Israel in 2008 and again in 2012 when his re-election campaign marked a year-long pause in his ongoing hostility to the Jewish state and its government before it resumed in full force with his appeasement of Iran. Things are very different in 2025. Mamdani's record of opposition to Israel's existence, membership in antisemitic organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, and refusal to disavow leftist chants in favor of Israel's destruction and Jewish genocide ("From the river to the sea") and in favor of international terrorism against Jews ("Globalize the intifada") would have been disqualifying, even in deep-blue New York not that long ago. Now, the cheers from Obama and his administration's alumni are not the only or even the primary indication of the shift among Democrats.
That Mamdani has the enthusiastic support of left-wing anti-Israel billionaire George Soros, as well as his son Alex, and their network of philanthropies and political action committees is hardly surprising. But the real indication of how Democratic opinion has shifted comes from the wide range of officeholders and office-seekers who are now adopting positions far closer to that of Mamdani on the Middle East conflict than pro-Israel stalwarts like Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) or almost the entirety of the Republican congressional caucus.
Political weathervanes
The decision of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a once and likely future Democratic presidential candidate, is one such example. His shift away from a stance of traditional support for Israel and to denounce the campaign to eradicate Hamas in Gaza — and to say that he would have voted, along with the majority of the Democratic caucus, for the resolution of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to halt arms sales to the Jewish state — speaks volumes about party sentiment. Buttigieg may have little chance to win in 2028, given his lack of minority support in a party where such voters dominate the primaries, coupled with his disastrous performance in former President Joe Biden's cabinet. Yet the former think tank analyst who always crafts his positions to appeal to what he thinks is mainstream opinion is a reliable weathervane of Democratic opinion.
His bending of the knee to the Hamas propaganda narrative about "genocide" and "starvation" in Gaza demonstrates how the balance of power in the party is no longer a matter of a leftist base pushing back against party moderates and congressional leadership.
The same applies to the decisions of other congressional Democrats.
It's one thing for House "Squad" members and open antisemites like Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to promote blood libels against Israel. But when Minority Whip Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) — the second-ranking House Democrat — does so by specifically endorsing the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza (though she later contradicted herself and walked back the comment when questioned about it by JNS) or when Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) a darling of pro-Israel liberal Jewish Democrats, becomes a co-sponsor of a bill blocking arms sales to Israel in the House, it's time to stop pretending that Mamdani is some kind of an outlier in the party on the Jewish state.
This is bad news for Mamdani's opponents, especially former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, both Democrats running as independents in November. Their candidacies are based on the idea that most voters, even in a city dominated by Democrats, have no interest in electing a Socialist who believes in policies like expanded rent control and government grocery stores that will exacerbate rather than fix the problems facing New Yorkers, who aren't as wealthy as the progressive elites backing Mamdani. Like Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, they have also been counting on the idea that the majority of them would be appalled by the prospect of a supporter of the sort of open antisemitism that was witnessed on campuses like that of Columbia University, Barnard College, New York University, the New School, the City University of New York and other academic institutions since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, would be too extreme to win a general election.
It remains to be seen whether their hopes of a backlash against Mamdani's extremism will develop as Election Day approaches, or if the refusal of any among his trio of opponents to pull out of the race will enable him to win a plurality of votes even if that happens.
What we do see is that mainstream Democrats have now concluded that it's better to join Mamdani than fight him. That Mamdani and other Democrats are embracing the cause of Mahmoud Khalil, the Syrian organizer of the pro-Hamas demonstrations and encampments at Columbia, whom Trump wants to deport, is just the icing on the anti-Zionist cake. If even people like former Staten Island Rep. Max Rose, a Jewish centrist, are now saying that Obama was right to welcome Mamdani and his supporters into a big-tent version of their party, that speaks volumes about who is and isn't an outlier among Democrats.
Democratic support craters
They are, after all, just reading the numbers the way all politicians must. As a recent Gallup poll showed, while a decisive 71% of Republicans endorsed Israel's actions in Gaza, a staggeringly low 8% of Democrats agreed with them.
This illustrates, among other things, the decisive influence liberal media has on the opinions of the sector of the population that still pays attention to them. The avalanche of anti-Israel coverage of the current war — with so many mainstream corporate liberal outlets effectively echoing Hamas propaganda about Palestinian casualties, starvation and genocide — has made an impact on Democrats.
Among them, support for Israel's actions in Gaza fell from 36% in November 2023 to the current 8% figure. One could argue that having only slightly more than a third of Democrats backing the counter-offensive against Hamas only weeks after the orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction on Oct. 7 already spoke volumes about the decline in support for the Jewish state. But with backing for Israel cratering and slipping into single figures, it's unsurprising that Democratic politicians, who once hewed to a pro-Israel line, have abandoned it.
By contrast, Republicans — who in today's bifurcated culture are highly unlikely to read, watch or listen to left-wing outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and NPR — are giving Israel the same 71% level of support now as they did right after the current war started.
This is the culmination of a long process that has its roots in the progressive conquest of American education and liberal media, and the way toxic leftist myths about race, intersectionality and settler-colonialism that falsely labeled Israel as a "white" oppressor of Palestinians, a "people of color," have become a new orthodoxy among liberals. As long as virtually every publication and broadcast and cable channel is mainstreaming the "genocide" lie, expecting politicians who look to the consumers of those outlets for support to stand up against these falsehoods is to engage in magical thinking.
While far-right antisemites and online Israel-bashers have become too loud and popular online to ignore, they are still a minority phenomenon and out of sync with GOP voters and Trump, the man whose opinion is the only one that truly counts among Republicans these days. Yet while their support is unlikely to shift, those who are holding onto the belief that a bipartisan pro-Israel coalition can be resurrected from the political dead are dreaming. That's a tragedy for Israel, and even more so for the majority of American Jews. Liberal Jews who aren't willing to abandon Israel are increasingly politically homeless.
Given the ideological motivation for their willingness to buy into Hamas blood libels, the belief that even an Israeli decision to end the war and surrender to the terrorists' demands to hold onto power in Gaza would change things is to engage in fantasy, not sober political analysis. The focus on Mamdani among Jewish New Yorkers and pro-Israel Democrats is understandable, even if the chances of defeating him are slim. But it's obvious that no matter what happens in New York in November, the Democrats are a lost cause for the pro-Israel community.
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Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of Jewish News Syndicate. He's been a JWR contributor since 1998.