The victory in Michigan proved: Democrats can no longer ignore the extremists in the party
The victory of Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan primaries, alongside other successes of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, proves that the far-left is no longer just on the margins. From abolishing the police and the Senate to stopping security aid to Israel, the rising movement is forcing a new agenda on the party leadership, deepening the rift with Jewish voters and donors.
When someone like Abdul El-Sayed — a doctor and politician identified with the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) movement — wins a Senate primary in Michigan, it is an event with national implications. El-Sayed, who holds sharp positions against Israel, did not win in a small progressive district, but garnered votes in a statewide primary in one of the most important key states in the USA — a state that Donald Trump even won in the elections.
Opposing him was Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who received full backing from the Democratic establishment, including Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and outgoing Senator Gary Peters, for whose seat the battle was fought. El-Sayed, who was supported by, among others, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, won despite the fact that a great deal of money flowed into the race in an attempt to defeat him.
85% of Democrats think the US spends too much money on aid to Israel.
65% of Democrats identify more with the Palestinians than with the Israelis.
Sources: Emerson College and Gallup polls.
The victory joins a long line of successes for candidates identified with the progressive and socialist left. Some are directly supported by the DSA movement, which challenges the party's traditional positions not only regarding Israel, but also regarding capitalism, immigration, crime, the structure of the regime, and America's place in the world.
Abundance of radical candidates
El-Sayed's positions on the issue of Israel were one of the main points of contention surrounding his candidacy. He opposes American military aid to Israel, accused Israel of genocide and apartheid, and avoided answering affirmatively regarding its right to exist as a Jewish state. During the campaign, he said he struggled with the question of how the definition "Jewish state" fits with liberal values. When asked on CNN if Israel has a right to exist, he refused to give a yes or no answer, and said that for him the relevant question is whether American taxpayer money should "continue to fund Israel."
A terrorist incident that occurred at the Temple Israel synagogue in Michigan last March made the dispute even more charged. El-Sayed said he was "shocked and heartbroken" and emphasized that "nothing justifies" it, but tried to place the attack within the broader context of the war in the Middle East. He said that "hurt people hurt people," and argued that events occurring thousands of miles from Michigan could have consequences within the state as well. His words sparked outrage. The Jewish community, and not only it, believed that the very attempt to explain an attack on Jews in Michigan through the actions of the Israeli government places responsibility on Jews in the US for the policy of another country. El-Sayed, for his part, did not retract the words.
However, El-Sayed is far from being the only Democratic candidate who holds such positions. In the same Michigan primaries, Donovan McKinney, also supported by the DSA and opposed to military aid to Israel, managed to defeat the incumbent Democratic Congressman Shri Thanedar in District 13 (which includes parts of Detroit).
And not only in Michigan: in the city of Philadelphia, Chris Rabb won the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania's 3rd District, a clear Democratic district where there is not even one Republican candidate in the general election. The DSA celebrated the result and described Rabb as an "anti-Zionist, anti-AIPAC (a lobby organization of American Jews that promotes the connection with Israel in Congress, ed.) and anti-capitalist" voice entering Congress. Rabb also received the support of some of the well-known names in the progressive wing of the Democrats, including Ocasio-Cortez.
In New York City, too, successes were recorded for the radical camp. Drialys Avila Chevalier (who said she "uses the US flag as a napkin after she eats" and called to "destroy Western society") won the Democratic nomination after defeating an incumbent Congressman. Both received the support of New York City Council member Zohran Mamdani, who himself became the most prominent symbol of the rise of the new left within the party.
In Colorado, a surprise was recorded when Malet Kiros, supported by the DSA, defeated the incumbent Congresswoman of 15 terms, Diana DeGette, in the primary. The victory is seen as significant because it is not about entering a vacated seat, but a progressive candidate who managed to end the long career of one of the representatives of the Democratic establishment. And above all, her victory showed that the power of the new left is not only in the big cities on the East Coast.
The vision for changing the USA
If you ask what all these candidates have in common, the answer is supposedly simple: a burning hatred for the State of Israel and Zionism. However, while Israel is probably the issue where the change in the party is most sharply visible, it is only part of the story. The new national program adopted by the DSA this year presents a much broader vision for changing society and the regime in the USA.
To receive the movement's support, candidates are required to adopt its proposals, including abolishing the US Senate and the Electoral College and moving to a proportional and multi-party election system. It also proposes a fundamental change in the status of the presidency and the Supreme Court, so that the executive and judicial branches would be elected by Congress and be subject to it — a change that would move the USA from a presidential model to a system more reminiscent of a parliamentary regime.
Also in the field of immigration, the program is far to the left of the traditional positions of the Democratic Party. The DSA demands to abolish the ICE agency that enforces immigration laws, end the detention of immigrants and their deportation from the country, grant extensive legal status to immigrants, and abolish restrictions and quotas on entry visas.
Positions on law enforcement are even more far-reaching, as the DSA's national working group presented a long-term goal of abolishing prisons and the police in the USA. Among other things, it calls for an annual reduction of police budgets "towards zero" and the release of prisoners — a position much more extreme compared to the police reforms that the mainstream of the party spoke about after the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
In economics, the DSA's program calls for a dramatic expansion of public ownership, including of large corporations and industries defined as essential, alongside high and aggressive taxes on wealth.
In foreign policy, the movement calls for reducing the military presence in the world, closing bases overseas, and reducing the American "war machine." Regarding Israel, the movement demands to stop military and economic aid, recognizes the Palestinian right of return, and supports Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital. Most of the organization's candidates speak openly about imposing crippling sanctions on Israel. The movement also demands to stop economic sanctions on countries like Cuba, Venezuela, or Iran.
As DSA candidates win the primaries in the Democratic Party, the movement's popularity among the left-wing base rises. The movement reports more than 120,000 members, and the donation network is growing steadily.
Jews on the left in a dilemma
Relations between the Democratic Party and US Jews and supporters of Israel have been a stable anchor for decades. The party always contained criticism of Israel, but the issue of basic and security aid to the Jewish state enjoyed broad support. This is no longer the picture, and for Jewish and pro-Israel organizations in the party, the change creates difficult dilemmas. In Michigan, for example, even before the primaries, Jewish leaders identified with the Democrats said that if El-Sayed were the candidate, they would consider for the first time voting for his Republican opponent.
Now that he has won, the hesitation of some of the party's senior officials is becoming difficult. Michigan may be one of the states that will decide who will control the Senate, so giving up the seat because of a dispute with the candidate is not a simple choice. Therefore, senior Democrats began to rally around El-Sayed after his victory. Even Chuck Schumer, the senior Jew in American politics, expressed support for his candidacy against his opponent from the other party. Thus, the Democratic establishment can invest great efforts in an attempt to defeat a candidate from the far-left in the primaries — and find itself required to help him get elected in November.
Some of the Jewish Democrats in Michigan were less forgiving. Many community members and donors said they do not accept El-Sayed's positions regarding Israel, alongside his statements after the attack at the synagogue and his ties to figures like the anti-Israel, and some would say antisemitic, influencer Hasan Piker.
That same tension also appeared around Zohran Mamdani in New York. Senior Democrats criticized some of his statements and positions on the issue of Israel. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that the phrase "make the intifada global" is unacceptable, and Schumer also condemned the phrase because of what he called its "dangerous consequences." And yet, Mamdani's electoral success made him a figure that the Democratic establishment cannot ignore.
Even within the Jewish Democratic community, there is no single answer. There are those who see the trend as a threat to the historical alliance between US Jews and the Democrats; others strongly oppose the positions of certain candidates on the issue of Israel but are not willing to support Republicans because of it. And there are also progressive Jews who support some of these candidates and their sharp criticism of the Israeli government.
What is particularly significant in the rising trend is that ideas that a few years ago were easy for the Democratic Party leadership to describe as belonging to the margins are today gaining organizational infrastructure, money, activists, and above all, candidates who win.
What will be the day after
If all these candidates win and reach Washington, or even some of them, they of course will not be able to abolish the Senate alone, nationalize large corporations, or stop aid to Israel — but they will certainly have a significant influence on the direction of the party in the coming years.
A larger group of legislators from this wing can influence budget votes, aid to Israel, immigration policy, committee composition, elections for faction leadership, and the internal debate ahead of the presidential race in 2028. The narrower the gaps within Congress between the parties, the more significant a relatively small number of legislators can become.
The more moderate side of the party gives birth to sporadic initiatives that try to fight the phenomenon. For example, moderate House members Tom Suozzi and Adam Gray tried to promote a document of principles aimed at redefining the Democratic center. The demands that appeared in it were far from conservative. One of the central slogans was the preference of "persuasion over ideological purity," and elsewhere it was written simply that "we are capitalists, not socialists." However, when the document was distributed among party members, the number of signatories was very small — only 15 legislators and candidates. The moderation of the phrasing is what made the number scandalous, as even a document that did not demand the party to move to the right on any issue did not receive support.
James Carville, the Democratic strategist who was one of the architects of Bill Clinton's victory in 1992, used less diplomatic language. Carville referred to the positions of the winner of the primary in New York, Drialys Avila Chevalier, on issues of police, prisons, and American identity. "Ma'am, I am not in the same party as you," he said. According to him, the time has come for Democrats to speak explicitly about a rift or split from the movement. For him, the gap between the Democratic center and part of the socialist left is no longer just another family argument about taxes or the scope of public spending, but a question of whether it is even the same political movement.
Influential comedian Bill Maher, who has been identified for decades with the liberal left, also began to speak in terms that were once hard to imagine coming from him. In an interview with ABC, he argued that Democrats are "cowards" and that their party is in the process of being taken over by the far-left. Maher pointed, among other things, to the DSA's positions and the rhetoric around the intifada, and made it clear that for him there is a point where party loyalty ends. When asked if this means his vote in the 2028 presidential election is open, he answered in the affirmative. When the interviewer pressed and asked if he would even be able to vote for Vice President J.D. Vance — Maher again answered that yes.
Several weeks earlier, Maher provided another illustration of this feeling of alienation. After hosting Vance on his show, he pointed to the irony that a Republican vice president is willing to sit down with him for a conversation, while some of the prominent figures in the party he himself usually votes for refuse to do so. "The people I vote for are the ones who are not willing to talk to me."
