How the 2026 US Midterms May Have Revived the Democratic Party for Zionists

The shockwave of Election Day 2026 changed America overnight: Democrats pulled off a stunning US House and Senate sweep, and the party’s anti-Israel left lost the argument.

For decades, I was a proud Democrat – a delegate to three national conventions and a member of the DNC’s National Platform Committee. In 2025, I registered as an Independent, as liberal as ever, yet a passionate Zionist repulsed by the party’s growing hostility toward Israel and the coddling of Antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism.

After yesterday’s elections, I feel something about the Democratic Party that had left me: Hope. Not blind forgiveness. Not an urge to sprint back to the party that broke my heart. But hope nonetheless.

Democrats are poised to win at least 54 Senate seats, an overwhelming victory powered by historic breakthroughs across Donald Trump’s backyard. For American Jews like me who love Israel and cherish liberalism, the results are far better than we dared to imagine.

The party’s Democratic Socialists of America wing, spreading its Antisemitic influence through the party like a metastasizing cancer, insisted Democrats must embrace radical purity tests to mobilize voters.

The election results proved otherwise.

Consider the US Senate race in Texas, where James Talarico showed what happens when a Democrat speaks the language of faith and reconciliation – language I understand as a rabbi after a lifetime as a civil rights lawyer and advocate – rather than ideological warfare. Or the Senate race in Kansas, where pastor Adam Hamilton toppled Republican Roger Marshall in a state that hadn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932.

Across the map, Democrats like Josh Turek in Iowa and Annie Andrews in South Carolina captured Senate seats in the reddest of red states – places where running candidates further to the left would have been political malpractice.

America’s economy and the baggage accumulated by a President in his second term certainly fueled the wave. But it took pragmatic candidates who knew how to swim in red waters to turn that wave into wins in Lubbock and Topeka. The anti-Israel left wanted a revolution; everyday voters wanted representation.

If Democratic leaders are smart, they will treat 2026 map not merely as a midterm repudiation of Trump, but also as a blueprint for 2028.

The mandate is clear: Nominate a center-left pragmatist who can carry red and purple states, not an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or another DSA traveler whose appeal is confined to deep-blue echo chambers.

That isn’t a retreat from principle, but the proven formula for Democratic success. JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden differed wildly, but not one won the Oval Office by auditioning for the party’s most uncompromising fringe.

Winning nationally means understanding that support for Israel is not a political liability. A Democratic candidate can defend Israel’s right to exist, demand its ironclad security, and combat Antisemitism without bending the knee to an activist fringe.

Still, before we Zionists pop the champagne, we must confront the worst pill of the night: Abdul El-Sayed won the Senate seat in Michigan.

For American Jewry, El-Sayed’s arrival is agonizing. He is, in my view, the most Antisemitic leader ever elected to the United States Senate. He has questioned Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, insinuated that support for Israel is a Jewish conspiracy, and delivered a response to an attack on a Michigan synagogue so callous he later apologized.

I don’t oppose El-Sayed because of his faith; I’ve fought Islamophobia for years, including my having been at the forefront of opposition to President Trump’s anti-Muslim refugee ban in his first term.

But El-Sayed is an outlier. The DSA cannot credibly claim its dogma flipped the Senate when the majority was delivered by moderates in conservative territory. Democrats didn’t need seven more El-Sayeds to win the gavel. They needed candidates who could speak to America.

Now look at Chris Pappas, who won the US Senate race in New Hampshire. The headlines rightly celebrate Pappas as the first openly gay man elected to the Senate. As a gay man who devoted years to LGBTQ advocacy – including helping to lead the fight for marriage equality – I have pride in Pappas that runs deep. But his triumph appeals to me more as a Zionist and center-left Independent.

Ranked by the Lugar Center as the most bipartisan Democrat in the House, Pappas has stood by the US-Israel alliance even as he has critiqued the Israeli government – which, heck, even Israelis do. His win embodies the coalition Democrats must protect: One that defends civil rights with Jewish rights among them.

I am not naive enough to believe every newly elected Democrat is a Zionist champion, or that the party’s civil war over Israel is settled. But political arithmetic dictates reality. A Senate majority built through red-state pragmatists fundamentally shifts the balance of power away from the Squad. The new class answers to constituents who demand results over ideological purity, stripping the radical fringe of its claim that the future belongs solely to them.

Where does that leave me today? Still an Independent.

I don’t regret walking away from the party I once loved. Trust broken over the Israel’s survival cannot be repaired in 24 hours. I still see pervasive Antisemitism on the far left; a reckless normalization of anti-Zionism among self-styled progressives whose phony intersectionality excludes Jews; and too many Democratic politicians willing to treat Jewish self-determination as an expendable bargaining chip.

Nor will I ever find shelter in a MAGA-dominated Republican Party whose assaults on democracy and civil liberties disgust me.

Yet today, for the first time in years, the fog has lifted just enough to reveal a way back.

The Democrats expanded their tent rather than burning it down. They sought common ground instead of demanding total capitulation. In doing so, heartland voters may have just rescued the Democratic Party from the radicals trying to drive it off a cliff.

To the DSA wing, the message of this election is unsparing: You don’t own liberalism. You don’t own the Democratic Party.  And you certainly don’t get to dictate that we Jews must renounce our homeland to stay inside the coalition we helped build.

Whether I ever re-enroll as a Democrat depends on what the party does with the mandate handed to it yesterday. Will leadership elevate voices like new Senators Talarico, Hamilton, and Pappas? Will it choose a 2028 nominee who can unite mainstream liberals, independents, and disaffected moderates?

Or will it cede the microphone back to the anti-Israel fringe?

For now, I remain politically homeless. But yesterday proved the sensible center is still kicking. American Jews like me who love Israel and value liberalism need not surrender either identity. Democrats won the 2026 elections. Now they will have a fighting chance to reclaim their soul.