As the summer comes to a close, the last primaries have provided observers with some clear conclusions about the current state of America’s two major parties. Polls still show that the Democrats are the favorites to win control of at least one of the two houses of Congress in November. That’s only to be expected since historical trends generally show that the party out of power always gains ground after being routed in the previous presidential election year. And that goes double when the incumbent is as deep underwater as President Donald Trump is in his job approval ratings.
There may be too many variables in play in too many different races to know for sure who will run the House and the Senate in January. Yet regardless of the ultimate outcome of the midterms, we already know something important about both the Republicans and the Democrats that ought to inform both policy decisions next year, as well as the 2028 presidential race that will already be ongoing a year from now. And that is the plain fact that the Democrats are in thrall to their antisemitic and anti-Israel extremists while the Republicans—for all of their problems and shortcomings—have marginalized theirs.
The rise of the DSA
For the past few months, we’ve seen in race after race how far-left candidates, whether they call themselves members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) or not, have triumphed over those who can be labeled mainstream liberal Democrats. In most of these races, Israel is the issue that has been the difference-maker. There are exceptions to this trend; specific circumstances have led to incumbent supporters of the Jewish state surviving primary challenges. But there is no question that anti-Zionists who routinely spout blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” and seek to demonize American Jews for organizing to support the tiny nation’s efforts to defend itself against actual genocidal terrorist foes appear to speak for the bulk of those who identify as Democrats.
The same trend has not applied to what is happening on the other side of the aisle. That was made abundantly clear in Florida, where Republican voters were given a clear choice between candidates who mimic the antisemitic left while still posing as conservatives were routed by unabashed pro-Israel opponents.
In the gubernatorial primary there, only one candidate—investor James Fishback—was clearly identified as anti-Israel. Were Republicans as influenced by the anti-Israel bias that pervades mainstream corporate media as Democrats have shown themselves to be, that might have been smart politics. And if you watch or listen to a number of popular podcasts that are said to appeal to conservatives, such as those hosted by former Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly—or those who appeal to an even more extreme audience, such as conspiracy theorist Candace Owens or neo-Nazi groyper Nick Fuentes—you might be under the impression that someone like Fishback would have at least a fighting chance to prevail.
Israel-bashing and antisemitism, which increasingly resembles the same sentiments that now prevail on the left, are a predominant theme on these shows, which are often represented as providing platforms for views that are widespread on the right.
Still, while Jew-hatred was no bar to victory in Democratic primaries across the country, it turns out that the same sort of thing isn’t appealing to Republican voters.
In the Florida governor’s race, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) won easily in a multi-candidate contest where he wound up with 47.8% of the vote. Fishback, who mocked the pro-Israel stands of the GOP establishment, flopped badly, getting only 10.5% of ballots cast. The same thing happened in the state’s 6th Congressional District, where incumbent Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), an outspoken supporter of Israel who has taken to wearing a kippah on the floor of the House of Representatives, defeated antisemitic challenger Dan Bilzerian 56.9% to 18.7%.
The GOP and Israel
This shouldn’t surprise anyone.
National polls show that 70% of Republicans still favor Israel, despite a tsunami of anti-Israel coverage in the mainstream media since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That number may be down from where it was before the onslaught of Hamas propaganda masquerading as news. But it demonstrates that the GOP is still rock-solid in its backing for the Jewish state. And it also provides a strong contrast to the situation among Democrats, where the same surveys show that only 17% of their voters back Israel.
Despite the convictions among liberal elites that Trump supporters and conservatives in general are inherently antisemitic, the vile Jew-hatred exhibited by Fishback and Bilzerian wasn’t just appalling. It was rejected by Republican primary voters as disqualifying.
Yet at the same time and in the same state, another Democratic Socialist, Florida State Rep. Angie Nixon, defeated U.S. Army veteran Alex Vindman in the U.S. Senate primary. Vindman was one of the main players in the first attempt to impeach Trump in 2019 and earned the status of a hero of the Democrats. He used his national profile to amass a 16-1 fundraising advantage over Nixon. Yet Nixon, who ran as both a fervent opponent of Israel and an advocate for DSA economic plans, trounced Vindman 56% to 44%.
Nor are the Florida returns an isolated result. The other key contest among Republicans that hinged on Middle East policy was in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, where Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) labeled his primary opponent as a stooge of AIPAC. The libertarian incumbent was not only an opponent of Trump and the war on Iran. He claimed that the primary was “a referendum on whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress.”
But while AIPAC and Israel-bashing helped Democrats like Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed win his race in Michigan, it doomed the seven-term congressman, who lost to a Trump-backed political newcomer in a 55% to 45% landslide.
On the outside looking in
The only other Republican member of Congress who joined Massie in libeling Israel and its supporters didn’t even bother trying to win re-election this year. Former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned from Congress in January after it was clear that not only would the administration oppose her mounting a run for the U.S. Senate, but Trump would back a challenger to her in her deep-red district.
Fishback, Massie and Taylor Green may be welcomed guests on Carlson’s podcast, where they can bash Israel and vent their Jew-hatred to their hearts’ content. Nevertheless, that puts them not just outside of the political mainstream but outside of the Republican Party in 2026 and for the foreseeable future.
So, no matter who controls the House and the Senate when the 120th Congress is sworn in next January, it’s clear that the so-called “progressives” and DSA supporters who regard smears of Israel as an “apartheid state” that commits “genocide” will dominate the Democratic caucuses. Their Republican opponents, whether back in the minority or not, will be uniformly pro-Israel.
This will have a decisive impact on the 2028 presidential race.
Among Democratic contenders, the impulse to bend the knee to the hard left may prove irresistible to any of them who are serious about winning. If the 2026 primaries taught us anything about the contemporary Democratic Party, it’s not just that it is leaning more heavily to the left than at any time since their landslide defeat in 1972. While economic issues, including appeals to tax the rich and provide free health care, are popular among its voters, it’s obvious that the organizing principles of Democratic politics have become opposition to Israel and enforcement of immigration laws.
It’s only in such a political universe that a previously marginal figure like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the ringleader of the original progressive congressional “Squad,” could be spoken of as a serious presidential contender. Indeed, AOC’s gestures toward the center—like her hypocritical claims that the sort of far-left views she called “Woke 1.0” that conquered academia, culture and liberal politics in recent years are now out of fashion—confirm this. That led to the Maoist faction of her DSA condemning the inveterate Israel-basher as insufficiently anti-Zionist to be considered for the presidency. But the point to be gleaned from this is that a Democratic Party where AOC is now considered mainstream is one run by its extremists.
The contrast with the sentiments of Republican voters ought to be sobering news for the man who is, as of the moment, the frontrunner to succeed Trump: Vice President JD Vance.
Whither JD Vance
The vice president’s refusal last December to take sides in a debate at the Turning Point USA AmericaFest over Carlson’s antisemitism was a pivotal moment that seemed to signal that conservatives were succumbing to the same destructive trends that were turning the Democrats into a party that was both anti-Israel and tolerant of Jew-hatred.
Since then, Vance has solidified his position as the opponent of Israel within the administration, as well as someone unhappy with Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran over its nuclear threat and terrorism. That led him to being given the job of negotiating an end to the conflict, a fool’s errand that confirmed his lack of understanding of the problem and the vacuous nature of his foreign policy philosophy.
After the blowup last fall over support for Carlson at the Heritage Foundation and the widespread conviction that large numbers of young Republicans are fans of Fuentes, there was an expectation among many observers that Carlson and the groypers represent the future of the GOP in the same way that the DSA does for the Democrats.
The primaries demonstrated that the Democrats’ lurch to the left is even more pronounced than many thought possible only a year ago. But the same assumption about the Republicans has proven to be mistaken.
There’s no denying that antisemitism exists on the right and that it is louder than ever. But if Vance really thinks that alienating the groypers would harm his 2028 presidential chances, then he may be setting himself up for failure. The demonstrated political strength of anti-Israel and antisemitic extremists appears to pose an insurmountable obstacle to Democrats who don’t want to conform to woke hatred. But Republican primary voters have been sending the message that if Vance wants to be his party’s 2028 nominee, then he is going to have to ditch Carlson and the anti-Israel right, not appease or echo it.
Republicans may be currently swimming upstream in an election year in which their president and his policies have proven to be unpopular. But whatever else one can say about the GOP, it’s still determined to marginalize extremists and toss them out of the party, as Trump has done with Carlson. Irrespective of their chances of holding on to Congress this fall, that’s a fact that bodes well for Republicans in 2028—and also sends a warning to Vance that if he fails to follow the president’s example, then he will never be president.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
