Democrats Are Getting a Brutal Lesson in How Much the Politics on Israel Have Changed

When the North Carolina Democratic Party adopted a first-of-its-kind resolution at its June convention calling Israel an apartheid state and demanding a total US arms embargo, it didn’t receive much attention. And yet, in the months since, it’s become clear that North Carolina’s Democrats were ahead of a growing trend.

Multiple Democratic members of Congress who were previously backed by AIPAC decided that it wasn’t tenable to be affiliated with the pro-Israel group anymore. Deborah Ross and Valerie Foushee, two members of the North Carolina congressional delegation, have both disavowed the organization, and the latter called for offensive military aid to Israel to be halted. Elsewhere in the country, the likes of Morgan McGarvey in Kentucky and Seth Moulton of Massachusetts are now trying to distance themselves as well.

These are relatively centrist Democrats, and yet AIPAC doesn’t seem to be able to maintain its previously unquestioned influence on them. What’s happening, exactly?

To answer that question, one only has to look at the polling of Americans, and Democrats more specifically, on the issue of Palestine. Two years of genocide in Gaza and intensified apartheid across the rest of occupied Palestine have severely degraded the public’s perception of US support for Israel.

A Pew Research poll earlier this month found that 59 percent of all Americans view the Israeli state negatively. Among Democrats, that number increases to a whopping 77 percent. A New York Times/Siena Poll from September found that 40 percent of all Americans, and 60 percent of Democrats, believe that Israel has murdered children intentionally. And according to a Pew poll from earlier in the year, negative Democratic perceptions of Israel have risen across every age demographic, with 71 percent of Democrats aged 18–49 having a negative view of Israel in 2025, and 66 percent of Democrats over 50.

Clearly, the pro-Israel consensus has evaporated among the Democratic and liberal base. Not only that—being uncritical of Israel and its regime of control over Palestinians today is becoming an impediment to Democratic politicians. While it won’t decisively win elections on its own, especially in a local context where foreign policy is a secondary or even tertiary campaign plank, a Democrat who is willing to buck the previous consensus could benefit from being able to distinguish themselves as the party tries to find a path out of the deluge of Trumpian authoritarianism. (Zohran Mamdani is the current favorite to become New York’s next mayor in part because he understood that.) And, as several high-profile Democrats are discovering, a candidate who tries to sing the same old song about Israel could find themselves on the backfoot.

Take, for example, Pete Buttigieg. In a recent interview with Pod Save America, the usually eloquent Buttigieg was asked a series of straightforward questions. Would he support restricting aid to Israel? Would he recognize the State of Palestine, as other G7 countries have done recently? Would Israel’s behavior finally be a factor in how we treat the country? Instead of having a ready answer, Buttigieg delivered vague platitudes about moral conscience and needing to support Israel’s security. In particular, Buttigieg told Favreau, “I think that we, as Israel’s strongest ally and friend, you put your arm around your friend when there’s something like this going on, and talk about what we’re prepared to do together.” It was an odd choice, to say the least, to call an apartheid state a friend and talk of genocide as somethig akin to self-harm.

In the days that followed, Buttigieg was criticized by fellow Democratic public officials and liberals online. As a man who aspires to higher office, Buttigieg seemed to understand where the wind was blowing. He sought to clarify and update his public-facing positions in a subsequent interview with Politico. Yes, he would indeed have supported Bernie Sanders’s resolutions to restrict aid. Yes, he would in fact recognize the State of Palestine. No, the US should not pass another 10-year military aid package for a country that doesn’t change its behavior.

None of these positions are particularly radical, and it is rather odd that it took this long for a potential 2028 front-runner to adopt them, but it is notable that Buttigieg, who is not on the left flank, has done so. It indicates something serious about the underlying dynamics in Democratic politics, and to his credit, he sensed it. The center has shifted.

Buttigieg is not the only one to have sensed it, though.

Another potential candidate for president, Senator Cory Booker, went on the I’ve Had It podcast last week. He probably thought he was going to get softball questions about almond milk like Barack Obama did when he appeared there in 2024. Instead, the hosts grilled him relentlessly on Israel. When asked by cohost Jennifer Welch if he believes Netanyahu is a war criminal, Booker called it a “loaded and hot” question designed to be a litmus test. In fact, he even went as far as to say that the question undermines his ability to help make peace happen.

To say that Welch was unimpressed might be an understatement, since the pod’s official social media scorched him for not being direct in answering the question.