Even amid war, the United States rarely selects its president on the basis of foreign policy. For the US electorate, it is almost always the economy, stupid. This year’s Democratic primaries, however, have turned into “It’s Israel, stupid”. The rubble of Gaza for liberals today is a candidate litmus test in much the same way the Vietnam War was for their grandparents. Fail that and you have forfeited your moral standing.
Michigan is the biggest red flag. The fight between Abdul El-Sayed and Haley Stevens for the state’s senate nomination turned into a proxy war between the party’s younger pro-Palestinian wing and its older pro-Israel establishment. It looks destined to be the most divisive issue in the Democratic 2028 presidential primaries. Though they differ only in degree on most other subjects, including the economy, the candidates’ split over Israel has dominated the race. It has taken up more oxygen than affordability, Ice (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), democracy, Donald Trump, and all the other issues combined.
El-Sayed, a progressive healthcare official, painted Stevens as a creature of Aipac, the deeply resourced American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, which has spent roughly $30 million (€26 million) boosting her campaign. Stevens, in turn, has all but accused El-Sayed of anti-Semitism: “Everyone in America understands you want to blame all your problems on Jewish Americans,” she said of El-Sayed last week. But it is El-Sayed who seems to have the wind at his back.
Polls nevertheless suggest El-Sayed is likelier than Stevens to lose to a Republican in November, which could sink Democrats’ chances of regaining control of the senate. Such arguments tend to fall on deaf activist ears. Many are convinced, on slim evidence, that Kamala Harris lost to Trump in 2024 because she did not break with Joe Biden over Israel. That she had just 107 days as nominee and sounded clueless about the economy is treated as less important than her hesitancy to stick her neck out on Gaza. It could have made the difference in Michigan, which is home to the country’s largest Arab-American population, but she lost all seven swing states.
Either way, any Democrat associated with Aipac – a dwindling band – has a vanishing chance of becoming their party’s 2028 nominee. This includes Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s governor, who has defended his right to take money from Aipac. His prospects have nosedived. Rahm Emanuel, a consummate Democratic insider, is a better bellwether. He has renounced Aipac and vowed to end the annual US military subsidy to Israel.
[ Democrats remain split over their longstanding leniency towards NetanyahuOpens in new window ]
Harris, who looks set to run again, would need to denounce her own administration’s record if she wants to move forward. Foreign policy staff who worked for Biden, such as Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser, are tainted by Biden’s unwillingness to confront Binyamin Netanyahu. Again and again, Israel’s prime minister got the better of the US’s pliable 46th president. Netanyahu was also decisive in convincing Trump to launch Operation Epic Fury on Iran, a blunder that Trump looks set to spend the rest of his presidency trying to escape.
Mutual loathing between Democrats is not ideal. But the party’s real foe – and that of democracy in general – is AI and social media. Technology has widened the Overton window by injecting views that were once taboo into mainstream political debate. Memes of El-Sayed, a practising Muslim of Egyptian descent, as an Islamist terrorist jostle alongside Holocaust denial for attention. People who read newspapers, or indeed books, are far likelier to be exposed to evidence-based arguments and real-world complexities. But only about a fifth of American adults subscribe to a physical or digital newspaper. Almost double that share is on TikTok.
Trump wants to increase the US defence budget by roughly half to $1.5 trillion, which would dwarf what Washington spends on education, infrastructure, science and other discretionary items combined
Social media algorithms drive users to what most outrages them, which is what stimulates engagement and makes money. This is a threat to humanity in general. But it is a particular bane for the future of democracy since it gives extremism an inbuilt advantage. Sadly, blaming Jews and Muslims for society’s ills makes for catchier memes than debating the tax rate or the future of healthcare.
To be fair to El-Sayed, who is as talented a communicator as New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, his campaign focuses on abolishing Ice and providing Medicare for all. He describes US military aid to Israel as taking money away from everyday Americans. It is good primary politics, but questionable economics. The $3.8 billion in US aid amounts to less than a day’s worth of federal social spending. A more generous reading of his platform is that Israel is a surrogate for the US’s forever wars.
Trump wants to increase the US defence budget by roughly half to $1.5 trillion, which would dwarf what Washington spends on education, infrastructure, science and other discretionary items combined. At a time when supposedly outmatched non-nuclear countries, such as Ukraine and Iran, are making a mockery of military superpowers, there ought to be a debate about the ever more bloated Pentagon budget.
El-Sayed offers that debate. But ethnic grievance drives out economic fairness as a topic on social media. China still owns a large chunk of TikTok and Elon Musk owns all of X. Neither is a fan of liberal democracy. While Democrats beat themselves up over Israel, they are missing the bigger story. The US relationship with Israel is a subject worthy of human debate. The algorithms are winning it.
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
