by Jonathan S. Tobin
Power-hungry Democrats, as well as Tucker Carlson, regard support for an antisemitic Senate candidate as an imperative. Are liberal Jews ready to normalize hatred directed against themselves?
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What do Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have in common? In general, the answer is not much. But when it comes to the election of an antisemite to a Michigan U.S. Senate seat, they are very much on the same page.
The same appears to be true for a lot of people like Schumer, who are nominally Jewish but who prioritize the interests of the Democratic Party over their abhorrence of antisemitism, let alone support for the survival of the State of Israel. For them, backing Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is a litmus test of their loyalty to the Democrats. It is one that many of them are passing with flying colors, as a recent letter signed by 500 people who claim to identify as Jewish attested.
That poses an interesting question for the rest of American Jewry. Regardless of their partisan affiliations, are they prepared to treat a candidate who is openly antisemitic as a line in the sand they will not cross and, in effect, a litmus test of their Jewish identity, if not also of their decency?
While ardent Democrats know how they stand on the El-Sayed litmus test, the jury is clearly out on whether Jews who don’t treat partisanship as the highest standard to which they aspire feel differently.
Horseshoe politics
Carlson’s extravagant praise for Democratic candidate El-Sayed while bashing his conservative Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, in the crucial Michigan race might surprise some people who are still under the impression that the podcaster is on the political right. That’s no longer the case.
For anyone who has taken the trouble to watch his popular podcast in the last two years, Carlson’s praise for El-Sayed is entirely in line with the core of his message. El-Sayed hates America and all it stands for, and has stated that the Al-Qaeda attacks on targets in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, were a natural reaction to U.S. foreign policy. He opposes the war on the Islamist regime in Iran. More importantly, he repeatedly floats blood libels about Israel committing “genocide,” and regards its efforts to defend itself against genocidal terrorists as uniquely evil. He campaigned on conspiracy theories about Jews trying to buy influence and power in Washington. And he continues to demonize the AIPAC lobby and American Jewish participation in the normal business of democracy if it involves support for the Jewish state.
In this way, El-Sayed and Carlson are a perfect reflection of the “horseshoe theory” of politics, in which the far left and far right always find common ground when it comes to Jew-hatred.
The question remains: Why is Schumer, who has spent his interminable political career boasting in Washington that he is the shomer, or “guardian,” of Israel and the Jewish people, backing El-Sayed?
Prioritizing power
The answer is as obvious as it is illustrative of Schumer’s hypocrisy and lack of principle. It’s also the same reason that motivates most antisemites: power.
Schumer is and always has been almost solely motivated by raw ambition and a desire for power. He needs El-Sayed to hold the Michigan seat for the Democrats so the party can win back control of the Senate. That will give him the ability to advance his party’s left-wing ideological goals, as well as hamstring, and maybe even impeach and oust President Donald Trump from office.
That’s why Schumer has not only endorsed someone who opposes the existence of the State of Israel—the very state he supposedly fought for all these years but has doubled down on support for El-Sayed’s candidacy, recently sending him an extra $10 million from the Democrats’ main Senate Super PAC fund.
If that means sacrificing not only the U.S.-Israel alliance and treating antisemitism as a legitimate cause, then so much the worse for Israel and the Jews.
Schumer isn’t the only Jewish Democrat treating power for their party as more important than anything else.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel attracted national attention last month when she said she wouldn’t attend her party’s state convention for fear of being shouted down as Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and other supporters of Israel had been treated when they spoke at a Democratic state gathering earlier this year.
But when faced with the question of whether to prioritize her party loyalty or her Jewish principles, Nessel didn’t hesitate. In a shocking speech to a group of Jewish Democrats, she declared that her party’s cause was more important than Israel or even the safety of American Jews.
Inevitably, that led to her endorsement of El-Sayed on a liberal podcast, where she appeared with him. In it, she anticipated criticism from Jews who don’t agree that their safety or the existence of Israel is either expendable or something that should have to wait until Democrats have saved the world from global warming or AI, saying that she would be called a “traitor to my people” or even a “kapo.” Nevertheless, she made it clear that other issues apparently take precedence over the survival of the Jews. For her, that’s true even amid an unprecedented surge of antisemitism across the United States, which is largely the work of people like El-Sayed, his allies among the Democratic Socialists of America and their liberal media cheerleaders.
Nessel’s disgraceful example is far from unique when it comes to liberal Jewish Democrats who have not unreasonably come to the conclusion that their party has been hijacked by hatemongers, and the only way to continue their careers in politics is to fall in line. Others, like former New York City Controller and likely future member of Congress Brad Lander, came to the same conclusion. He now regularly spouts the same smears about Israel to remain in sync with his party’s increasingly dominant left wing. And he used those haters to unseat incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who, though impeccably liberal and anti-Trump in other respects, refused to go along with the current liberal fashion when it comes to antisemitism.
And then there’s Stevens, who has spent all of 2026 being abused and smeared by El-Sayed and his supporters as a non-Jewish puppet of the supposedly all-powerful Israel lobby before losing the Senate primary to him. She knows that he’s unfit for office and that he is the spokesperson not just for an Arab and Muslim population that wants to chase those who oppose their Islamist beliefs out of the public square. But in a state where El-Sayed’s supporters control her party, the choice after her defeat wasn’t so much whether or not to back him in the general election as it was whether or not to remain in politics as a Democrat. So, of course, she did the pragmatic thing and endorsed him.
2028 contenders flock to Michigan
National politicians with an eye on the 2028 presidential election who only a few years ago wouldn’t have gone near a candidate with radical views like those of El-Sayed are now also embracing him.
Needless to say, the top celebrities of the Democrats’ left-wing faction that hopes to seize control of the party after being shut out of power by its establishment during the last three presidential election cycles is also all-in on El-Sayed. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the left’s unsuccessful standard-bearer in 2016 and 2020, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the ringleader of the progressive congressional “Squad,” have campaigned for El-Sayed. Political observers speculate that AOC is considering a run for president if she doesn’t challenge Schumer for his Senate seat in 2028.
But it’s not just El-Sayed’s DSA allies who are lining up behind him.
In earlier iterations of her political career, former Vice President Kamala Harris presented herself as a strong supporter of Israel and the Jewish community. But she, too, can see which way the wind is blowing among Democrats and is campaigning this week with El-Sayed in Michigan. Rep. Rho Khanna (D-Calif.), who also harbors 2028 ambitions, endorsed and campaigned with El-Sayed during the primary. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who appears to be positioning himself as a moderate as he prepares to run for president in 2028, has already endorsed and campaigned with El-Sayed.
For all of the pious rhetoric about putting principles above partisanship, politics is a team sport. That applies as much to Republicans as it does to Democrats.
El-Sayed, however, is a candidate who made the cause of driving the overwhelming majority of Jews who support Israel out of the public square the centerpiece of his Senate campaign. With him, as was the case with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the American public is dealing with something very different from political business as usual.
It is one thing to speak of “big tents” and creating coalitions that include people with whom one disagrees. But when it comes to El-Sayed, Democrats aren’t just agreeing to disagree civilly. They are normalizing anti-Zionism and antisemitism, which in practice are indistinguishable from each other. Endorsing a person like El-Sayed isn’t just about wanting a Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate. It’s saying that legitimizing Jew-hatred is an acceptable price to pay for achieving such a goal. And it has now become a Democratic Party loyalty litmus test.
Still, for the majority of American Jews who identify as politically liberal and as Democrats, yet who are also supporters of Israel, the calculations so critical for those in the business of politics need not apply.
Is Jewish security a priority?
Another litmus test—one that involves not only concern for the welfare and security of Israeli Jews, but here in the United States as well—must figure into the equation. As Nessel conceded in her speech, which acknowledged the threat that El-Sayed and his supporters pose to her community, Jews now understand that their synagogues and institutions have been turned into fortresses against antisemitic attackers. Jews who speak up against antisemitism now face possible cancellation. That includes popular singers like Pink, who faces not just public abuse but attempts at cancelation from celebrities like actor Javier Bardem, who opposed her condemnation of rapper Macklemore’s spreading blood libels against Israel and the Jews during his opening act for pop singer Ed Sheeran.
They can, if they like, accept the declarations from El-Sayed and Mamdani that they want Jews to feel welcome in the Democratic Party—provided they agree that one Jewish state on the planet is one too many. In that way, they can agree to discard an essential element of Jewish identity and faith that involves devotion to the land of Israel, as well as the rights of Jews to live there and defend themselves.
Or instead, they can adopt their own litmus test and say they won’t stand with anyone who backs, either implicitly or explicitly, the genocidal goals of Hamas and the Palestinian Arabs.
It was one thing for liberals to say that support for Israel was just one issue among many they cared about and not necessarily at the top of the list before the post-Oct. 7 surge of Jew-hatred. However, at a time when Jews are undergoing a siege from antisemites who no longer dwell in the fever swamps of the far left and right, but are now at the center of public discourse in politics and the media, that tired refrain is no longer relevant or satisfactory.
Democrats are no more required to renounce their basic political philosophies than those on the right who might face the same challenge. That said, if you think the partisan litmus test is more important than one about antisemitism, Jewish safety or decency, then maybe it’s time to reset your moral compass. If not, liberal Jews need to understand that they are placing themselves on the wrong side of a great divide that puts them in league with those who seek not only to marginalize their community, but to threaten their very existence.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, available on all major audio platforms and on YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won 60-plus awards for his columns, commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.
Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/column/jonathan-s-tobin/the-el-sayed-litmus-test-cuts-both-ways
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