Gary Willig is a veteran member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.
The Democratic Party needed to be more antisemitic to keep the White House in 2024. That’s the conclusion reportedly reached in the Democratic National Committee's autopsy on Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump.
According to Axios, Democratic officials, including Harris, agreed with the assessment of the anti-Israel IMEU Policy Project organization that the Biden Administration alienated Democratic voters by refusing to oppose Israel’s efforts to prevent another October 7 and to get back all of the hostages.
Given that the candidate who won the election was widely known as the most pro-Israel president of all time, what is the logic behind the idea that opposing Israel was the key to success? Is the idea that Harras could have won Michigan’s 15 electoral votes if she courted the antisemitic vote? Winning Michigan would have given her 241 electoral votes, still 29 shy of the 270 she would need to win the presidency.
A much stronger argument can be made that Harras and the Democrats hurt themselves by courting the antisemites too much. The Biden Administration looked weak when its support for an American ally facing a genocidal enemy wavered. Harris showed moral cowardice when she praised the racists who openly called for genocide and who actively made life unsafe for American Jews following October 7. Her statement that the most hateful people in America showed “exactly what the human emotion should be" was one of the most shameful acts by a presidential nominee in American history and disqualifying for public office.
If Harris and the Democratic Party had not attempted to appease the antisemites in their party, they would have had a better chance of winning. Harris blew her opportunity to win Pennsylvania, a far more critical swing state than Michigan with its 19 electoral votes, when she chose Tim Walz as her running mate over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who is popular and would have appealed to moderate voters in swing states far more than either Harris or Walz ever could. Shapiro’s problem was that he is a Jew, which made him anathema to the voters Harris was seeking and the Democratic Party is still trying to court.
The idea that the Democratic Party thinks it needs to double down on courting the antisemitic vote is truly frightening. It means that one of the two main parties is seeking the support of the people who assault Jews, who attack synagogues, who seek to put Jewish stores out of business. This can only lead to more attacks on Jewish life and violence against Jews in Democrat-run areas, and if a Democratic candidate wins after running on such a platform, it would be a license for antisemitic violence across the country for four years.
This is a dangerous time. America needs its political parties to have a spine, to stand up to their extremists and oppose hate and violence. The Democratic Party appears to be learning all the wrong lessons from 2024, doubling down on its worst mistakes and choosing cowardice over courage and hate over good governance.
The lesson of 2024 is that the antisemites can never be appeased. These is no degree to which Biden could have betrayed Israel short of nuking the only Jewish State that would have satisfied them. No amount of praise or endorsement from Harras would ever be enough for those who demanded Jewish blood day after day.
Doubling down on courting the Jew-haters is a Faustian bargain. For such a strategy to work, America would have to change into a far worse place. The idea of Jews having the right to attend school or synagogue, to work, even to live, would have to be abandoned by the land of the free. America would have to become like 15th Century Spain, the Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany. It is a strategy that normalizes hatred and violence and that assumes the worst of the American people.
To the Democratic Party, don’t take this Faustian bargain. Step back from the edge of the antisemitic precipice you are determined to plunge headfirst into. Empowering genocidal Jew-hatred and violent antisemites only ever ends one way. Don’t be the ones to turn America into Nazi Germany because you think it’ll get you a few more votes.