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When Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders exploded onto the popular national consciousness just over a decade ago during their insurgent presidential campaigns, it became clear that the two of them were running remarkably similar crusades from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Both Sanders and Trump ran aggressively against their parties’ establishments, rallying disaffected voters with a populist message calling for dramatic change in a system that had left many people behind.
Trump appealed to unemployed factory workers, Sanders inspired underemployed baristas. But both candidates promised their constituencies that their voices would finally be heard after having been ignored for such a long time. Both stormed the gates of their parties, and the only difference between the two candidacies is that the Bushes’ control of the Republican hierarchy wasn’t as strong as the Clintons’ hold over the Democratic Party apparatus. This disparity allowed Trump to prevail while Sanders fell just short. But they have continued to co-exist as improbable political bookends ever since, both still agitating against more traditional politicians to the delight of their respective loyalists.
As both of them begin to come closer to the end of their careers in office, it appears that both have ideological successors ready to continue this improbable left/right joint effort. But this time, the so-called “horseshoe” effect that brings the two disparate political movements together is not the broader societal anger and dissatisfaction that Sanders and Trump supporters have shared, but a more specifically targeted hostility. This time the target is not career politicians or a broken and nonresponsive system of government. This time the shared adversary is Israel.
Not all that surprisingly, Trump’s successor in this cross-partisan effort is his vice president, JD Vance. Sanders’ replacement is only slightly less predictable, the U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. In recent months, both Vance and El-Sayed have come under frequent and deserved fire for their criticism of Israel and both have repeatedly strayed in their condemnations from the geopolitics of the Middle East to more personal and more ugly pejorative allusions to American Jews.
The fact that El-Sayed’s references are even more repulsive than Vance’s is not the point here. Rather, we must recognize that both men are intentionally using divisive language to stoke nativist and bigoted sentiment among the most extreme ideological zealots within their respective political movements for their own career advancement. El-Sayed knows that using words like “genocide” and refusing to state whether he believes Israel should exist as a Jewish state motivate the most antisemitic voters on the far left. Vance recognizes that similar dog whistles, such as playing a chicken-and-the-egg game that equalizes Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist violence with Israel’s defense of its people, are comparably useful in his efforts to appeal to the extreme right.
Both El-Sayed and Vance have made occasional outreach efforts to the Jewish community, but neither has ever been particularly successful. Both have used noticeably similar language, most notably a pseudo-apology that leans heavily on phrases like “if I offended anyone” to demonstrate faux sensitivity without any substantive retreat. If either is to be successful in the next stage of their political careers – El-Sayed in this fall’s general election Senate campaign or Vance’s likely 2028 primary against Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz or another more reliable ally of Israel – they will need to find a more effective way of mollifying Zionist voters of all ethnicities and religions.
Ironically and tellingly, the biggest obstacle that both Vance and El-Sayed face is their refusal to separate themselves from even more noxious denigrators of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. El-Sayed’s relationship with social media demagogue Hasan Piker and Vance’s friendship with the equally reprehensible podcaster Tucker Carlson, and both men’s refusal to disavow their digital confederates, expose these two men as normalizers of the worst type of antizionist and antisemitic hatred.
We will not dignify either Piker’s or Carlson’s detestable screeds by repeating them here. But no friend of Israel should ever be tempted to cast a ballot for either Vance or El-Sayed until they repudiate their high-tech collaborators.
Dan Schnur is the U.S. Politics Editor for the Jewish Journal. He teaches courses in politics, communications, and leadership at UC Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine. He hosts the monthly webinar “The Dan Schnur Political Report” for the Los Angeles World Affairs Council & Town Hall. Follow Dan’s work at www.danschnurpolitics.com
