Someone should really have a serious conversation with the chieftains of the Democratic Party. It’s high time for a pulse check—a true heart-to-heart.
Are the events of the past few months really what they had in mind? Perhaps circumstances simply got away from them. A few candidates are demonstrably out of step with the Democratic zeitgeist, in no way reflecting the image the party wishes to project.
It’s possible in these polarized times that a candidate for higher office goes his or her own way and catches an electoral wave that turns longshots into political unicorns. A controversial maverick runs a campaign as an unapologetic outsider. His or her glaring deficiencies are bizarrely overlooked by the electorate. The party’s platform is trounced. They emerge victoriously from primaries where the new left has moved the goalpost outside the stadium.
Since House and Senate seats are so precious, given the slight numerical margins in the bicameral legislatures, party leaders bite bullets and choose electoral seats over partisan purity.
But perhaps party leadership deserves the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this is precisely what they want to see happen. After all, harikari is such a gloomy game plan. Would they sit passively and watch a mass leap of faith featuring Democrats diving off cliffs just to satisfy some demented DEI agenda?
You think such a query is unnecessary? Our nation is undergoing a monumental shift in political culture. Republicans certainly have image problems owing in large part to the outsized authoritarian impulses and actions of Donald Trump. But Democrats are not only endorsing and choosing quasi-Nazis and actual Islamists at the ballot box. They seem to have also adopted their suicidal tendencies.
At least they’re not using actual explosives—yet.
Today’s Democratic avant-garde—represented by the many positions they have staked out and candidates they have anointed—was once politically out-of-bounds. Any number of things they had once said or done were disqualifying political liabilities. Not only wouldn’t they have received the party’s blessing as standard bearers. They would have been disowned as voters.
But not today. Let’s look at this roster straight out of Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Electoral Horrors. Hopefully, for Democrats, the wax will melt before election day.
In Maine, Graham Platner, an oyster fisherman and former marine, sported a Nazi tattoo on his chest for 15 years without, implausibly, knowing its origins or meaning. It depicts a skull and crossbones that was fashionable among Hitler’s SS both before and during World War II.
Platner also can’t really explain some of his past social media posts—since deleted—in which he claimed to be a communist, referred to the police as “bastards,” and opined that white people in rural areas were both “stupid and racist.”
Way to secure the vote of the common man.
Platner’s alleged behavior toward women is at an altogether higher level of self-sabotage. Sexting with multiple women while he was married. Reports on “unsettling” behavior and physical abuse. Whatever happened to the Democratic Party’s #MeToo mantra? Aren’t we supposed to unquestionably “Believe Survivors” and cancel the likes of Woody Allen and Brett Kavanaugh from public life?
Platner’s running for the U.S. Senate! How is he the frontrunner to unseat Maine’s mainstay Republican senator, Susan Collins?
The Michigan senatorial race is improbably worse. Abdul El-Sayed has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood—that means Hamas! He once supported former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, whose removal from office made the United States State Department exhale a sigh of relief.
Today, Egypt won’t accept any of Gaza’s refugees precisely because they are brothers and sisters of the Brotherhood. But Michigan Democrats are seemingly fine with Brother El-Sayed?!
Egypt won’t accept any of Gaza’s refugees precisely because they are brothers and sisters of the Brotherhood. But Michigan Democrats are seemingly fine with Brother El-Sayed?!
He has declared the Israeli government to be as “evil” as Hamas. One of his political handlers is Linda Sarsour, who has praised the radical extremist imam Siraj Wahhaj, who calls for jihad. El-Sayed has also campaigned with online content creator Hasan Piker, whose anti-Israel commentary makes Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens look positively rabbinic by comparison.
Adam Hamawy, 56, an Egyptian-born physician running for Congress as the Democratic frontrunner in New Jersey, was once a defense witness for Omar Abdel Rahman, “the Blind Sheikh” responsible for the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center with a bomb in 1993. He, too, is backed by Hasan Piker.
During the Blind Sheikh’s trial in 1995, Hamawy was privy to calls to wage jihad against the United States. So damaging was his relationship with the World Trade Center’s bombers, he lied under oath. Recently, he has stated that if elected to Congress he would do everything possible to eliminate Israel’s vaunted air-defense system, the Iron Dome. After all, possessing anti-missile weaponry is terribly unfair to terrorists who wish for their rockets aimed at Israeli civilians to hit their intended targets.
It gets better—no, actually worse. This congressional candidate once interned for the Benevolence International Foundation, a front for terrorism (designated by both the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.N. Security Council) and a financier for Al-Qaeda.
At his campaign’s victory party last week, Hamawy reportedly led his roomful of supporters in that lovely Islamic sing-along: “Allahu Akbar,” recited three times.
New York City’s Islamist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, whose very presence has emboldened all of these anti-Zionist, anti-American Democratic Party candidates, just endorsed Darializa Avila Chevalier, yet another Democratic Socialist with a yen for jihad. She is running for a congressional seat from New York.
Her skeletons are not even in her closet! They came out years ago. She once referred to President Joe Biden as a “rapist” and “war criminal.” She has no affection for fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, either.
She openly refers to the United States in her social feeds as a “disgrace,” has called for abolishing the police and ICE and even for the elimination of prisons. Naturally she intends to vote to discontinue military aid to Israel.
Aisha Wahab, a state senator and rising Democratic Socialist Islamist, is running for Congress in Northern California. In Georgia, Ruwa Romman, who presently serves in the state’s House of Representatives—the first Muslim woman of Palestinian heritage to do so—is running in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Both are progressive on social policy, ambivalent about America, and medieval on Jews.
Abbas Alawieh is running to represent Dearborn in the Michigan state Senate—yes, Dearborn, where Muslims comprise the city’s majority and where every city councilperson, and its mayor, have Islamist sensibilities. Similar coalitions exist in various cities in Michigan, Minnesota and New Jersey.
It looks as though the red-green alliance is here to stay, and that Democratic leadership may have quite intentionally entered all of these races riding the same America- and Israel-hating horse. Democrats always considered themselves to be at the vanguard of the cultural elite. Today they are officially slumming in the same political precincts that have sunk societies all throughout the West.
It looks as though the red-green alliance is here to stay, and that Democratic leadership may have quite intentionally entered all of these races riding the same America- and Israel-hating horse. Democrats always considered themselves to be at the vanguard of the cultural elite. Today they are officially slumming in the same political precincts that have sunk societies all throughout the West.
Bernie Sanders and AOC either know something that has eluded the rational rest of us, or there is a hill they wish to die on, and it’s not the same City on a Hill that has always stood as the model of a moral example for what a nation should look like for the entire world.
The Fearless Democratic Downfall
Thane Rosenbaum
Someone should really have a serious conversation with the chieftains of the Democratic Party. It’s high time for a pulse check—a true heart-to-heart.
Are the events of the past few months really what they had in mind? Perhaps circumstances simply got away from them. A few candidates are demonstrably out of step with the Democratic zeitgeist, in no way reflecting the image the party wishes to project.
It’s possible in these polarized times that a candidate for higher office goes his or her own way and catches an electoral wave that turns longshots into political unicorns. A controversial maverick runs a campaign as an unapologetic outsider. His or her glaring deficiencies are bizarrely overlooked by the electorate. The party’s platform is trounced. They emerge victoriously from primaries where the new left has moved the goalpost outside the stadium.
Since House and Senate seats are so precious, given the slight numerical margins in the bicameral legislatures, party leaders bite bullets and choose electoral seats over partisan purity.
But perhaps party leadership deserves the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this is precisely what they want to see happen. After all, harikari is such a gloomy game plan. Would they sit passively and watch a mass leap of faith featuring Democrats diving off cliffs just to satisfy some demented DEI agenda?
You think such a query is unnecessary? Our nation is undergoing a monumental shift in political culture. Republicans certainly have image problems owing in large part to the outsized authoritarian impulses and actions of Donald Trump. But Democrats are not only endorsing and choosing quasi-Nazis and actual Islamists at the ballot box. They seem to have also adopted their suicidal tendencies.
At least they’re not using actual explosives—yet.
Today’s Democratic avant-garde—represented by the many positions they have staked out and candidates they have anointed—was once politically out-of-bounds. Any number of things they had once said or done were disqualifying political liabilities. Not only wouldn’t they have received the party’s blessing as standard bearers. They would have been disowned as voters.
But not today. Let’s look at this roster straight out of Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Electoral Horrors. Hopefully, for Democrats, the wax will melt before election day.
In Maine, Graham Platner, an oyster fisherman and former marine, sported a Nazi tattoo on his chest for 15 years without, implausibly, knowing its origins or meaning. It depicts a skull and crossbones that was fashionable among Hitler’s SS both before and during World War II.
Platner also can’t really explain some of his past social media posts—since deleted—in which he claimed to be a communist, referred to the police as “bastards,” and opined that white people in rural areas were both “stupid and racist.”
Way to secure the vote of the common man.
Platner’s alleged behavior toward women is at an altogether higher level of self-sabotage. Sexting with multiple women while he was married. Reports on “unsettling” behavior and physical abuse. Whatever happened to the Democratic Party’s #MeToo mantra? Aren’t we supposed to unquestionably “Believe Survivors” and cancel the likes of Woody Allen and Brett Kavanaugh from public life?
Platner’s running for the U.S. Senate! How is he the frontrunner to unseat Maine’s mainstay Republican senator, Susan Collins?
The Michigan senatorial race is improbably worse. Abdul El-Sayed has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood—that means Hamas! He once supported former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, whose removal from office made the United States State Department exhale a sigh of relief.
Today, Egypt won’t accept any of Gaza’s refugees precisely because they are brothers and sisters of the Brotherhood. But Michigan Democrats are seemingly fine with Brother El-Sayed?!
He has declared the Israeli government to be as “evil” as Hamas. One of his political handlers is Linda Sarsour, who has praised the radical extremist imam Siraj Wahhaj, who calls for jihad. El-Sayed has also campaigned with online content creator Hasan Piker, whose anti-Israel commentary makes Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens look positively rabbinic by comparison.
Adam Hamawy, 56, an Egyptian-born physician running for Congress as the Democratic frontrunner in New Jersey, was once a defense witness for Omar Abdel Rahman, “the Blind Sheikh” responsible for the first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center with a bomb in 1993. He, too, is backed by Hasan Piker.
During the Blind Sheikh’s trial in 1995, Hamawy was privy to calls to wage jihad against the United States. So damaging was his relationship with the World Trade Center’s bombers, he lied under oath. Recently, he has stated that if elected to Congress he would do everything possible to eliminate Israel’s vaunted air-defense system, the Iron Dome. After all, possessing anti-missile weaponry is terribly unfair to terrorists who wish for their rockets aimed at Israeli civilians to hit their intended targets.
It gets better—no, actually worse. This congressional candidate once interned for the Benevolence International Foundation, a front for terrorism (designated by both the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.N. Security Council) and a financier for Al-Qaeda.
At his campaign’s victory party last week, Hamawy reportedly led his roomful of supporters in that lovely Islamic sing-along: “Allahu Akbar,” recited three times.
New York City’s Islamist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, whose very presence has emboldened all of these anti-Zionist, anti-American Democratic Party candidates, just endorsed Darializa Avila Chevalier, yet another Democratic Socialist with a yen for jihad. She is running for a congressional seat from New York.
Her skeletons are not even in her closet! They came out years ago. She once referred to President Joe Biden as a “rapist” and “war criminal.” She has no affection for fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, either.
She openly refers to the United States in her social feeds as a “disgrace,” has called for abolishing the police and ICE and even for the elimination of prisons. Naturally she intends to vote to discontinue military aid to Israel.
Aisha Wahab, a state senator and rising Democratic Socialist Islamist, is running for Congress in Northern California. In Georgia, Ruwa Romman, who presently serves in the state’s House of Representatives—the first Muslim woman of Palestinian heritage to do so—is running in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Both are progressive on social policy, ambivalent about America, and medieval on Jews.
Abbas Alawieh is running to represent Dearborn in the Michigan state Senate—yes, Dearborn, where Muslims comprise the city’s majority and where every city councilperson, and its mayor, have Islamist sensibilities. Similar coalitions exist in various cities in Michigan, Minnesota and New Jersey.
It looks as though the red-green alliance is here to stay, and that Democratic leadership may have quite intentionally entered all of these races riding the same America- and Israel-hating horse. Democrats always considered themselves to be at the vanguard of the cultural elite. Today they are officially slumming in the same political precincts that have sunk societies all throughout the West.
Bernie Sanders and AOC either know something that has eluded the rational rest of us, or there is a hill they wish to die on, and it’s not the same City on a Hill that has always stood as the model of a moral example for what a nation should look like for the entire world.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is a contributing writer for White Rose magazine. His most recent book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”
Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.
Editor's Picks
Israel and the Internet Wars – A Professional Social Media Review
The Invisible Student: A Tale of Homelessness at UCLA and USC
What Ever Happened to the LA Times?
Who Are the Jews On Joe Biden’s Cabinet?
You’re Not a Bad Jewish Mom If Your Kid Wants Santa Claus to Come to Your House
No Labels: The Group Fighting for the Political Center
Latest Articles
Dear England: Don’t Cry for Thee Argentina
The Admirable Epstein: ‘Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles‘
Summer in Israel: Still Waiting for Tourists to Return
Rosner’s Domain | Can You Be a Zionist Without Zionism?
The Story This Moment Needs
The Jewish Tree of Life and American Tree of Liberty
The Kristallnacht Monument and the Question of Whether to Stop
Miniature, polite gestures of memorialization serve neither as insurance against future catastrophes nor as tributes to the victims. So should we stop to acknowledge them?
Jewish Donors: Don’t Walk Away
Do not give up on institutions — but do not disengage from the responsibility to hold them accountable.
Capping the Fire Hydrant
For close to 30 years, we forked up whatever we could afford and were happy to do it. It was now time for them to experience the exhilaration of staring at a pile of bills, not knowing where the money would come from.
Lindsey Graham’s Last Dream
It is difficult to see another member of Congress or administration official capable of moving a possible Israel-Saudi deal to fruition.
L.A. Jewish Leaders Split Over Rahm Emanuel’s Israel Speech
During his roughly 30-minute speech, he warned that Israel had become a “prisoner of its own tools” and that the American-Israel relationship, although historically strong, was “at a crossroads.”
When Confronting Israel Becomes a Career Strategy, Who Speaks for California?
At a moment when California faces soaring costs, housing shortages, energy challenges, water insecurity and mounting technological competition from China, Ro Khanna chose to travel halfway around the world in pursuit of yet another public confrontation with America’s closest and best ally in the Middle East.
Bar-Ilan University and Sheba Medical Center Joining Forces for Biotech Innovation Institute With $120 Million Investment
This $120 million investment is modeled after the American NIH, and it will accelerate the timeline from lab discovery to clinical treatment.
Jew Hatred is an Emotion. Discrimination is the Evidence.
Just like any emotion or any label, hate can be denied. What is much harder to deny is one set of rules for the world and another for the Jews. That’s not an emotion. It’s an action.
The Movie Europe Doesn’t Want You to See
“Citizen Vigilante” serves as a warning to governments that if they don’t secure their borders, enforce laws, and protect their most vulnerable, ordinary people will resort to self-help.
Why Was Platner’s Nazi Tattoo Tolerable?
Why America Wins When Europe and Israel Stand Together
Hasan Piker and the Narrative about Israel – Untethered to Reality and Harming the Cause of Palestine
The only hope for a better future is to turn the Palestinians away from Hamas and back on the path of building their economy and a democratic society that conceivably could regain the trust of Israelis.
Who is Going to Disarm Them?
No one else is willing to pay the price except Israel which understands its survival depends on it.
How Zionism Strengthens Judaism
Israel, and everything it has accomplished, has given Judaism a spine. After two millennia of insecurity and persecution, Israel shows us a way of being Jewish that is the opposite of weakness.
Don’t Book Family Trips, Build Legacies Instead.
All My Journeys — A poem for Parsha Matot-Masei
It all started in New Jersey…
A Bisl Torah — Confidence in Them, Trust in Yourself
Our tradition not only teaches to have confidence in the children we are raising but to also trust ourselves, our ever-evolving characters.
The Young Investors Redefining What It Means to Support Israel
Israel Bonds, the organization that has mobilized diaspora investment in the State of Israel for 75 years, is building a community among a new generation of pro-Israel professionals in Los Angeles.
Print Issue: Remember Who You Are | July 10, 2026
An Open Letter to My Fellow Jews on Peoplehood, Memory, and Israel
A Moment in Time: Israel – Coming Home Again
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.