The economy and immigration policy will soon be the problems of President-elect Donald Trump and the fully Republican Congress already in power. Yet Democrats face a lingering problem as they try to regroup ahead of the 2026 midterm elections and 2028 presidential race — having to appease the party’s hard-left activist base, particularly over the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Democrats’ growing criticism of Israel’s prosecution of the war, together with the party’s seeming inability or unwillingness to tamp out often violent and disruptive campus protests against the Jewish State — and Jews — leaves open the question of how Democrats intend to include Israel in their revamped policies, messaging, and branding since public opinion polls consistently show strong voter support for the nation.

With Biden’s exit from the political stage and Harris’s losses across all of the battleground states, there is no heir apparent, or even a front-runner, as the seemingly endless presidential campaign cycle starts to rev up for 2028. It all raises a notion long thought unthinkable in many circles: Will the Democrats elevate a presidential nominee who is, at best, indifferent to Israel’s plight? Or even actively hostile?

The matter came to a head for Harris once she took over as Democratic nominee, about ten months after the Oct. 7 attacks, which resulted in about 1,200 Israeli deaths and around 250 people taken hostage. Almost immediately, hard-left activists vocally blamed Israel for civilian casualties in Gaza amid its defensive war against Hamas.

Harris effectively tried to split the difference.

“I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself,” Harris said in her only debate against Trump. However, she added, “How it does so matters.”

That caveat seemed to imply Israel was at least partly to blame for military tactics in a surprise attack launched by Hamas against civilians. Harris’s approach didn’t end up satisfying either side, Israel supporters or its harshest critics. It raises the question of whether the next Democratic presidential nominee can ignore anti-Israel sentiment by the most fervent supporters in the party’s base, who reliably show up to vote for its candidates and work in the political trenches to get them elected.

Israel still has many Democratic supporters

Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, disagreed that the party’s support for Israel is dwindling.

“I don’t think we saw tempering even in this past election cycle,” Soifer said in an interview. “And no, I don’t believe there will be tempering in the future.”

Soifer, who was a national security adviser to Harris when she was a Democratic senator from California, pointed the Washington Examiner to the party’s adopted platform this summer. It’s far more detailed on the matters of Israel and antisemitism than the more cursory platform Republicans adopted, said Soifer.

Some House Democrats say there’s no fall-off in support.

“People have to understand that the vast majority of the Democratic Party stands with Israel,” Rep. Kim Schrier (D-WA) asserted to the Washington Examiner. “I have no doubt that the pro-Israel vast majority of our party will rise for the next presidential election.”

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), co-chairman of the House Abraham Accords Caucus and staunch pro-Israel congressman, told the Washington Examiner, “I have no doubt that support for Israel will always be bipartisan and always be strong.”

Likewise, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), a pro-Israel House mainstay and former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, said, “I’m confident we’re going to have a strong pro-Israel candidate in 2028 because the Democratic Party is strongly pro-Israel.”

Lingering questions about Democratic support for Israel

However, Democrats of late have sent conflicting messages.

On one hand, its voting base sent a pair of virulent anti-Israel House members packing in primary elections — Outgoing Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO). Both members blamed the pro-Israel lobby. Bowman additionally blamed Jewish voters in his former district, covering southern Westchester County.

Additionally, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was soundly defeated last month by party colleagues in her upstart bid to serve as the top Democrat on the prominent House Oversight Committee. The progressive star and feature member of the “Squad,” a group of House members ranging from Israel-hostile to outright anti-Israel, lost resoundingly to the more senior Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA).

On the other hand, internal elections lifted to positions of leadership five Senate Democrats who voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) Israeli arms embargo resolutions. That’s nearly half of the Senate leadership team and includes Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), its second highest-ranking member. Sanders, though not a Democrat himself, was elected outreach chairman.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) will be the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) holding his party’s top spot on the subcommittee on the Middle East. Both voted for an Israel arms embargo. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the nation’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official, faces increasing pressure. Some sections of the Jewish community feel he turned their back on them in search of political expediency. Schumer has received loud boos and taunting at mainstream American Jewish events in recent months. 

And there is the lingering sting of Harris turning down popular Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), who was a possible 2028 presidential candidate, as her running mate, with accusations from across the political spectrum (and credit taken by some on the far left), that she made the choice based on Shapiro’s pro-Israel positions and Jewish faith. The Harris campaign vehemently denied the accusations, as did Shapiro. 

Looking ahead to 2028

As for the still-forming 2028 crop of Democratic candidates, there’s every reason to believe they’ll back Israel, said Soifer.

“We do have a strong bench of leaders. All of them could make for very strong candidates for president — many of them currently serving as governors — and all of them are strong supporters of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” she said.  

Shapiro is among those who are seen as possible 2028 contenders, as well as Govs. Wes Moore (D-MD), Andy Beshear (D-KY), Gavin Newsom (D-CA), and Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI).

However, that’s a long way away, and no Democrat the Washington Examiner spoke with was willing to opine on the shaping of the next election.

Mark Mellman, the Democratic strategist and pollster who heads the Democratic Majority for Israel advocacy group, told the Washington Examiner he believes party leadership understood that an anti-Israel message was not a winning one politically in 2024.

“After my discussions with leaders since the election, I came away confident that they will be paying less attention to the fringes of the party going forward,” Mellman said.

When asked how that can be, given that so many who have been staunchly critical of Israel retained or were elevated in their positions, Mellman cited House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who maintains a loyal grip while consistently supporting Jerusalem.

He also pointed to Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who was recently elected to the Democratic Senate leadership team. 

Booker voted against all three resolutions, as did Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), another rising star in the party, who told the Washington Examiner that night that if those who sided with Sanders against Israel “want to go down in flames, then that’s their choice.”

However, Sam Markstein, national political and communications director for the Republican Jewish Coalition, told the Washington Examiner that Democrats are “certainly on the precipice” of possibly nominating an anti-Israel candidate at the top of the party.

He pointed to the leading candidacy of Wisconsin party Chairman Ben Wikler for the national party chairman. Wikler recently told Jewish Insider that the party should have invited a representative of the anti-Israel Uncommitted National Movement to speak onstage at this past summer’s national convention, all in the name of party unity.

“Joe Biden, for all of his faults and disagreements that we have with him on the policy side of things, he at least had a 50-year or more track record” of supporting Israel, said Markstein. “So, he kind of had that built-in well of support.”

Mike Wagenheim is a senior U.S. correspondent for the i24NEWS television network, covering U.S. government, diplomacy, religion, business, and culture.