Who would have thought that we would ever be looking back nostalgically on the days when the anti-Israel “Squad” in the US Congress numbered only four people?
Yet following recent primaries in Pennsylvania, New York, and now Colorado, a squad of “only” four is beginning to look like the good old days.
On Tuesday, voters in Denver – a deep blue city – ousted 15-term mainstream Democrat Diana DeGette in favor of 29-year-old Melat Kiros, yet another Zohran Mamdani-style democratic socialist.
Kiros, whose family immigrated to Colorado from Ethiopia when she was a baby, was fired from her law firm in 2023 after publishing an open letter, arguing that student protesters’ calls for the elimination of Israel should not be conflated with antisemitism and that the October 7 massacre needed to be contextualized, because throughout history, the occupied have resisted with violence.
She also refused in a televised interview to say the deadly firebombing attack in Boulder that led to the death of 82-year-old Karen Diamond was an antisemitic attack.
“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” she said.
Never mind that the attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who is serving a life sentence, yelled, “Free Palestine!” as he hurled homemade bombs at a group gathered in support of the hostages in Gaza. Or that he reportedly told investigators he was driven by a “desire to kill all Zionist people.”
A string of anti-Israel candidate victories
Kiros’s victory follows victories by two other Democratic Socialists of America candidates in New York congressional primaries, both strongly anti-Israel, as well as another in Philadelphia’s congressional primary, and one in the Democratic primary for mayor of Washington, DC. In these deep-blue locales, winning the primary is often tantamount to winning the election.
Some Democratic stalwarts may dismiss these victories as outliers confined to a handful of overwhelmingly liberal districts. Others may argue that democratic socialism is simply another political fad, destined to fade much as many believed the Tea Party eventually did.
But that misses the point. The Bernie Sanders-Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party may not yet be capable of winning nationally, but it is steadily expanding its influence within the party.
Every primary victory sends a message to Democratic officeholders about where the party’s activist base is moving. Politicians pay close attention to who wins elections. As the DSA and its allies accumulate victories, other Democrats will inevitably ask themselves whether long-held, pro-Israel positions could make them vulnerable to a primary challenge.
The success of these candidates is not only – or even primarily – an Israel problem. It is a Democratic Party problem. For too long, the party establishment underestimated these insurgent primary campaigns, believing that endorsements from senior politicians, superior fundraising, and traditional media campaigns would be sufficient.
That strategy failed against a young, highly motivated movement that organizes relentlessly at the grassroots and is willing to challenge incumbents once thought untouchable.
Some have compared the DSA to the Tea Party, which burst onto the political scene in 2009 and challenged the Republican establishment. The comparison is not exact, but it is instructive.
Left seeks to redefine the Democratic Party
Like the Tea Party, the Mamdani-style Left is trying to redefine what it means to belong to one of America’s two major parties rather than create a third party. It thrives in low-turnout primaries, where highly motivated, ideological activists wield disproportionate influence.
And like the Tea Party, it employs ideological purity tests. For the Tea Party, the defining issues were taxes and the size of government. For today’s Democratic Left, positions on Israel have become an increasingly important litmus test.
Many Republicans initially dismissed the Tea Party as a passing fringe phenomenon. They soon discovered that movements capable of consistently winning primaries have a way of reshaping parties from the inside.
Democrats should not make the same mistake.
Whether the DSA ultimately succeeds in taking over the Democratic Party is almost beside the point. It is already changing the party’s priorities, changing how Democratic politicians approach Israel, and changing the tenor of the debate surrounding Israel.