In a close election, every constituency is thought to hold the potential to tip the balance. Jewish voters, like others, were believed to impact the outcome, but the race wasn’t even close. Donald Trump won decisively, with the Democratic “blue wall” collapsing and Trump overperforming in nearly every county in the country, while Vice President Kamala Harris underperformed. Some media outlets published a National Election Pool exit poll reporting that the Jewish vote broke 79% to 21% for Harris. Don’t believe it. That was based on 10 states and contradicts pre-election projections that showed Harris leading on average 65% to 30%. The Fox News exit poll is more likely to be accurate as it was consistent with these earlier polls reporting Harris winning 65% to 32%.
As I noted in an earlier column, this would be the lowest share of the Jewish vote since Michael Dukakis in 1988. No Democrat was elected president with less than 68% (Joe Biden’s total) since 1968. Unlike overly optimistic predictions by Republicans that Trump had won over significant numbers of Jews, he appears to have received the same support as in 2020, so there was no realignment and the Jewish vote did not impact the outcome.
Years will be spent analyzing the election but several reasons for Harris’s loss can easily be discerned.
Many Jewish voters who had previously downplayed Israel’s importance in their decision-making likely voted with that issue in mind. They abandoned Harris because she was tied to Biden’s good cop, bad cop approach to Israel that has both aided and impeded its war effort. She was also undermined by the association with groups pushing her to weaken the U.S.-Israel alliance: J Street, the far-left, antisemites, Israel critics and proponents of cutting aid to Israel. Harris didn’t help herself with her unwillingness to define her Middle East policy beyond supporting the phantasmagorical two-state solution and acknowledging that she “heard” protesters accusing Israel of genocide. A California liberal, Harris could not bring herself to tack to the center and failed to articulate a coherent, forceful Middle East policy.
Arab Americans were rejoicing, believing they had helped defeat her in Michigan. In Dearborn, the city with the most Arab Americans, Trump won 47% to 28%, with 22% voting for Jill Stein (final results may vary). In 2020, Biden won 69% to 30%. This group will undoubtedly regret their virtue-signaling when they see Trump dismissing their concerns.
The party and Harris also suffered because of Biden’s selfish refusal to withdraw from the race until almost the 11th hour. Had he left earlier, the Democrats could have had a competition for the nomination. He also might have resigned to allow Harris to become president and run as the incumbent.
Few people are talking about it, but Harris lost because Democrats are seen as placing identity politics over policy. She was chosen as the candidate without receiving a single vote largely because the party feared that it would implode if a woman of color were denied the nomination. Her run for the presidency in 2020 had shown her to be unpopular, but most Democrats were so happy to replace Biden that they overlooked her flaws. The “joy” campaign quickly faded as the relief over dumping Biden subsided.
Paradoxically, Harris played the identity politics card and lost a significant share of key Democratic constituencies, notably black men and Hispanics.
Despite Biden’s overwhelming unpopularity and a sense among the public that the country was heading in the wrong direction, Harris failed to offer any substantive vision of her own. Instead, she doubled down on Biden’s policies, refusing to distance herself even from the most unpopular ones. Remember James Carville’s mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Her failure to adequately address “kitchen table” issues put her out of step with millions of Americans.
Trump’s attacks on Harris as the “immigration czar” responsible for the nation’s border crisis were also effective as he blamed her for the country being overrun by foreigners “poisoning the blood of our country.”
A non-issue in 2020, Harris’s support for trans rights became a Republican line of attack that seemed to resonate with some religious voters, including Jews and parents.
The so-called “bro” factor led to Trump erasing Harris’s gender-gap advantage with women. Many bros were not even prepared in 2024 to accept a female president.
Democrats talked about Harris being in the room with the president when he made all his foreign-policy decisions to suggest that she was ready to be commander-in-chief. However, evidence was never presented to substantiate her influence on Middle East policy, and Republicans blamed her for Biden’s perceived shortcomings in support for Israel, positioning her as a scapegoat amid increasing tensions.
Harris and her party underestimated the depth of Trump’s acceptance (he may win the popular vote for the first time). It was unfathomable to many who saw Trump as a vulgar felon, adulterer and wannabe dictator who could be re-elected. Biden’s remark about his supporters being “garbage” reinforced the view of at least half the population that they were being dismissed and derided by elites who did not relate to their everyday challenges.
Even issues like abortion, which were supposed to serve as a rallying cry for women voters, failed to deliver the expected gender-gap advantage. Although abortion rights energized many voters, it also alienated others, especially religious voters, including Jewish and Catholic communities. Despite a well-funded campaign designed to emphasize women’s rights, Harris ultimately garnered fewer votes from women than Biden had in 2020, while male voters shifted even further away from her.
Now, we know Harris lost, but what can those of us concerned with Israel expect from the president-elect?
We can make inferences based on Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House, but he said almost nothing during the campaign about his plans. Agree or disagree with Trump’s approach to the Middle East in the first term; there is no assurance that it will be the same in the second term. Key architects of his Middle East policy, notably son-in-law and former senior adviser Jared Kushner, are not expected to be part of a second Trump administration.
Unlike Harris, Trump did not face protests or questions about what he would do about Gaza, and he never told us. Without expressing sympathy for the Palestinians, he did say, “Get your victory and get it over with. It has to stop, the killing has to stop.”
He told Netanyahu, “It has to get over with fast.”
“I will give Israel the support that it needs to win, but I do want them to win fast, wouldn’t it be nice if they could win fast? And we have to let them win fast. We will restore civility and peace to the Middle East.”
“I want to see the Middle East get back to peace and real peace, but a peace that’s going to be a lasting peace, and that’s going to happen,” he said, suggesting that he could bring it about because he “was respected over there” and had “great relationships with so many.” It was unclear who he was talking about.
He told Netanyahu, “If we win, it will be very simple. It’s all going to work out and very quickly.”
Trump also warned that Israel would be annihilated if Harris was elected and that he would be Israel’s “big protector.”
He never explained what his policy would be to either help Israel win the war or what he would do if it didn’t end as quickly as he wanted, that is, before his inauguration. He said he thought negotiations could free the hostages but didn’t mention any terms. He did say he believed “very few hostages” were alive.
Hoping to build on his greatest foreign-policy success, Trump said he would bring at least a dozen other countries into the Abraham Accords. More eye-opening was his inclusion of Iran among them. “I would have gotten, in my opinion, 50/50 chance, maybe more than that, Iran would have been in the Abraham Accords. … They wanted to make a deal so bad until we had that phony election.”
Netanyahu appeared on the outs with Trump after the prime minister infuriated the former president by congratulating Biden for his victory in the “rigged election.” Trump also said that Netanyahu had “dropped out” of a joint operation to kill Qassem Soleimani, Iranian commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, in January 2020. Trump blamed Netanyahu for the Hamas attack occurring on his watch and for his conduct of the war. Ironically, Trump annoyed Netanyahu by thanking Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas for sending him a get well soon message after the attempted assassination. Netanyahu later went to Mar-a-Lago, and the two began to speak on the telephone, suggesting all was well again.
Trump supporters were thrilled that he pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement in May 2018 but have been silent regarding his new position. “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible,” he said.
He did say he wouldn’t allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon but indicated that he expected Israel to take care of the problem. In response to a question about Biden pressuring Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, he said: “That’s the thing you want to hit right? I said I think he’s got that wrong, isn’t that the one you’re supposed to hit? It’s the biggest risk we have, nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons. When they asked him that question the answer should have been, ‘Hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later.’”
After the second assassination attempt, Trump said, “If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country—in this case Iran, that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens.”
Trump failed to offer a strategy or vision for the region or how he would address the myriad problems unrelated to Israel or Iran, such as countering Russian and Chinese influence, Turkish belligerence, and Qatar’s malevolent behavior.
The positions the new president adopts are likely to be influenced by his choice of advisers, but that is the subject of a future column.
