Tuesday’s landslide Democratic victories in the Senate, House and state houses are a “victory for team common sense,” according to Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), one of Israel’s strongest supporters in Congress and one of the most outspoken congressmen about Jew-hatred.
The Jewish representative told JNS that the Democratic wins, widely being referred to as a “blue tsunami,” were achieved not because of the election of far-Left democratic socialists but due to victories by more mainstream, middle-of-the-road candidates who promised to bring costs down for Americans.
A member of the Blue Dog Coalition of moderate Democratic lawmakers, Gottheimer is a founder of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which seeks bipartisan solutions in Congress and a critic of some of the far-Left members of his party with whom he sits in the House chamber.
He has called some of them out for antisemitic comments and has introduced several bills to support Israel and oppose antisemitism after Oct. 7.
He told JNS that the moderate wing of the Democratic Party was the big winner on Tuesday night, not the Democratic Socialists of America and its allies. The Blue Dogs more than doubled their ranks, with at least 14 new members coming to Washington in January as a result of the midterms.
“Given the breadth of the victory in the Senate and the House and governors’ mansions, it was a victory for team common sense,” Gottheimer told JNS.
“The headlines were not about the DSA. It was about the swath of the win, and that means in a lot of places you had a lot of middle-of-the-road, common-sense, reasonable Democrats who won,” he said. “It was a big win for the Democratic Party, not for the Socialist Party, and I think that was pretty clear.”
While several anti-Israel candidates were elected, Gottheimer, a leading supporter of the Jewish state, said that the majority of his party would have a different agenda than focusing on the Middle East when Democrats take over both houses of Congress in January.
Voters gave Democrats the majorities so that they could address the issue upon which they ran: affordability, he told JNS.
“What they want is us to focus like a laser beam on cutting costs for them,” Gottheimer said. “They want us to get stuff done and they want less drama, because it’s been with Trump one day of chaos after another.”
“Most importantly, they want us to get their costs down like between utility bills and gas prices and health insurance premiums and drug prices and food prices, and childcare costs,” he told JNS. “It’s clear that’s the message, given how many places we won we weren’t expected to win.”
While Gottheimer talked about wins by the more moderate wing of the party, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) stated that Tuesday “saw some of the greatest progressive victories in modern American history.”
“All across the country, in rural and urban areas, Americans said ‘no’ to oligarchy and ‘yes’ to an agenda that fights for the working class,” said the Jewish senator, who has been a vocal critic of the Jewish state.
Some of those winners were DSA members or ran on similar platforms. Many oppose Israel and its policies and some have accused the Jewish state of “genocide.”
But Israel wasn’t the centerpiece of their campaigns this fall.
“In these places where we won, this wasn’t because they were running as anti-Israel candidates,” Gottheimer told JNS. “They were running as lower-cost Democrats, and I just think that’s what people want.”
“They don’t want lots of debate about whether we should support our key ally or fight terror,” he said. “They would talk about what are you going to do to protect Americans to get our costs down. That’s, to me, what the focus was.”
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee didn’t cite Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s criticism of Israel but rather his economic platform in celebrating his election to the Senate in Michigan, one of the battleground states in presidential elections.
“He ran on three key issues: getting money out of politics, making life more affordable for working families and guaranteeing health care for everyone through Medicare for All,” stated Adam Green, co-founder of the committee.
“He showed that a candidate who genuinely threatens billionaire and corporate power can withstand an unprecedented onslaught and win in a presidential battleground state,” Green said.
The Republican Jewish Coalition has said that El-Sayed, who declined to say that the Iranian regime is more dangerous than the Jewish state, is the most antisemitic Senate candidate in America.
Republicans have tried to brand the entire House Democratic Caucus as anti-Israel because of candidates like El-Sayed.
Gottheimer insisted that the midterm results showed that the far-left wing of his party was a minority in the new majority.
“When you win 40-plus seats, of course there’s always going to be some people with some views you don’t agree with,” he told JNS.
“I don’t think those are representative now of the broader caucus, especially with the big win,” he said. “Yes, there’s some DSAers, but that was not the majority of what we won.”
