For the time being, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) says that he’s not leaving the Democratic Party. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, the Pennsylvania Democrat who was elected in 2022 despite suffering a massive stroke just before he won his party’s nomination, said that he’d make a “terrible Republican” because he votes with his party the overwhelming majority of the time.
Yet the two positions on which he seems to differ with most Democrats—opposition to illegal immigration and support for Israel—seem to have become the organizing principles of American politics for the contemporary left. Those positions, along with his willingness to work with the incumbent administration to get things done, which is the sort of thing that all members of the Senate were once expected to do in order to serve their constituents, make him an outlier today. It’s also why, regardless of the efforts of the GOP to recruit him, he has very little chance of winning a Democratic primary in 2028 when he’s up for re-election.
No place in the party
That factor—not the focus of Washington insiders on whether Fetterman could be persuaded to help maintain the Republican majority in the Senate—is the more interesting variable in the equation. Though Fetterman may still think of himself as a Democrat, the fact remains that in 2026, an unabashed supporter of Israel like him simply doesn’t fit in his party anymore.
That’s the understandable conclusion many drew in June from primary results in New York and Colorado. Even hardline liberals, like Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), were defeated by opponents who were much further to the left and proclaimed their anti-Israel sentiments. Indeed, the interesting question is not whether the Democrats will renominate Fetterman, since we already know they won’t. It’s whether the party is on the cusp of becoming America’s anti-Israel party, just as it’s already taken for granted that it’s the party that is pro-abortion and sympathetic to illegal immigration.
The fact that some journalists are even bothering to ask leading Democrats whether they will commit to minimalist positions, like supporting Israel’s security and continued existence, in their next platform reflects the mindset of the politics of the past. These queries are only interesting in that the noncommittal answers they are receiving are confirming the obvious.
The fact that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), heretofore considered a stalwart friend of Israel, and left-wing “Squad” ringleader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has been an ardent foe of the Jewish state, brushed off the question as irrelevant says all anyone needs to know about the issue. Instead of Jeffries refuting the anti-Israel position and AOC advocating for it, the subtext is that they both are now acting as if they assume that the divorce with supporters of Israel and the embrace of the antisemitic left is a done deal.
Shapiro’s hopes
That is not to say that there is unanimity on the issue among prominent Democrats. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is still flailing away, trying to create some space in the political center for a brand of Democrat that is not willing to bend the knee to the far left.
Shapiro used most of a CNN interview—with the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia as the backdrop—during the weekend when the nation celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence to falsely accuse President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance of leading America “back to tyranny.” That sort of hyperpartisan hyperbole is what Shapiro knows his party base requires.
Still, he had no real answer when confronted by interviewer Dana Bash with the fact that the overwhelming majority of his party’s voters are no longer very proud of being Americans. How could they be with the core ideology driving their base and their leaders: the toxic far-left critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism that have all fueled hatred for the country.
Unlike Fetterman, Shapiro has sought to placate anti-Israel activists with unfair and over-the-top criticisms of the current Israeli government. But he has refused to go as far as others who have repeated blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” in Gaza or to call, as the majority of Senate Democrats have done, for stopping arms shipments to the Jewish state.
That puts him in an interesting position because Shapiro, who is almost certain to be re-elected governor this fall, hopes that it’s possible for Democrats to nominate someone in 2028 who is open about his faith and affiliation with the Jewish community, and at least nominally pro-Israel.
Is that possible given the sea change in opinion about Israel and antisemitism among Democrats?
Thinking about 1992
He is somehow hoping that he can time-travel back to an earlier, more centrist version of the Democratic Party. As such, he used the July 4 interview to talk about wanting a debate over issues inside the party, such as the one that took place in 1992 and led to the election that year of a centrist like Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. He took the opportunity to say that his values differ markedly from those of some of the socialists who have won Democratic congressional primaries in recent weeks. One such was Darializa Avila Chevalier, who is not merely a Democratic Socialist that hates the America created in Philadelphia in 1776, but also was a cheerleader for the atrocities committed against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
It used to be that denouncing extremists in your own party was a layup for politicians on both sides of the aisle. Indeed, Clinton helped secure his nomination in 1992 with a “Sister Souljah moment,” a reference to his denunciation of a hitherto obscure African-American rap artist who called for blacks to kill whites.
The bad news for Shapiro is that it isn’t 1992. Extremist views on race, immigration, Israel and Jews that would have gotten a candidate kicked out of the Democratic Party in Clinton’s day now are a pathway to congressional seats and power. He sought to fire a shot over the bow of his potential 2028 rival, former vice president Kamala Harris, by writing about her team’s bizarre queries about whether he was an Israeli agent when he was vetted for the vice-presidential nomination in 2024. But most Democrats probably agreed with her staff’s decision then and certainly do now when even minimal support for the Jewish state, such as that of Shapiro, is considered by many to be disqualifying in the party.
He is swimming against an overwhelming tide of increasingly open anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric that dominates Democratic Party discourse in 2026.
Take the left seriously
Many in the corporate press focus on establishment liberals who are now pandering to the left, such as Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, when speculating about 2028. But they, like Shapiro, are ignoring the fact that their party’s left-wing base, which was double-crossed and shoved aside during the party’s nominating process during the past three presidential election cycles, is unlikely to accept that sort of treatment again. The truth is that the sentiments about America and Israel expressed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (who, as a native of Uganda, is constitutionally prohibited from becoming president) resonate more with Democratic primary voters than the tepid centrism of Shapiro.
With polls showing 80% of Democrats now opposing Israel, it is not only difficult to envision someone like Shapiro winning the presidential nomination. Realists should also be prepared for the possibility of someone who represents the far left winning it, even if it’s difficult for even liberals to take the most visible and popular of Democratic Socialists—AOC—seriously as a potential commander-in-chief.
Is it possible for the pendulum among Democrats to swing back to the center over the course of the next two years? Possibly. If leftist candidates, like Michigan’s pro-Islamist Abdul El-Sayeed, are defeated by Republicans in November (Maine’s Nazi-tattooed Israel-bashing Graham Platner may be crashing and burning due to allegations of sexual assault that may destroy his candidacy long before the voters render their verdict), it could convince many Democrats to change course. The far left’s dominance in primaries has given Trump an issue that could lead to the disappointment of the Democrats’ expectations for a midterm blue wave in the same manner that sunk the GOP’s hopes for a red wave in 2022.
Such a scenario could be ideal for Shapiro. But in a party that seems convinced that it lost the White House and Congress in 2024 because their leaders were insufficiently anti-Israel, rather than because of their embrace of far-left ideas like gender ideology and critical race theory, that sort of sensible thinking seems unlikely.
And it’s unclear if Fetterman, whose health issues have dogged him for the past four years, will even try to hold onto his seat in 2028. Though he has a respectable amount of money on hand in his campaign treasury, his fundraising efforts have stalled in the last couple of years. Were he to cross the aisle and become a Republican, that might be an easier path to another six-year term, though that seems unlikely. And while independents have won Senate races in other states, that is viewed as less likely in Pennsylvania, due to both the partisan spirit of the times and the way the commonwealth’s election system is skewed toward enforcing party dominance. The smart money is now on him simply not running for re-election. If so, he will be missed because of his rather unique style, both in terms of his centrism and his sartorial choices.
A haunting precedent
The problem for someone like Shapiro, who tries but usually fails to conceal his unquenchable ambition for higher office, is that the shift to the left among Democrats may have already gone too far to accommodate someone with his views, particularly on Israel.
Indeed, his hopes for a return of the Democratic Party of 1992 should worry rather than encourage him. In that time, the dominant politician in Pennsylvania was one of his predecessors in Harrisburg, Gov. Bob Casey Sr. (father to his namesake, who represented Pennsylvania in the Senate from 2007 to 2025). The popular Casey was a throwback to an earlier era of American politics in many ways, not least because he is usually referred to as the last of the pro-life Democrats. The Clinton camp denied him a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention largely because they felt that it was no longer possible to give that sort of prominence to someone who was so out of touch with the rest of the party on an issue on which so many felt so strongly.
That precedent should haunt Shapiro. Because just as anti-abortion Democrats are now extinct, it’s entirely possible that if current trends hold, by 2028 or soon thereafter, pro-Israel Democrats might be put in the same position. Indeed, right now, I’d say the odds of Shapiro being denied a speaking slot at the 2028 DNC are slightly higher than his rather minimal chances of being nominated for president at that gathering.
Even if you don’t share Shapiro’s high opinion of his capabilities, that’s tragic. If, as recent primaries and the polls indicate, opposition to Israel is a requirement to get the votes of most Democrats, the party is on the verge of becoming as anti-Israel as it is pro-abortion. While the rise of antisemitism on the right is creating genuine concerns about the future of the Republican Party, the far more serious situation on the left is now creating the possibility that the national Democratic Party will soon not be so much divided on Israel but will have become a space where politicians like Shapiro, let alone Fetterman, will have no place in it.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
