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August 23, 2026
Key Developments and What We're Discussing Today:
- DSA is nowhere near becoming mainstream in the Democratic Party. It's news when its candidates win precisely because it is so out of pattern. At most, DSA members will constitute 1% of the next U.S. Senate and 2% of the next U.S. House, with none in leadership positions.
- The Republican Party is led by Donald Trump, whose record of antisemitism and extremism exceeds that of any DSA candidate. He is, by definition, the GOP mainstream. The House Republican caucus is led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), an ardent Christian nationalist.
- If you want to play guilt by association, remember that Republicans who campaign with or support Donald Trump are campaigning/associating with someone whose platform, power, and past record of antisemitism and crudity exceeds anyone any Democrat campaigns with or associates with. That's not whataboutism. That's what we in democracies call "elections," which are choices between two candidates and necessarily require comparisons.
- The November midterms will decide control of the House and Senate. A Democratic House and Senate with a fringe of DSA members will be better than a Republican House and Senate dominated by election deniers and Trump sycophants.
- Remember when Democrats were criticized for saying that they did not want AIPAC money? Looks like Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers (MI) doesn't want it either. Maybe AIPAC really is bipartisan.
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Friends,
Availability bias is a common cognitive error "arising from the use of information which is most readily available, rather than that which is necessarily most representative."
Sometimes it costs lives. Driving is more dangerous than flying, but a well-publicized airplane crash (out of hundreds of safe flights every day) can cause people who otherwise might fly to drive, resulting in needless deaths.
Cognitive biases influence our voting behavior too. Every time a Democratic Socialist of America candidate wins, that's all we talk about. We forget that it makes news because, like airplane crashes, it's unusual.
Most DSA candidates lose their House and Senate primaries. With the primary season nearly over, eight DSA candidates have won Democratic congressional primaries, including the only two DSA incumbents, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Eighteen have lost Democratic federal primaries.
No U.S. senators are DSA members. At most, the next U.S. Senate could include one DSA member: one percent of the Senate and, if Democrats win a majority, less than 2% of the Democratic caucus. Chances are that no DSA candidates will be elected to the Senate in November regardless of which party wins the majority.
Of the two DSA members in the House, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib, DSA only endorsed Tlaib. In 2024, DSA pulled its endorsement of AOC for what it deemed insufficient support of the Palestinian cause, a good reminder that while DSA candidates tend to have similar views on economics (i.e., the issues that most people vote on), they are not monolithic on Israel.
The next U.S. House is likely to include eight DSA members, an increase of six out of 435 members, totaling less than 2%. If Democrats win control of the House, less than 4% of the Democratic caucus will be DSA members.
In the next Senate, none of the Jewish senators will be Republicans. In the next House, all but three or four of the roughly 20 Jewish members will be Democrats.
Of the roughly 20 House members (including Republican leader Mike Johnson) who display Christian nationalist flags outside their offices, all are and will be Republicans.
Choosing between a Democratic Party whose DSA fringe will go from two to less than a minyan in Congress and a Republican Party led by a president whose long record of antisemitism is unparalleled and led in the House by an ardent Christian nationalist who was the architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election should be an easy choice--but only if we are conscious of our cognitive biases, driven in part by social media that too often looks for clicks rather than truth.
147 Republicans voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. That's not a fringe. Nearly all Republicans voted against impeaching and convicting Trump during his first term. That's not a fringe. Because it is not a fringe, because Trump says and does things nearly every week that would have resulted in impeachment, if not conviction, of any president prior to 2016, it's not news. We've become numb to Trump's abuses and the GOP's failure to rein in those abuses.
Is this whataboutism? Of course it is. We are talking about an election. In an election with more than one candidate, when talking about one candidate, it is always appropriate to ask about the other candidate because it's a choice.
We should always ask, in response to questions about who any given Democrat associates or campaigns with, whether that Democrat's opponent supports Donald Trump or welcomes Trump's support.
I guarantee you that no matter who the Democrat is or who the Democrat hangs out with, Donald Trump has a bigger platform, more power, a longer record of antisemitism, and has made more crude and offensive comments about women and others.
If a Republican supports Trump, shouldn't we hold that Republican to the same standard to which we hold Democrats who associate with public figures we disagree with or find offensive? If we hold both candidates to the same standard, we'll find ourselves supporting the Democrat every time.
You don't like Abdul El-Sayed campaigning with Hasan Piker? Neither do I. But if you don't, then you should be livid that Mike Rogers will be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump. Supporting El-Sayed over Rogers should be a clear choice even if control of the Senate were not at stake. We should be far more concerned about Trump's endorsement of Rogers than Piker's endorsement of El-Sayed.
Control of the House and Senate hangs in the balance this November. We cannot afford two more years of Donald Trump unchecked by Congress and the Supreme Court. We can't change the Supreme Court (yet), but we can prevent more extreme Supreme Court appointments by electing a Democratic Senate, and we can stop bad bills from passage, and conduct proper oversight of the Executive Branch, with a Democratic House and Senate.
Claims that the election of any given DSA or so-called "far left" Democrat would signal a shift against Jews or Israel within the Democratic Party are as absurd as claiming that any given airplane crash means we should stop flying. Get a grip. Jews don't fare well under authoritarian regimes. If Donald Trump continues unchecked, that's where we are headed.
If we cut out the noise, this should be an easy choice.
Corrections. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts, so I appreciate it when readers bring errors to my attention. In last week's newsletter, I spelled Ami Fields-Meyer's first name incorrectly.
In Case You Missed It:
- This is for everyone who doesn't understand why a two-state solution is the best solution or who doesn't think a two-state solution is possible: Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Egypt Daniel Kurtzer: Making Peace is Not Rocket Science.
- This is for, well, everyone. It is an incredibly valuable analysis from Rabbi Irwin Kula of the dangers of treating Israel and Judaism as synonymous. Among the many important parts of this essay is this summary of the generational divide: "By viewing Israel as a nation-state like any other using immense power in devastating ways, younger Jews apply the same moral critiques they would to any nation. This shift has created a painful cross-generational collision. For the legacy generation who experienced Israel as an existential sanctuary and salvific shield against destruction, the younger generation’s moral condemnation feels like betrayal, an existential threat, and a reckless abandonment of Jewish safety. For the younger generation, the older generation’s unwavering reflexive defense of state power feels like a refusal to confront horrific realities and an abandonment and betrayal of Jewish ethics and morality."
- Ben Samuels: The American Jewish Establishment Is Defending an Israel That No Longer Exists. Samuels explains that the endless rationalizations by American Jewish organizations for why Ben Gvir's latest indefensible remarks should not change anyone's understanding of the country increasingly look like a refusal to confront what Israel has become. We cannot effectively advocate for Israel, nor can we understand why Israel is losing popularity among Americans, until we internalize this truth.
- Larry Montes, the person who attacked Manhattan's Central Synagogue, appears to have been a pro-Israel Republican who wanted to convert to Judaism. The lesson is that we should not jump to attribute motives that suit our political agendas. Whatever he was motivated by, it does not appear he was motivated by Zohran Mamdani's rhetoric, as much as some seem to wish he was.
- A new Yale School of Public Health study found that Medicare for All "could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it would replace." You could call that socialism. I would call it common sense.
Jewish Insider Fail of the Week. On Wednesday, a Jewish Insider headline read, "Florida Voters Reject Political Extremes." Among other races, JI cited Rep. Randy Fine's (R-FL) defeat of GOP challenger Dan Bilzerian, who JI correctly identified as an antisemite. The fail? Randy Fine is a political extremist too, with a long record of Islamophobic statements, including comparing Muslims to dogs and saying that Gazans should “starve away” until the Israeli hostages were released. Fine's win was not a victory over extremism. It was one bigoted extremist who has no place in Congress defeating another bigoted extremist who has no place in Congress in a Republican primary.
We should treat Jewish Insider with the level of trust that we would Fox News.
Social Media of the Week. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Paul Rudnick, and Elaine.
Facebook Post of the Week. Joshua Shanes.
Video Clip of the Week. Police Squad Epilogues.
Vintage Music Clip of the Week. When you watched last week's Wang Chung video, every time that cool guy with the baritone voice sang, didn't he remind you of the cool guy in Eddie Cochran's Summertime Blues (1958)?
The Fine Print. Read the fine print before you reply or send me anything.
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