The American public’s outrage over Gaza just decided Tuesday’s midterms.
asserted
outrage → decide → midterms
Democrats have now won control of both the United States House of Representatives and the Senate, taking them from a belligerently defensive Republican Party that not only did the bidding of Israel and its allies in America’s foreign policy commentariat, but went out of its way to smear and shame those who opposed that deeply unpopular choice.
asserted
who → win → choice
To take as a sample the nation’s most hotly contested and watched election, what we saw in Michigan was the defeat of a candidate who disregarded that public outrage by a candidate who sympathised with and substantially addressed it.
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who → take → it
Democrat Abdul El-Sayed beat out Republican Mike Rogers there.
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Sayed → beat → Rogers
And this was a victory that really showed just how committed voters now are to ridding themselves of the influence of apologists for the tragedy of Gaza.
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voters → show → Gaza
Before the US Senate vote in Michigan, El-Sayed was targeted for defeat with a record-breaking amount of political spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group that has made it its business to play surrogate to the regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even as his government’s violent campaigns in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon and the West Bank draw mounting international condemnation.
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it → target → condemnation
In fact, not only did AIPAC and its affiliates spend nearly $30m to defeat El-Sayed in the Democratic primary by backing self-proclaimed “Zionist Democrat” Haley Stevens – their largest-ever investment in a single race – but AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC, an organisation in the US allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money for political advertising, continued spending against El-Sayed after the primary, benefitting Rogers.
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PAC → spend → Rogers
And finally Stevens, explicitly citing El-Sayed’s campaign messaging against Israel’s military actions and US taxpayer funding for it, baffled her own party by endorsing his Republican rival just days before the election.
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Stevens → cite → election
Vice President JD Vance himself acknowledged the morning after the elections that the same coalition that voted President Donald Trump and himself into office in 2024 had just decided the results of 2026.
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that → acknowledge → 2026
Citing his own best advisers, Vance said voters were motivated by four priorities:
- ending the war on Iran
- the rising cost of living/inflation
- putting America First
- changing the US relationship to Israel
“Our voters showed up,” the vice president said.
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president → cite → Israel
“And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats.”
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many → vote → Democrats
And Vance is hardly going out on a limb with that analysis.
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Vance → go → analysis
Donald Trump Jr, the president’s own son, publicly endorsed Vance’s admission of the GOP’s failures.
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Jr → endorse → failures
Hours later, President Trump himself called Vance’s analysis “good” although he stood by the disastrous war nonetheless.
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he → call → war
That’s because it is impossible to obscure or erase the impression the whole drama of this year’s elections leaves us with.
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drama → ’ → us
The impression of a hostile faction embedded in our political class whose commitment to Israel-right-or-wrong is directly, undemocratically and contemptuously opposed to the growing consensus of the American people.
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commitment → embed → people
It is also impossible to miss, however, that the American people this year showed themselves willing and able to oust that faction.
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themselves → miss → faction
And it is impossible to miss why.
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it → miss → ?
To paraphrase the immortal maxim of Democratic political strategist James Carville: It’s Gaza, stupid.
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It → paraphrase → Carville
As I’ve argued repeatedly over the past few years, the scandal of the Gaza genocide itself has profoundly reshaped Americans’ attitudes towards foreign policy, war and military aid – particularly when it comes to the Netanyahu regime.
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it → argue → regime
Over the past year, Trump and other politicians have compounded that genocide with the disastrous Iran war and Israel’s new military campaigns in Lebanon – all while an increasingly antiwar America watches with growing outrage as its political leaders use our tax dollars for violence.
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leaders → compound → violence
The coalition that elected Trump in 2024 was built around a rejection of what he called “forever wars” and “stupid wars”.
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he → elect → what
On the campaign trail, he even spoke explicitly about ending the violence in Gaza.
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he → speak → Gaza
As I wrote at the time, when a voter in Dearborn, Michigan, asked him about the Gaza genocide, Trump replied: “It’s gotta stop.
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It → write → genocide
What we want is peace.”
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want → want → What
So there is no denying that the initiation of the US-Israeli war against Iran this year was a betrayal and a reversal of the will of those who voted this administration into office.
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who → be → office
Democrats had already received this warning in 2024.
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Democrats → receive → 2024
The Jerusalem Post reported in February that Democratic National Committee officials had acknowledged that the Gaza policy of President Joe Biden’s administration was a “net negative” in that election.
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policy → report → election
The party’s defeat should have warned Republicans against treating public outrage over Gaza as politically irrelevant.
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defeat → warn → Gaza
It is also no secret that this war would likely not have happened were it not for Israeli operatives (including Netanyahu himself) and neoconservative figures like Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin pressing for it.
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it → happen → it
Poll after poll has shown growing American disapproval of Israeli military actions.
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Poll → show → actions
A valuable election night poll also showed a stunning 62 percent of voters explicitly calling the joint US-Israeli initiation of a war with Iran “wrong” while 74 percent identified the war as a crucial or major factor in their votes.
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percent → show → votes
But more broadly, the polls have shown clearly all this year that the American public is concerned about affordability.
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public → show → affordability
What showed less clearly was that, in the public mind, “affordability” concerns were always synonymous with the war and the war synonymous with the influence of Israel and Israel synonymous with the Gaza genocide – that is, with a warlike military policy that is as thoughtless of its cost to the American taxpayer as it is of the sanctity of innocent Palestinian lives.
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it → show → lives
And all this is to say nothing of the final scandal that, in a way, hits particularly close to home for American Christians: the Israeli terrorist campaign to ethnically cleanse the West Bank – including by attacking the ancient Christian communities who have lived there since the first century.
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who → say → century
One can imagine how central that drama will be to the next major American election season.
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drama → imagine → season
November is not far from December, after all, and asking Americans in 2028 to approach Christmas with few (or no) Christians left to celebrate it in Bethlehem thanks to Israel-backed settler terrorism against our coreligionists in the Holy Land would spell the end of whatever remains of the GOP after Tuesday’s midterms.
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whatever → ask → midterms
The effect of the Gaza genocide and its hideous, snowballing effects on American public life are unmistakable to those with eyes to see, even if invisible to the few pollsters and prognosticators who have somehow managed to remain too out of touch with common sentiments to rightly quantify them.
But that leads to a final consideration that leaders in both parties must now keep in mind: It is the coalition that Trump rallied in record numbers two years ago that won last night.
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that → snowball → numbers
Not a political party and not a small, elite group in a strategy meeting who now might go on to manage and fine-tune that coalition as if it were their own man-made invention.
uncertain
it → go → coalition
GK Chesterton once observed that the American way of life is not based on the clumsy ambitions of a tribe, on ethnic identity or even on some fragile truce between such groupings.
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way → observe → groupings
…and 7 more, not listed.
The Aporia
