The definition of insanity, famously, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This should certainly be what Republican strategists are thinking to themselves after launching a needless, illegal, failed, and wildly unpopular war in the Middle East that, just like in 2006, has handed the Democratic Party control of the Senate and a commanding majority in the House in this week’s midterm elections.

Vice President JD Vance released a statement Wednesday morning that served as a rapid autopsy, naming the war with Iran and resultant rising prices as top reasons for Republicans’ generational wipeout. He also cited the United States’ relationship with Israel. These, of course, are not separate issues. In March, the State Department wrote that it had launched the Iran War in large part at Israel’s request (Benjamin Netanyahu having finally found a president foolish enough to fulfill his decades-long desire for this exact war). And the impunity that the US granted Israel for its ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, its invasion of Lebanon, and its aggressive strikes against its neighbors—including US allies like Syria and Qatar—fueled the arrogance that led to the Iran conflict.

Vice President Vance’s pointed statement was surprising in its seeming disloyalty to his boss. But in saying that voters wanted to, in his words, “change our relationship to Israel,” Vance was only reflecting a truth that millions of people have known for years—even if some within the Democratic Party still might not want to admit it.

In fact, the most glaring issue with Vance’s comments might be that they’re two years late. Americans didn’t just want a fundamental break with Israel in 2026. They wanted one in 2024, and they punished Democrats for refusing to reflect their revulsion at Israel’s actions. It’s worth remembering where we were two years ago: As polls showed a majority of swing-state voters opposing further US funding for Israel, President Biden sent Israel tens of billions of dollars in weapons to continue the slaughter in Gaza.

The Israeli government had announced in August 2024 that it had received 50,000 tons of weapons from Biden in 607 shipments over the preceding 11 months—a weapons shipment every 12 hours. At the same time, Save the Children estimated that Israel was killing a Palestinian child in Gaza every hour. By the end of Biden’s term, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimated that Israel had dropped 100,000 tons of bombs on Gaza—the equivalent of seven Hiroshima atomic bombs on an area of land smaller than Detroit. Millions of Americans watched this horror livestreamed, day after day after day.

Biden even made a surprise appearance at the White House Press Briefing Room on October 4, 2024, to say that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have. None.” Meanwhile, the voters Democrats needed to turn out were calling Biden “Genocide Joe.”

We all know what happened next.

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November 2026 Issue

In the wake of the Democrats’ 2024 loss, our polling at the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project found that “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” was the top-cited factor among Biden 2020 voters who defected from Kamala Harris, especially in the crucial swing states of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan. President Biden’s response to the election results was to announce another $8 billion weapons package to Israel as one of his final acts as president.

And we weren’t the only ones picking up on this pattern. Earlier this year, Axiosreported that the author of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) 2024 autopsy report also “concluded the war in Gaza hurt Kamala Harris politically.” Concerningly, a version of the report released by DNC Chair Ken Martin made zero mention of either Israel or Gaza.

Nevertheless, many establishment Democrats continued to deny what was staring them in the face. The New York Times reported last year that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer justified his refusal to endorse Zohran Mamdani on the belief that being “deeply critical of Israel” would be a liability in swing states in 2026. This was not reflected in polling at the time, and certainly did not bear out in polling as we approached this election, with most voters in key states including Texas, Maine, Ohio, Iowa, and North Carolina—all states Democrats ultimately flipped—saying they support blocking the transfer of bombs to Israel.

Throughout the 2026 primaries, candidates who recognized Israel’s genocide and called for a weapons embargo against Israel won with the odds stacked against them—including in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Colorado, Florida, and California. Nowhere was this clearer than in the critical swing state of Michigan, where the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent over $30 million—a record amount for one organization to spend in a single Democratic primary in US history—to defeat Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed was able to overcome that record spending because of his moral clarity in recognizing Israel’s genocide, a position that 80 percent of Michigan Democratic primary voters agree with.

El-Sayed also won by refusing to allow AIPAC’s money and political power to intimidate him into silence. For years, advocates for Palestinian rights have tried to warn Democrats about the dangers of candidates backed by AIPAC—an organization largely funded by Republicans and whose agenda contradicts the core values of human equality that the Democratic Party is supposed to represent at its best. That warning was fully realized in Representative Haley Stevens, Senator Schumer’s recruit for the seat.

Her bizarre turncoat act in the last weeks of the election was a historic embarrassment for the Democratic Party, but it was just as much an embarrassment for the claim, so popular in the media, that there is a bitter Democratic voter divide when it comes to what the future of US-Israel policy should be. As the results in Michigan showed, there simply isn’t one.

El-Sayed coasted to a seven-point victory, just as he predicted in May, because Democratic voters fully consolidated behind him and independents broke his way. Stevens’s shenanigans and the millions spent against him by AIPAC couldn’t overcome the majority of Michigan voters—including 66 percent of Michigan independents—who say they want to end US funding to Israel. And despite endless warnings that Jewish Michiganders were set to abandon El-Sayed en masse, early exit polls showed him winning 60 percent of the Jewish vote.

It could not be clearer: Unyielding support for Israel is electoral poison, and candidates who back Palestinian rights, oppose genocide, and call for a decisive break with Israel will win. Democrats—the honest ones, anyway—know this. The question then becomes: What are they going to do about it, now that they have so much more political power?

Unbelievably, some observers are suggesting that Democrats should elide the questions over their position on Palestinian rights, and holding Israel accountable for its ongoing genocide, that have roiled their voters for over three years. That would be a severe betrayal of the clearly stated wishes of the Democratic base that delivered this week’s historic victory.

Others might want to follow AIPAC’s lead. In October, the lobby group announced, in an admission of its own toxicity, that it would stop endorsing candidates going forward, while still continuing to spend millions of dollars in our elections through its super PAC, and presumably more untraceably through shell super PACs, as it has throughout this year.

AIPAC’s new strategy mirrors what some supporters of a close US-Israel relationship foresee for themselves as well. At the 11th hour on election morning, President Trump dubiously claimed in a Fox & Friends phone interview that he would end annual taxpayer funding for Israel’s military at year’s end. Given Trump’s penchant for lying, this is more important for its recognition of this ritual’s unpopularity than it is as a reliable indicator that such a policy change will actually come about under his watch. Regardless, his allies in Congress are, at this moment, advancing legislation to rapidly integrate Israeli weapons companies into the Pentagon procurement process—a method of providing taxpayer funding for Israeli companies at even higher levels than today, and without congressional oversight. Any Democrat who joins them will be walking down a political path they will almost certainly regret.

With the mandate voters have given them, Democrats have every ounce of leverage to strip those measures out of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act. They have every ability to strip funding for Israel’s military out of next year’s budget and send it to Trump’s desk to call his bluff. And they have every ability to bring the Block the Bombs Act for a vote and test how much their Republican counterparts have really learned from this election.

They not only have this ability; they also have every reason to become a party that is a full-throated defender of Palestinian rights—and human rights for every person. They have a mandate to stand against endless war in the Middle East, and to stand up to megadonors and super PACs that have distorted our democracy for too long.

To do anything else is the definition of insanity.