Don’t Look to the Democratic National Committee to Change Middle East Policy, That’s Not What the Party Does

Washington Watch

September 28, 2026

Dr. James J. Zogby ©

President

Arab American Institute

There is compelling evidence that voter disaffection with the Biden administration’s failure to confront Israel’s war on Gaza played a role in the Harris presidential campaign’s devastating loss in 2024. The groups most impacted by this failed policy have been central to the Democratic Party’s support base—young voters, voters of color, and those who self-identify as liberal. Polling data establishes that these groups did not turn out to support Harris in 2024 in the same numbers that had voted for Biden in 2020. 
 
These disaffected voters, however, have coalesced in 2026, supporting several Democratic progressive challengers who ousted incumbents in Congressional and Senate contests across the country. While some of these victorious challengers self-identify as socialists, many do not. What most have in common is opposition to continued US military assistance to Israel. In fact, the electorate’s negative attitudes toward Israeli behaviors in the occupied Palestinian lands, US support for Israel, and the role played by pro-Israel groups attempting to silence and defeat critics of that support have become so widespread that even some incumbents joined the critics in an effort to buttress their campaign electoral chances. 
 
In the wake of these developments, a slew of articles have asked: “What will the Democratic National Committee do now to change its support for Israel and win back disaffected voters?” While the sentiment prompting this question may be understandable, it is the wrong question to be asking because it is born of a misconception of what the Democratic Party is and isn’t and what it can and cannot do. 
 
In the first place, this question mistakenly assumes that the Democratic Party operates as a policymaking governing body that provides direction for party members and candidates. It does not. What the party governs is its internal affairs and how it runs the process of selecting delegates who are elected in the states to the quadrennial national convention that writes its platform and chooses the presidential nominee. 
 
Despite this limited role, there is the persistent misconception that the DNC operates like European political parties who run for elections in a parliamentary system. There, a party defines policies and can enforce an internal discipline. In the US system, candidates—whether for president, senator, or representative—run largely on their own, controlling their own budgets and staff, and defining their own policies. 
 
Other factors should also be considered, foremost among them the role of money in our politics. In addition to the party itself, party-related entities operate independently of the national party, principally the party’s congressional and senate campaign committees. These bodies raise money to support Democrats running for these offices. And then there are what are known as Super PACs and “dark money” entities—often funded by wealthy donors, who aren’t required to report their contributions (hence the term “dark money”)—that make independent expenditures on behalf of Democratic candidates. The amount of money raised and spent by these entities combined far exceeds the money raised and spent by the party itself. In the last presidential election, for example, while the Harris campaign reported a budget of one billion dollars, the super PACs combined far exceeded that amount. 
 
Where does this money go? The recipients of the monies raised by party-affiliated entities, Super PACs, dark money funds, and individual campaigns are largely a handful of Democrat-leaning consultant groups who have increasingly come to play an outsized role in elections. In each election cycle, they go through billions of dollars on advertising, polling, digital messaging, and even usurping the roles once played by the state and national parties. Because they are at the receiving end of donor largesse, these consultants are creatures of conventional wisdom. They are risk averse, out of touch with changes in the electorate, and as driven by the profits they can make, given by their donors’ largesse, as they are in the results they can achieve. 
 
The new chair of the Democratic Party has come under attack from some quarters (including consultants and their donor allies) because he is less inclined to view the party as simply a conduit funneling money to consultants and has instead directed record amounts to building state parties. 
 
With this background, it is wasted energy to focus protests against the Democratic National Committee for the failure in 2024 or to change their policies on the Middle East. The DNC is not the problem, nor is it the solution. The problems are with the consultants and the big money funding their work and the candidates whom they advise and elect. 
 
Nevertheless, as we’ve seen this year, change is coming and it is being led by Democratic voters, both those in progressive organizations and those motivated by issues who have delivered defeats to Democratic incumbents who maintain the failed pro-Israel policies of the past. Abdul El Sayed’s defeat of a pro-Israel, establishment-supported congresswoman backed by over $70 million in superPAC and dark money expenditures, and other electoral victories by progressive critics of the pro-Israel status quo, sent a clear message that change is afoot. 
 
Making Middle East policy isn’t the role of the DNC. That is why calling on the party to pass a resolution on the issue is a misdirected and wasted effort. Far more consequential are the victories of Brad Lander and Abdul El-Sayed. That’s where real change will occur. And energy ought to be focused on continuing these electoral victories. If Democrats want to pass resolutions, they should start in areas where the DNC can make changes: campaign finance reform to get big money out of politics and eliminate the corrupting role of superPACs and dark money in elections. They could also support efforts by the party’s chair to focus more party resources on building state parties, instead of simply funneling money to consultants. And instead of trying to pass a resolution to change Middle East policy, Democrats could pass a resolution supporting the 40 (out of 47) Democratic senators who voted for the amendment to curtail some forms of military aid to Israel—because the party has a history of passing resolutions supporting the actions of Democratic lawmakers.