America will never return to harmony while the Left dominates
The quintessential swing state, Pennsylvania has voted for the winner of almost every presidential election over the past 50 years. The only exceptions have been 2000 and 2004 (the Keystone State proved immune to the charms of George W. Bush). Mirroring those trends, it flipped from Barack Obama to Donald Trump in 2016 and from Trump to Joe Biden in 2020. It is expected to be a hotly contested battleground this November.
However, Pennsylvania is now also the site of a clash within the Democratic Party over the Israel-Hamas war and the protests that have erupted over it.
On one side is Pittsburgh Congresswoman Summer Lee, a member the progressive “Squad.” Like other Squad members, Lee has been very critical of Israel and of the Biden administration for supporting it. In the days after the October 7 massacre, she was one of only ten members of the House of Representatives to vote against a symbolic resolution condemning Hamas’s attack and pledging to stand with Israel. She also voted against funding for Israel in the new foreign-aid bill.
In Congress, the Squad acts as the tribune of the Left-vanguard activist wing of the Democratic Party. Almost immediately after the October 7, activists began mobilising against Israel taking any response to Hamas. As Israel’s campaign against Hamas has continued, activist frustration has risen to a tea-kettle’s whistle. Opponents of Israel’s military response have mounted an “uncommitted” primary challenge to Joe Biden, an effort that Lee has pointedly not condemned. In her own primary on Tuesday night, Lee beat her more moderate challenger, Bhavini Patel, with over 60 per cent of the vote.
While Lee’s victory shows the continuing power of the progressive activist class within Democratic politics, freshman Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman has taken the opposite approach: rebuffing the Leftist vanguard rather than the state of Israel. While many progressive intellectuals and activists call for the boycott of Israel, he wears the Israeli flag as a cape and backs military aid for it. Even as many of his Democratic colleagues have adopted a strategic silence on the protests roiling American college campuses, Fetterman has unambiguously denounced the antisemitic outbursts featured at some of these demonstrations.
Fetterman’s defense of a proactive military response has sometimes put him at odds with the White House – as well as with his own staffers, some of whom have left the senator’s office. Fetterman’s position on Israel may reflect his deeply held beliefs, but he may also be calculating that pivoting against the activist vanguard could help burnish his image with Pennsylvania voters. That gamble could be paying off.
A Quinnipiac poll from early October gave him a net-approval rating of -7, but that had rebounded to a +3 net-approval rating by January. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who has strongly condemned antisemitism, also saw a healthy bump in his approval numbers over this period. Conversely, Biden’s approval numbers have remained flat in the Keystone State. Performative hostility to Israel might have an appeal in some of the bastions of progressive cultural politics, but swing voters might reward politicians who stand up to the demands of the activist class.
Biden thus finds himself caught between Lee and Fetterman. The activist base has been a crucial vanguard for progressive politics and Democratic political ambitions. If Biden breaks decisively with those demands, he risks more discontent from a Left flank already disenchanted with him. But he also risks alienating swing voters if he cannot differentiate himself from the excesses of the current protest movement. Perhaps even more troubling for Biden: He was elected on a pledge of returning to normalcy, and continuing unrest over Israel might make that promise look evermore removed from reality.
