American academician Dr. Adam McConnell wrote about the impact of the Israeli issue on the upcoming US midterm elections and the future of the country's politics for AA Analysis.
The US midterm elections are less than two months away. It can be said that every American election in our era has been marked by exaggerated rhetoric. However, the 2026 midterm elections are witnessing unprecedented tensions.
In the USA, ruling presidents and their parties usually emerge injured in midterm elections. As a matter of fact, Donald Trump's public support is at historic lows for a president in the first year of his second term. Moreover, the first year of this term was even more turbulent than the first term. At the upper levels of management, seats are constantly changing hands. The unpredictable decisions Trump makes, whether with a tweet he sends in the early hours of the morning or with impulsive statements he makes in front of the cameras, continue to shake markets and societies all over the world.
In the USA, Trump blamed DOGE on the "bureaucratic state" and ICE on ordinary people. On the other hand, although he claims to have ended eight wars, he is mostly talked about for taking Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from Caracas in early January and joining forces with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran on February 28. The six-month war with Tehran has exacerbated inflationary tendencies in the US economy, especially daily expenses such as kitchen expenses and fuel. If Trump and the Republicans emerge from the polls in November with control of Congress, Trump will feel that his choices have been legitimized and vindicated. Congress, which has already been paralyzed for the last twenty months, will remain in a coma at least until 2029.
Things are not so bright
However, neither of the two major parties in the USA appear to be heading for victory in the November elections. President Trump's unpredictable, personal decision-making style is a double-edged sword for his party. Despite the deteriorating situation in the polls, the base voters stand behind him and the candidates he personally points out are generally successful at the ballot box. However, the election dynamics in which each candidate competes in their own region are different. As a matter of fact, some are aware that keeping their distance from Trump will be in their favor at the ballot box. Another point, at least as critical, is that a significant group of senior figures who supported Trump in the past have broken ties with him because of the US's Israel policy. Moreover, a large part of the Republicans' young voter base seems to have acted with them in this rupture.
The situation for the Democrats is much worse. Throughout the course of their defeat in the 2024 elections, the Democrats appeared disoriented and leaderless. The Democratic National Committee (DNC), divided by a generational conflict between young, rising figures and traditionalist senior staff, decided to persist with its current strategy. As a result, first President Joe Biden became a candidate, then he withdrew from the race too late and was replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris, by the decision of the party leadership, not the party base. Ultimately, Democrats not only lost the presidency, they lost control of the House of Representatives.
Although the search for criminals began immediately after the elections, there is neither clarity nor a restructuring that has been implemented, with only two months left until the 2026 midterm elections. The generational dispute between Democrats focused on policy and strategy continues unabated. As party leadership remains aged and ineffective, the DNC's refusal to honestly discuss what went wrong in 2024 casts a dark shadow over the party. Instead of gaining political gain from the Trump-induced chaos in the Republican Party, Democrats are struggling every day to present even a minimal appearance of "unity" to the outside.
As with Republicans, the US's Israel policy is at the center of internal conflicts among Democrats. While the old and moderate wing of the party defends the continuation of traditional support for Israel, the young and progressive part demands that US aid be cut. This picture shows that policies towards Israel have become a dominant issue that captures both sides of American politics.
Axis shift in American politics?
The last period in which the two major parties of the USA were simultaneously plunged into such a deep ideological crisis was the 1920s. The Republican Party, once a progressive force, had turned into a conservative bastion of industrialists and financial giants under the hands of the Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge administrations. As a matter of fact, President Herbert Hoover's duty was to watch helplessly as the country's economy collapsed in October 1929.
This economic ruin paved the way for New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt to enter the national political scene. When Roosevelt took office, he transformed the once-conservative Democratic Party into a liberal structure that defended the rights of the working class and ordinary people throughout the 1930s, and he engraved this new identity at the heart of the party. From that period until today, Democrats have focused on socio-economic issues that form the backbone of traditional politics, while Republicans have increasingly taken refuge in culture wars and charismatic leaders in order to get out of the polls.
Israel's mark on American politics
Although America's Israel policy may seem like a foreign policy issue on paper, it is actually deeply embedded in the historical codes of both parties. The main motivation behind Democratic President Harry S. Truman's official recognition of Israel on behalf of the United States in 1948 was concern for votes in the upcoming elections. The Evangelical base of the Republican Party has long seen the existence of the modern State of Israel as the cornerstone of their beliefs.
In summary, Washington's Israel policy has been a dominant topic in American domestic politics for decades, but it has never been so central to the country's political climate. As we head towards the November midterm elections, both parties are literally going through a civil war over the Israel issue. Moreover, this issue has turned into a huge fault line for the entire American society. Which party will be able to reconstruct its own stance most successfully on this issue, which includes such vital cultural, military, political and religious dynamics? The answer to this question will likely determine who will carry the key to Congress for the next decade.
