The thing that Democratic Party leaders and strategists can never quite figure out is that American politics is in a constant state of evolution. Democratic insiders imagine that the issues that motivate voters remain static, but that’s not the case. The reality is that people learn things, they incorporate new ideas, and they vote accordingly. Unfortunately for the party, when it fails to keep up with the electorate, there are consequences.
Such was the case in 2024, when Democratic Party leaders refused to recognize that the genocide in Gaza had become a fundamental concern for millions of Americans—especially the young voters the party desperately needed to mobilize in swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Democratic disconnect is rooted in a devotion by too many party leaders who continue to embrace variations of the so-called bipartisan foreign policy consensus that took shape during the Cold War and remained largely in place even after the Berlin Wall came down. This is the consensus that saw leading Democrats and Republicans give absurdly uncritical support to the Vietnam War in its early stages, and then—long after lessons had supposedly been learned—to George W. Bush’s rush to war with Iraq. It is the common ground where neoconservatism and neoliberalism have met to develop bloated military budgets, corporate-aligned trade policies, and agonizingly misguided approaches to human rights, no matter who is in the White House. Grassroots Democrats have always been frustrated by it.
Now, however, Democratic primary voters are in open revolt. Foreign policy is not the only issue that is motivating democratic socialists and progressives to challenge and defeat incumbents and other candidates associated with party leadership in Democratic primaries. But it is a vital part of the equation. In state after state, candidates who reject the ill-fated alliances, the wrongheaded policies, and the cruelty of the past have shaken up the 2026 midterm primaries. Even now, however, a striking number of mainstream Democratic officials, media pundits, and political class hangers-on neglect the reality of what is occurring. But the insurgents are leaving clear-eyed observers no doubt regarding the profound shift that has taken place.
“Denver voters of all ages, of all races, of all religions sent a clear message: We will not wait!” declared Melat Kiros, the twenty-nine-year-old democratic socialist who in late June defeated fifteen-term incumbent U.S. Representative Diana DeGette in a Colorado Democratic primary that captured the attention of the nation. Kiros, who like many of the other primary winners was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, listed a number of issues for which frustrated voters were no longer willing to wait, including Medicare for All, abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and taxing the rich. But the applause from supporters at her victory party became thunderous when the Ethiopian immigrant declared, “We will not wait . . . to reject corporate PACs and AIPAC. And, no, we will not wait to end the genocide in Palestine.”
It was the same in New York City a week earlier, after thirty-two-year-old doctoral student Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated Adriano Espaillat, the incumbent Democratic U.S. Representative and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Following a campaign in which she faced brutal personal attacks and efforts to label her as “antisemitic” because of her ardent advocacy for Palestinian rights—despite being backed by Jewish Voice for Peace Action—Avila Chevalier declared victory for her “babies not bombs” message of shifting U.S. policies in the Middle East.
Another Congressional primary winner in New York was Claire Valdez, who declared victory by promising to “continue to call for Palestinian liberation,” adding that “we will stand up to the genocide. We will refuse to abide by apartheid. And we will use our money to improve lives here instead of destroy them abroad.”
A few miles away, another primary winner, progressive Brad Lander, celebrated his defeat of Democratic U.S. Representative Dan Goldman with a message for the party: “We cannot compromise on anyone’s humanity . . . . Our party needs to admit that Joe Biden’s ‘hug Bibi’ strategy was a catastrophic mistake. I believe it made us complicit in genocide. Bombs we paid for killed more than 70,000 Palestinians—most of them women and children. Tanks we paid for left a million people homeless. Humanitarian aid still is not getting in. We cannot keep paying for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s wars with our tax dollars. Democratic voters are saying this loud and clear.”
That wasn’t hyperbole. Candidates opposing bipartisan consensus on international issues were winning Congressional primaries all over the place, including the Reverend Frederick Douglass Haynes III in Texas; veteran organizer and now U.S. Representative Analilia Mejia and Dr. Adam Hamawy in New Jersey; and State Representative Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania. In addition, contenders in high-profile statewide primaries have been outspoken—including Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial contender Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist who, as a state legislator, sponsored calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and talks about the importance of state and local officials advocating “for safety and peace and liberation for all people.”
While Gaza has been a touchstone issue, it is hardly the only one. In Pennsylvania, Rabb campaigned on a platform that declared, “American leadership for too long has been defined by the violent impact we have on other nations. We must immediately dismantle the military industrial complex, cease all imperialist foreign policy, and end all U.S.-led efforts for regime change.”
In New York, Valdez has made U.S. foreign policy a part of her discussion of immigration issues. “I want to see Representatives of the United States really grapple with the idea that the United States has played a major role in the destabilization of countries abroad. They’ve played a role in coups, in disruptions, and endless, endless wars that have forced so many people to come to the United States in the first place. We can’t talk about immigration without talking about economic sanctions, about war and displacement, about environmental devastation,” she told Zeteo. “I want to see Representatives really grapple with that long history.”
Valdez was strongly backed in her primary bid by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, as were many of the winners in the early primaries of 2026. Sanders plans to remain equally active in later primaries, arguing that President Donald Trump’s war on Iran has awakened even more Americans to the need for a new foreign policy. “Amidst the fiasco of the war in Iran, Americans need to rethink the very foundations of our foreign policy and how we go forward in a very different direction—a direction which focuses on peace, democracy, and economic and social justice,” he wrote.
That’s not a new message for the Senator and his Democratic allies in Congress, including U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, and Ro Khanna of California. Indeed, Sanders has talked about breaking with the bipartisan foreign policy consensus for much of his political career. More than a decade ago, he made the issue a focus of his groundbreaking challenge to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the presidency. During a February 2016 primary debate, he famously offered something rare and refreshing: dissent from the notion that elites with close ties to Wall Street and the military-industrial complex knew best.
It came in the context of a discussion about who the candidates looked to for advice on foreign policy. Clinton touted her bond with another former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Sanders was not impressed.
“Where the Secretary and I have a very profound difference, . . . she talked about getting the approval or the support or the mentoring of Henry Kissinger. Now, I find it rather amazing, because I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive Secretaries of State in the modern history of this country,” Sanders said to a round of applause.
For a brief moment, Americans got a flavor of what a real foreign policy debate might sound like. They got another sense of it in 2020, when Sanders, a top contender in that year’s presidential race, spoke up for the rights of Palestinians.
But then, the discourse settled back into the empty rhetoric and indefensible policymaking of the failed consensus. Nowhere was this more evident than in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israeli kibbutzim and a music festival. In response, Israel launched a disproportionate, multiyear assault on Gaza. Even as international human rights groups labeled the Israeli assault a genocide, the U.S. governments of Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican President Donald Trump refused to block arms sales to Israel or press effectively for peace and justice.
Now, a new generation of Democrats—most of them inspired by Sanders, many of them associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, and all of them enraged by the failure of Democratic Congressional leaders to stand on the right side of history—have had enough. They are upending the politics of their party and may well upend the politics of this 250-year-old country. That’s because a growing number of voters believe, as Sanders does, that “we need a foreign policy that actually reflects our values and which must start with a simple premise: The United States will not provide weapons and diplomatic cover to governments—whether in Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, or Doha—that engage in systematic human rights violations.”