Dear Democrats,

I was one of you for a long time. My entire life.

My first vote was for Bill Clinton. I wasn’t a party loyalist by nature, but the Democratic Party consistently lined up with what I believed. I stayed through the fights, the losses, and the years when voting Democratic felt like being on the right side of history. October 7 changed that.

Before I go further, I want to be clear, because I know what’s coming the moment anyone starts this conversation. This isn’t a comparison piece. I’m not here to rank which side has worse problems. This is about us. The people who identify as Democrats, who’ve voted Democratic for decades, who believed in what this party said it stood for. I’m talking to you directly. Stay with me.

I’ve been biting my tongue since 2023. It’s starting to hurt badly.
Watching the response to the massacre of 1,200 Jews in Israel wasn’t what broke it for me. What broke it was watching so much of the Democratic base, its activists, and eventually its elected officials line up against the Jewish state with a speed and enthusiasm that told me everything I needed to know.
Siding against Israel isn’t just bad foreign policy. It’s a death sentence.

There’s no version of a world without Israel where Jews are safe. That’s not a dramatic statement. It’s the entire lesson of Jewish history. Israel exists because every other option was tried and failed, repeatedly and catastrophically. When people in this party call for the elimination of the Jewish state, whether they dress it up in political language or straight shoot it, they aren’t staking out a policy position. They’re describing a world where Jews have nowhere left to go.

J Street has been documented. The Antizionist, openly antisemitic voices getting voted into positions of power within this party have been documented. The DSA’s direction and what it represents has been documented. The warnings have been out there for anyone willing to look. None of it was hidden. And the party kept moving in that direction anyway.

What was once the outermost fringe of the Democratic coalition has moved inward and kept moving. It isn’t the fringe anymore. It’s the majority of the party. The people calling for Israel’s destruction at rallies organized by Democratic-affiliated groups aren’t being pushed out. They’re being organized around. Candidates who would’ve been considered unelectable a decade ago are now winning primaries with institutional party support, and nobody in leadership is pulling the fire alarm.

I said this wasn’t a comparison piece and I meant it. But there’s something I’ve been noticing. The alt-right exists on the Republican side. It’s loud and it’s ugly, and I’m not dismissing it. But those voices aren’t seriously campaigning at the mainstream level, and when they do, only the alt-right fringe endorses them. The institutional party doesn’t follow. That’s not what’s happening on the Democratic side. That’s the difference.

Over 30% of New York City voters elected Zohran Mamdani. We’re watching in real time what that looks like as it unfolds. Look what’s happening in Michigan. New Jersey. Philadelphia. In other Democratic majority states with higher Jewish populations.

You don’t have to speculate about where this leads. Look at the United Kingdom. Look at Canada. Find the Jews living there and listen to what they’re saying. Then listen to the non-Jewish citizens sounding the same alarms, people of every background and faith who see what’s changing and are saying so clearly. This isn’t only a Jewish concern. It just reaches us first.

There’s no part of me that has stopped believing what I’ve always believed about human rights. That hasn’t changed and it won’t. Those values are mine and have nothing to do with a political side. They always have been and they always will be. But I will not stay loyal to a party that has made clear it doesn’t believe Zionists or Jews are people who even deserve those rights. That’s my line. And it’s been crossed multiple times already.

I’ve been so worried about saying any of this for fear of hurting feelings. I don’t like to think I’ve caused anyone pain, and that’s kept me quieter than I should have been. But staying silent isn’t something I can keep choosing. If you identify deeply with this party and my words sting, please know that was never my intention. My intention is to wake a few of us up. To get us to take a harder look at what’s actually happening and recognize that a party’s actions will always tell you more than its words ever will.

I know how it feels to not want to see it, because seeing it means giving something up. I stayed far longer than I should have, for exactly that reason. But discomfort isn’t an excuse anymore.
Tell me I’m not alone in recognizing this. Tell me there are Democrats left who understand what’s at stake. Because a party that has proven, time and time again, that it isn’t just Antizionist but Antisemitic is not a party that’s safe to keep handing power to. Every vote for that party as it stands today is a vote against our survival. I don’t think that’s being overly dramatic. That’s where we are.

This isn’t going to reverse itself because we want the old party back. The one of our parents and grandparents, and even ours in earlier days. The old party isn’t coming back. And if we keep voting for the party it’s become because of what it used to be, we’re not voting for who they were. We’re voting for who they are.

They’ve told us who they are. And loudly.

How are we being loyal to a party that has constantly betrayed us?

If we vote for people who are showing us exactly who they are and then choose not to believe them, we’re not just making a personal political choice. We’re signing our own death warrants. And when that bill comes due, it will fall on us.

Michigan, my home state, was my final straw. That was the proverbial nail in the coffin, and I will no longer be quiet about it. I am completely done with this party unless there’s a reckoning and a course correction, and frankly…I don’t see any of that coming. I’m not holding my breath. But I’d welcome being wrong.

Democrats, what are we doing? Tell me, please. What are we doing?