This week, Rahm Emanuel — a chief of staff in the Obama White House and widely rumored 2028 candidate — went to Tel Aviv to deliver a stern message to the Israeli public: If Israel wants to keep America as an ally, it needs to change. 

“Without question, the alliance is at a crossroads. It cannot stand or survive as it has been,” he said. “To maintain the strength of our ties, we need significant changes and a new direction.”

The problem, per Emanuel, is that Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become “a modern-day Sparta” — a militarist, expansionist state that sees no alternative to crushing Palestinians under its foot. Such a country does not deserve the “unconditional support” Emanuel believes it has gotten from the US, which is the geopolitical equivalent of giving vodka to an alcoholic.

“Unconditional support has allowed you to deny food and medical relief to innocent Palestinians in Gaza, leaving the world to conclude that Israelis not only want to kill Palestinians, but they are completely indifferent to their death, to their destruction, and completely indifferent to their suffering,” he wrote.

Instead, he said, the United States needs to push Israel to be a better version of itself. This means sanctioning Israeli political and business leaders who enable terrorism against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, ending US military aid to Israel, and launching a new framework for peace negotiations with the Palestinians built around support from other Arab countries.

No one thinks this speech will change American policy. Rahm Emanuel very much does not speak for President Donald Trump. Rather, the speech should be understood in the context of intra-Democratic politics. 

While both Barack Obama and Joe Biden clashed with Netanyahu at various points, both attempted to keep those disagreements mostly private and their public steps to punish Israeli misbehavior relatively muted. Even as multiple administrations called for a Palestinian state and opposed new settlements in the West Bank, sanctioning Israeli leaders and cutting off military aid were completely off the table — the sort of thing that only a left figure like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would even dare suggest. 

Emanuel is not Sanders. In his memoir The World as It Is, Obama adviser Ben Rhodes recalls Emanuel repeatedly mocking his concerns for Palestinians in internal administration discussions — giving Rhodes the nickname “Hamas” and accusing the advisor of making “it impossible for my kid to have his fucking bar mitzvah in Israel.”

That a Jewish Democrat like Emanuel is now comfortable with once-marginalized rhetoric and policies is a marker that the old pro-Israel consensus is well and truly dead among Democrats. What’s coming in 2028 and beyond is going to be very different — and much tougher for Israel — than what came before it.

“I think [Rahm’s position] becomes the baseline of Democratic primary candidates,” Ilan Goldenberg, the chief policy officer at the liberal J Street lobby, said. “You can’t go to the right of this.”

The new center on Israel is the old left

For pretty much all of 2026, Rahm Emanuel has been positioning himself to capture the centrist lane in the Democratic primary.

In interview after interview, he has argued that the party has become unduly influenced by left-wing activists who are obsessed with unpopular trans issues, defunding the police, and abolishing capitalism. Instead, he argues, the party should refocus on “middle class values” and “pocketbook issues” — meaning deprioritization of social issues, stronger border enforcement, and welfare state expansion.

In the past, this type of centrist candidate would almost invariably be taking a lockstep pro-Israel stance: unconditional military aid and diplomatic support. Democratic presidents, House speakers, and Senate majority leaders used to be regular attendees at AIPAC’s annual conference — signalling their alignment with the pro-Israel lobby’s stance.

This old approach reflected public opinion. Most Americans were broadly supportive of the US-Israel alliance, and had been for decades. The basic centrist impulse — that politics should be about winning the median voter — militated in Israel’s favor, leading both Obama and Biden to keep their frustrations with Netanyahu and clashes with him over policy as private as possible while in office. 

But the outcome of the Gaza war has changed everything. In February, Gallup’s annual survey found that more Americans sympathized with Palestinians for the first time in the poll’s history. A brand-new Pew survey found that 62 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the Israeli government. This new American hostility is overwhelmingly driven by Democrats, with just 16 percent of Democrats expressing a favorable view of the Israeli government in Pew’s data.

This has been brewing for years. Netanyahu’s involvement in American politics — including his 2015 effort to sabotage Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran — has long been driving down Israel’s numbers. But it was the Gaza war that finally pushed Democratic voters to snap, with a July AP poll finding that a majority of Democrats now believe Israel committed genocide during the conflict. 

Today, anger at Israel is a potent voting issue. Left-wing candidates, including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Graham Platner in Maine, have used the issue to burnish their anti-establishment identity and rocket to the top of hotly contested primaries. Mainstream Democratic candidates are using the word genocide to describe what happened in Gaza. AIPAC is frequently denounced as an enemy, if not outright evil.

This is where Emanuel’s speech is coming from. A consummate centrist, he has decided that what used to be the far-left position among Democrats — that America should use its leverage to try and push Israel to change for the better — is the center. It’s the latest sign that the old pro-Israel consensus within the party is dying, and something new is emerging to replace it.

The new Democratic debate on Israel

So if the Democratic debate on Israel has changed fundamentally — if the old consensus is well-and-truly dead — what does the future look like?

Goldenberg is a helpful guide here. J Street, his organization, has long occupied the ground Emanuel is now attempting to claim. Indeed, J Street hosted Emanuel on their podcast in March, and his speech is very clearly influenced by their ideas. His proposal for reviving the peace process — a “23 state solution” in which Israel works with Arab governments to bring about a Palestinian state as part of a regional settlement — is directly taken from J Street literature.

Unsurprisingly, Goldenberg liked the speech, telling me he agreed with “80-90 percent” of what Emanuel said. His critiques were less with its policy vision and more with some specifics: Emanuel offered a view of the peace negotiations of the 90s and 2000s that put nearly all the blame for their failure on the Palestinian side, which Goldberg thought was unfairly one-sided. This reflected, in his words, an “Israel-centric” worldview that took the perspective and needs of the Palestinian side less seriously than he’d like. 

But the fact that the disagreements between Emanuel and Goldenberg are this narrow reflects just how far the Democratic center has moved. When they were founded in 2008, J Street’s views represented the left fringe of the Democratic coalition. Now, one of the party’s consummate insiders is literally lifting its talking points.

Matt Duss is perhaps the leading left-wing policy wonk on Israel-Palestine, having advised both Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the topic. He tells me that he found real things to like in the Emanuel speech — in particular, that it marked a decisive break with the lockstep pro-Israel past. 

But he was more exercised about its discussion of the conflict’s history than Goldenberg was. “To call this a tendentious presentation of history would be to give it too much praise,” Duss wrote in the Nation. In general, he thinks, the speech simply didn’t go far enough, describing it as a “landmark,” but one “we should’ve passed long ago and should quickly leave in the rear view mirror.”

This is the future of the Democratic party conversation on Israel. Gone are the arguments over whether the US should put pressure on Israel to change; the questions now are what kind of pressure, how much of it should be applied, and what the ultimate end goal of said pressure should be. 

Emanuel’s view will hardly be the only one. Just as J Street has moved from the left to the center of the party, the growing discontent with Israel has also elevated competing groups and ideas into the conversation that were almost invisible in the halls of power until recently, like the rising slate of DSA-aligned candidates. 

One can imagine a spectrum of views here. The J Street side wants to preserve both Israel’s existence and its strong relationship with the US, conditional on Israel ending its occupation of Palestinian land. There’s a more left position, that the US no longer has any interest in being an ally of a country like Israel. And there’s a lefter-still position, in which US policy should actively aim towards a one-state binational solution that dissolves Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.

The boundaries between these positions are not always clear in policy terms, and they can blur together at the edges. It’s hard to know exactly what the balance of forces will be in the 2028 election, let alone beyond it. A lot will depend on Israel’s own election, scheduled for this fall, in which lightning rod Netanyahu might finally lose power.

But the forces behind this change run deeper than one prime minister. Through its occupation of the West Bank, wanton violence in Gaza, and direct partisan interference on behalf of Republican priorities, Israel’s leadership has fundamentally broken its relationship with the Democratic party. That’s not something that’s fixable without a fundamental transformation of Israeli policy — one that doesn’t seem especially likely in the short term.

There is, thus, every reason to believe that the Emanuel speech is, as Duss said, a “landmark” — another all-but-formal codification of the reorientation of the Democratic party. 

“If you’ve lost Rahm Emanuel,” Goldenberg said, “you’re kind of toast.”

For the past month, one name has dominated discussions of the 2028 Democratic primary: Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff.

Though Ossoff is running for reelection in a crucial swing state, his consistent polling lead is prompting national observers to leapfrog all the way to 2028. Features in both the New York Times and Politico have touted him as a leading candidate. His odds on the Polymarket prediction site have more than doubled since late May: he’s now given a better chance than Vice President Kamala Harris (who is currently the leader in nearly all national polls).

There are good reasons for this. Ossoff is a repeat winner in one of the most important presidential battlegrounds who appeals to everyone from the Never Trumpers at the Bulwark to leftist streamer Hasan Piker. His rhetorical focus on Trump’s corruption elevates a theme that energizes Democrats of all stripes. And his background as a filmmaker makes him almost uniquely well-suited to the short-form video age.

“I have been jokingly calling him…the Lisan al-Gaib, which is a Dune reference to the Timothée Chalamet figure — essentially, the chosen one,” Chris Hayes, the MSNBC host, said on a recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show. “I think he has figured out a way, in a broadly palatable ideological fashion, to leverage a populist moral critique of the rot of Trump that can appeal across the different Democratic factions.”

And yet, there’s some reason to think this hype is getting over its skis.

Ossoff is a certain kind of archetype who often emerges in divided parties: The mythical “unity candidate.” 

These figures are typically broadly appealing elected officials without any one defined base of supporters. They have traits that seem to correct for the party’s failures in the previous election, have qualities that can attract fans from a wide range of factions and demographics within it, and they have yet to alienate anybody important. But the “unity candidate” has a mixed record in recent contests — they often look perfect on paper, then struggle in practice. 

Whether Ossoff is the Democratic savior or another unity candidate poised to flame out remains to be seen. There’s a reasonable case in either direction.

But the fact that Ossoff is already generating so much attention tells us something undoubtedly important: that Democrats are deeply frustrated with their early frontrunners and looking for alternatives. That could augur a wild, perhaps even unpredictable, outcome in the eventual primary.

Why Ossoff has so many Democrats excited

Let’s start with one important caveat: Ossoff might not run. He has steadfastly denied rumors of presidential ambition, saying he’s focused on the Senate race. 

Of course, that’s what anyone in his position should be saying — even if it’s insincere. But many in Democratic and Georgia politics seem to think that it might not just be for show. It will be harder for him to run if Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms doesn’t win the governor’s race, which would allow her to appoint a Democratic replacement for his seat. It will be harder still if fellow Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, a star in his own right, launches a bid.

But should he run, there are considerable reasons why so many Democrats believe Ossoff is poised to take off in 2028. 

He’s a proven winner in the swing state, an excellent public speaker, a telegenic young guy with an inspiring and unifying message: he’s basically the stuff that Democrats dream of. It makes sense that pundits and bettors would anticipate a boom even before it emerges among voters; the raw material is all there.

The Epstein class is ruling our country. pic.twitter.com/LjJlKbTp2p

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) February 18, 2026

What’s especially impressive is his ability to straddle the party’s internal divides without making enemies. 

His vote to block military aid to Israel in 2024, when that position was less common among Democrats, endeared him to the left. The party’s centrist faction admires his vote for the Laken Riley Act imposing harsher punishments on undocumented immigrants who commit crimes. And he managed to avoid taking hardline stances on social issues that many Democrats took during Trump’s first term — the ones that left Kamala Harris with a trail of quotes and positions for Republicans to attack in 2024 — without alienating liberals. 

“He not only refused to join along with the craziness of 2017 to 2020, but actively explicitly rejected it without becoming defined by the negative,” said Liam Kerr, co-founder of the centrist WelcomePAC. 

Ossoff’s multifaceted appeal makes even more sense when you look at the emerging field. Across poll averages, the top four candidates are consistent: Harris on top, California Gov. Gavin Newsom in second, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg battling it out for third.

Each of those candidates has a major strike against them with at least some important corner of the party. Buttigieg is unpopular on the socialist left and has long polled poorly with Black voters. AOC is hated by Democratic centrists and will need to convince electability-minded voters that she can appeal to the center. Gavin Newsom is seen by many as oily, insincere, and a traitor on trans rights. Kamala Harris, of course, carries enormous baggage both from Biden’s presidency and her own unsuccessful presidential runs. 

In a party looking to move beyond its Trump-era doldrums, many see these choices as either uninspiring or divisive. There is a deep hunger for someone new. Ossoff, who is less weighed down by prior party debates, can fill that need. 

At the same time, Ossoff isn’t just defined by who he isn’t — he’s genuinely impressed observers with his messaging strategy. Not just the focus on corruption, though that’s part of it, but the means by which he communicates. Instead of the long-form podcast interviews and direct-to-camera videos most candidates employ nowadays, Ossoff primarily communicates through slickly produced clips of his speeches at rallies or Sunday services at a Black church (and the occasional cable news hit).

Ossoff: How much do you guys know about Jared Kushner, Ivanka's husband? He's on the Saudi payroll for $2 billion dollars. Did you know that? And now he's leading American diplomacy in the Middle East, apparently while at the very same time asking princes and sheikhs across the… pic.twitter.com/VRn425sVNq

— Team Ossoff (@TeamOssoff) April 19, 2026

Perhaps counterintuitively, this works really well in the TikTok age. The clips do great numbers — again, he’s a documentarian by training and a talented orator. Making speeches his primary means of communication also allows him to keep tight message control: There is far less risk of a slip-up where he manages to infuriate one of the Democratic Party’s various subfactions.

Why “unity” candidates often fail 

But there’s a big risk to this something-for-everyone strategy: it can leave you without a base.

In 2016, for example, Marco Rubio had a similar profile to Ossoff. He was a young Tea Party insurgent who unseated an old incumbent, but with an establishment-friendly profile on foreign policy and welfare-state politics. For electability-minded party leaders worried about Latino voters, his Cuban roots and fluent Spanish were viewed as an asset — just as some on the left now hope Ossoff’s Judaism might smooth over debates over Israel and antisemitism. 

But ultimately, he got squeezed. Ted Cruz had outmuscled him to the right with ideological conservatives, the truly moderate Ohio Gov. John Kasich had taken over the center lane, and Trump ultimately beat all of them running as the charismatic outsider with populist appeal. Rubio dropped out before the race was done.

Similarly, in 2020, Kamala Harris looked like a unifying bet on the Democratic side. She had taken some quite left-wing positions in the Senate, but also had a moderate-appealing tough-on-crime background as California attorney general. Like Ossoff, she generated excitement among voters with widely shared clips — in her case, televised grill sessions with Republicans.  Yet she flamed out even earlier than Rubio, suspending her campaign in December 2019 before the first primary vote was even cast. 

Both Rubio and Harris suffered from their lack of a clear identity and support base: In offering something for everyone, they ended up being few people’s first choice. As they filled in their platforms with more detail, each sought to find a compromise on issues dividing party factions — Rubio backtracked from his earlier support for immigration reform, Harris endorsed Medicare-for-all then put out her own plan — only to find their answers pleased no one. 

Currently, Ossoff is starting from a weaker place than either Rubio or Harris at the start of those races: 2.3 percent in the RealClearPolitics average, dead last among all included candidates. Several Democrats I spoke with questioned whether Ossoff could rise to frontrunner status without a sturdier base of support from one corner of the party or another.

“We’re seeing that play out in the Michigan Senate race,” Democratic pollster Adam Carlson said, referring to recently dropped-out Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow, a state legislator who became a rising star earlier after a speech on trans rights went viral. “McMorrow [was] kind of in the middle between [Haley] Stevens and [Abdul] El-Sayed, trying to be a little something to everybody.”

In particular, McMorrow got trapped on Israel: She angered the left by criticizing El-Sayed for campaigning with Hasan Piker in an interview, while failing to win them over by labeling Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide.” Meanwhile, Stevens consolidated centrist support and drew in outside spending from pro-Israel groups. Ossoff has yet to face this level of sustained scrutiny on the topic, and it’s an open question whether left-wing influencers will be as willing to celebrate his partial support for their positions if there’s a rival candidate, perhaps Ocasio-Cortez, who goes significantly further.

Ossoff’s media strategy, while generally effective, might also mask upcoming challenges during a crowded primary. In our current attention economy, people build rabid fandoms by fostering parasocial connections — often by convincing fans that what they’re seeing on screen is the “authentic” version of the person. That’s harder to do when you eschew unscripted content for polished speech clips. 

“He doesn’t do longform [interviews], he doesn’t do off-the-cuff, he doesn’t do the omnipresent attention,” one Democratic strategist told me. “He’s gotta get the reps in, because he’s going to need that skill set to run for president.”

Again, prior candidates are instructive: Harris famously struggled in interviews; Rubio was wrecked by an overly scripted debate performance. Ossoff will have to prove he can operate in settings where he has less control and can handle follow-up questions that are designed to pinpoint the narrow differences between candidates.

To be clear: Ossoff’s strategy isn’t doomed to fail. Barack Obama quite famously managed to be everything-to-everyone in his 2008 campaign: appealing to the left on the Iraq war while attacking Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan from the right, all while delivering a message about bridging old partisan divides. Some have suggested Ossoff’s early criticism of Israel might play a similar role to Obama’s early war opposition, potentially allowing him to reassure the left on a key litmus test while courting the middle on substantive policy debates. 

“He seems like someone who plays to win — not someone who plays not to lose,” Kerr said.

Ossoff may, or may not, emerge as a 2028 force. But the hype surrounding his campaign, even before it exists, has clearly exposed that the Democratic primary is unsettled: the current polling frontrunners are weak, and both voters and the party elite seem to be actively searching for alternatives.

It’s a bit like where the GOP was in 2016: plenty of credible contenders, but no one who clearly stood out as a consensus favorite. And that race ended with a nominee who had seemed to most, at the outset, like an impossibility.