A DNC task force meant to unify Democrats on Middle East messaging is struggling to deliver results—until a resolutions push forces clearer direction.
Democrats have a Middle East problem that never stays contained to one corner of party debate.
The DNC’s Middle East “working group”—tied to an internal push that was supposed to “have the conversation” after the party punted on resolutions last August—meets in-person today for the second time.. Yet after months of meetings and mixed momentum. the group is still trying to turn discussion into decisions. goals. and ultimately party-ready messaging.
The working group is made up of eight DNC members with backgrounds in both Jewish and Palestinian advocacy. a composition that underscores what the party is trying to do: speak to a broad coalition without forcing one side to absorb the other.. But the same diversity that gives the group legitimacy also makes alignment harder when time is limited and views are sharply divided.. Some members have scheduling constraints, including at least one actively running for office.. More fundamentally. the debate itself is emotionally charged—one reason members say productive discomfort is unavoidable if the party wants to move.
“People aren’t comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Steph Newton, a DNC member from Oregon and part of the group, said.. For her. the point of the task force is not agreement on every moral and policy question; it’s the party learning how to talk about the Middle East in a way that builds coalitions rather than just reheating arguments.
The group’s early pattern has been familiar to anyone who has watched internal committee work stall: it spent much of its time debating what it should even be doing.. It met first in December during the DNC’s winter meeting in Los Angeles. then convened virtually twice on March 1 and March 18.. Rather than producing a clear set of talking points or a unified policy direction. those discussions often revolved around determining the group’s mission. boundaries. and priorities.
That uncertainty matters because Middle East messaging is now a recurring liability for Democrats.. Support for Israel remains a fault line within the party. while criticism from pro-Palestinian voters and activists has intensified since Hamas’s Oct.. 7 attack and the subsequent Gaza war.. At the same time. the party is facing a new kind of political pressure through primary politics and outside influence—where Democrats risk being judged. in effect. on whether they pass a purity test rather than whether they can win persuadables in swing districts.
A key claim from the working group’s backers is that the DNC should not treat this issue as a shouting match between factions.. Andrew Lachman. another working group member from California. framed the party’s challenge as finding a way to debate without turning disagreement into a permanent party brand.. A DNC spokesperson said the objective is to figure out how to talk to voters about the Middle East to help Democrats build coalitions and win elections.
But the working group’s lack of visible outputs came into focus again at the DNC’s spring meeting in New Orleans. when the resolutions committee considered a submission by Joe Salas—another member of the working group from California—to recognize Palestinian statehood.. The move became a test not just of policy preferences. but of process: did the working group function as a collaborative engine. or did it become a holding pattern while individual members advanced competing resolutions?
According to James Zogby and Steph Newton. Salas submitted the resolution without discussing it with other members of the working group. which surprised them.. Newton said she expected members on the same task force to coordinate before resolutions land in the packet.. Zogby echoed the broader complaint that the working group had been there to “have the conversation. ” yet it wasn’t being used consistently as the forum for that conversation.
Salas’s approach sharpened the sense of friction.. He said he would not attend the New Orleans meeting and told interviewers he would “let them” reject. accept. or modify the resolution as they saw fit.. Afterward, he did not respond to additional questions about why he did not flag the proposal in advance.
What happened next showed how quickly internal disputes can migrate from policy to credibility.. The resolutions committee referred the matter back to the working group, but not as a neutral routing.. The committee co-chair Ron Harris recommended the return to the task force while signaling expectations that the group produce progress.. John Verdejo of North Carolina was more blunt: a task force can’t be a recurring headline without deliverables. especially in a midterm year when frustration is likely to deepen.
Allison Minnerly of Florida said that unless the party prioritizes the conversation. voters will keep seeing the same cycle—questions at successive DNC meetings and no clear direction for what comes next.. In other words. the political risk isn’t just disagreement over what the DNC should say; it’s the appearance that the party is unwilling to settle on any coherent messaging framework.
Now. the working group has a concrete near-term objective heading into today’s in-person meeting—something Zogby described as a “defined period of time.” That shift may sound technical. but it’s often where political committees either break through or continue drifting.. Without a timeline and measurable outputs, internal debate can become performative.. With one. members are forced to negotiate what the party can say. how it will say it. and when it will say it.
For Democrats, the stakes are bigger than internal order.. Messaging on the Middle East isn’t simply a communications issue; it intersects with organizing. fundraising. volunteer enthusiasm. and candidate recruitment—especially in districts where the electorate is more diverse. more polarized. and less tolerant of evasiveness.. If the DNC can translate its internal dialogue into consistent voter-facing language. it could reduce the temptation for every campaign to conduct its own proxy argument.. If it cannot. the party may find that the same controversies resurface—each time with higher political costs and fewer people willing to wait for the next meeting.
Today’s session will determine whether the working group becomes a real mechanism for party alignment or remains another phase of discussion that Democrats promise and voters eventually stop believing.
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