The Democrats’ Big Tentifada

By Abe Greenwald

Last week, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin went on PBS New Hour and explained that the Democrats’ “big tent” had plenty of room for anti-Semitism. When asked about Zohran Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” Martin offered the following, which I’ll quote in full for reasons explained below: 

You know, there’s no candidate in this party that I agree 100 percent of the time with, to be honest with you. There’s things that I don’t agree with Mamdani that he said.

But at the end of the day, I always believe, as a Democratic Party chair in Minnesota for the last 14 years, and now the chair of the DNC, that you win through addition. You win by bringing people into your coalition. We have conservative Democrats. We have centrist Democrats. We have labor progressives like me. And we have this new brand of Democrat, which is the leftist.

And we win by bringing people into that coalition. And at the end of the day, for me, that’s the type of party we’re going to lead. We are a big-tent party. Yes, it leads to dissent and debate, and there’s differences of opinions on a whole host of issues. But we should celebrate that as a party and recognize, at the end of the day, we’re better because of it.

The full answer is useful because it reveals both the fear and desperation of the Democratic Party. Forget that Martin is too scared to condemn Mamdani for not refuting intifada enthusiasts. Martin is too scared to even say that that’s one of the “things” he disagrees with Mamdani about. 

No one who’s been monitoring the direction in which the Democrats have been heading should be surprised by Martin’s lack of interest in anti-Semitic incitement. All the energy is with the Squad types, who’ve been overtly and slimily anti-Israel for years. 

To “celebrate” such incitement as a welcome voice in the conversation, however, is a bit striking. The truth is that Democrats are desperate for numbers. Martin says, you win through “addition” because polls show that the Dems have recently become masters at subtraction. They are intersectional losers, hemorrhaging voters among virtually every demographic group in the nation. 

Whether they can make up for lost ground by inviting terrorist-sympathizers to join them is a bigger question for the country than for the Democrats. If one of the U.S.’s two major political parties makes a comeback with a platform that explicitly includes anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, that’s the end of the American experiment as far as I’m concerned.

And who else is concerned? I ask this because I’m also troubled by the question that Martin was responding to. Here’s what Amna Nawaz asked him: “What about concerns, from some of your Jewish colleagues in particular, about him not outright condemning the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’ in a recent interview? Some of your Jewish colleagues have said that that could be very disturbing, potentially dangerous. Do you agree with that?”

This is a popular formulation, and it assumes two things. First that “globalize the intifada” is disturbing to Jews but few others. Second, it implies that Jews are merely hearing something dangerous in the call for anti-Semitic violence that may not necessarily be there. 

Polls indicate that the first assumption is false. And history—including the history of 2025—shows that the second assumption is pure propaganda. “Potentially dangerous”? Jews and non-Jews alike have seen what “globalize the intifada” means—in Israel, Washington, D.C., and Boulder, Colorado. It means the murder of Jews for being Jews.

The shameful crux of the issue is that everyone in the tent—Zohran Mamdani, Ken Martin, and liberal journalists—has figured out how to deny this in their own way.  

Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.