Democrats Have a Josh Shapiro Problem

One reason Kamala Harris is on the Democratic ticket is because of her identity. One reason Josh Shapiro isn’t on the ticket is because of his.

In March 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden declared that he would choose a woman as his running mate. The following month, after Mr. Biden became the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, multiple news outlets started reporting on the “pressure” influential Democrats were applying to ensure that the woman he chose would be Black.

Ms. Harris’s race and gender were not the only reasons Mr. Biden chose her. She served as attorney general of the country’s most populous state and had been a senator for four years.

But it’s disingenuous to argue that race and gender played no role in her advancement.

The matter of identity arose again in this year’s Democratic veep stakes, but in a subtler, more insidious way. In this case, the candidate in question doesn’t possess an identity trait preferred by the left, but one the left increasingly views with suspicion.

Among the possible reasons Ms. Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota over Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, according to a report in The Times, was that Mr. Shapiro’s selection could “inflame the left.” And chief among the reasons given for this potential inferno was Mr. Shapiro’s allegedly extreme pro-Israel views. An article in The New Republic called Mr. Shapiro “the one vice-presidential pick who could ruin Democratic unity” and claimed that he “stands out among the current field of potential running mates as being egregiously bad on Palestine.” A writer for Jacobin, a socialist magazine, labeled him a “genocide apologist.” A group of far-left congressional staffers and the Democratic Socialists of America teamed up to produce an open letter demanding that Ms. Harris “say no to Genocide Josh Shapiro for vice president.”

The examples marshaled as evidence of Mr. Shapiro’s “egregiously bad” views on the Middle East were specious. Mr. Shapiro, it was alleged, likened all pro-Palestinian demonstrators to the Ku Klux Klan. In actuality, he singled out extremists who called for Israel’s destruction and threatened violence, and he has stated clearly that “we should be universal in our condemnation of antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of hate.” More absurd was the digging up of a column Mr. Shapiro wrote for his college newspaper over 30 years ago arguing that the Palestinians were “too battle-minded” to co-exist with Israel. Mr. Shapiro, who has long supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, appropriately brushed off the column as something he “wrote when I was 20.”

In their efforts to vilify Mr. Shapiro as a lap dog of Israel’s right-wing government, his antagonists conveniently ignored his harsh criticism of the country’s right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Shapiro has called Mr. Netanyahu a “terrible leader” who “has driven Israel to an extreme,” and “one of the worst leaders of all time” — comments that went well beyond anything that Ms. Harris, Mr. Walz or any of the other vice-presidential contenders had said. These were extremely disparaging, never mind undiplomatic, words to describe the democratically elected leader of an American ally. But they didn’t earn Mr. Shapiro any purchase with the activists branding him “Genocide Josh,” an inflammatory term that they conspicuously avoided using against any other vice-presidential contender, let alone Ms. Harris herself, who is serving in the administration of the man these same activists call “Genocide Joe.”

Mr. Shapiro is a thoroughly mainstream liberal Zionist whose views on the Middle East were virtually indistinguishable from those of his vice-presidential rivals, so the effort to single him out — Mr. Shapiro was the only vice-presidential contender to be targeted by an open and organized campaign against his selection — had to have been motivated by something else. What is it about Mr. Shapiro that led people to argue his placement on the ticket would “ruin” party unity?

It’s hard to escape the impression that some of Mr. Shapiro’s left-wing detractors were riled because he is Jewish. If being pro-Israel was the problem, they would have protested all of the vice-presidential contenders. Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, like Mr. Shapiro, supported the use of police to dismantle campus anti-Israel encampments. Furthermore, he attended Mr. Netanyahu’s speech to Congress last month and applauded. Activists loudly criticized Mr. Shapiro for enforcing a Pennsylvania statute prohibiting the state from doing business with companies that boycott Israel, but they didn’t seem to notice that Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina signed a similar measure into law. Nor did they attack Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky when he was asked for his view of the conflict and replied, “Israel has a strong ally in the United States,” and “When you have disagreements with a strong ally, I think you have them privately, and I don’t think you can litigate foreign policy through the press.”

Some of the attacks on Mr. Shapiro were highly personal, suggesting that his identity as an observant Jew with a connection to Israel means he has dual loyalties. “I am aware that Walz (and Harris) have far from perfect records themselves,” David Klion, author of the aforementioned New Republic piece, admitted on X. “But I think we were within our rights to highlight Shapiro’s deep, lifelong commitment to Israel.” If having a “commitment” to Israel, deep or otherwise, is a barrier to being on the Democratic presidential ticket, it bodes ominously for future Jewish participation in Democratic Party politics.

The conversation around a possible vice-presidential nominee’s Jewish identity that took place recently was very different from the one that transpired nearly a quarter century ago, when Joe Lieberman became the first Jew to serve on the presidential ticket of a major American political party. Mr. Lieberman, a more highly observant and hawkishly pro-Israel Jew than Mr. Shapiro, was widely considered to be an asset. Whereas other minority identities are celebrated within the party, being a proudly pro-Israel Jew is becoming a hindrance.

Some Democrats are worried by what they see. “You also have antisemitism that has gotten marbled into this party,” Van Jones, a longtime Democratic strategist, said earlier this month in a conversation about the snubbing of Mr. Shapiro. “You can be for the Palestinians without being an anti-Jewish bigot, but there are some anti-Jewish bigots out there. And there’s some disquiet now, and there has to be. How much of what just happened is caving into some of these darker parts in the party?”

As with Ms. Harris, Mr. Shapiro’s identity is not the only factor that has determined his professional fate. Reportedly, Mr. Shapiro’s interview did not go well, and Ms. Harris was concerned that he would outshine her on the stump. But just as Ms. Harris’s identity played a role in her political destiny, Mr. Shapiro’s played a role in his. One of them was a beneficiary and the other was a casualty of the unwritten hierarchy of identities that exists not only within the current Democratic Party but across broad sections of the American left.

None of this is to say that the Democratic Party is institutionally antisemitic, just that it may have taken into consideration the tacit threat by “darker parts in the party” to disrupt its convention had Mr. Shapiro been selected. I worry that this is yet another sign that the extremist fringes are increasing their influence over American politics and public life.

Next week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago will reveal much. Will speakers denounce the platform’s declaration that “a strong, secure, and democratic Israel is vital to the interests of the United States?” Will those who endorse it be booed?

The 2024 Democratic presidential ticket personifies the party’s values, just not in the way it intends. The Democrats claim to be the party opposed to discrimination. Since the ascension of Donald Trump, they have passionately leaned into their self-professed identity as the party of diversity, equity and inclusion, nobly battling the hate and prejudice of the American right. The formation of their ticket tells a different story.

James Kirchick is a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times and the author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington.

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