One of the unsettling realities that American Jews have been learning throughout this election cycle is that antisemitic behavior and virulently anti-Israel rhetoric has become so normalized that it doesn’t register all that much politically anymore. 

The early tell was discovering that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s involvement throughout his life in extreme anti-Israel activism didn’t impact his ability to win an election in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world. 

Then we learned that disgraced former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo — which he later covered up — made very little difference in his political standing in the battleground Senate race. It wasn’t until he was accused of rape that rank-and-file Democrats began to reconsider their support of him.

And today we’re grappling with the possibility that Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who won’t acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state (like Mamdani before him), could prevail in a Democratic primary in a swing state.

Jews find themselves in the news often these days, and for that reason it makes sense to want to dwell on the extreme, often-antisemitic positions that these radical candidates have espoused. 

But as we head into a general election where several far-left candidates will be testing their political viability in competitive states and districts against strong Republican challengers, it’s important to remember that their biggest vulnerabilities are on issues that don’t directly impact the Jewish community.

The reality is that these candidates are politically problematic to the overall public for reasons that go far beyond their views on Jews or Israel. The same Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) platform that rejects a Jewish state and condones terrorism also is one that envisions abolishing prisons and defunding the police and backs open borders. 

DSA co-chair Megan Romer’s interview on “Fox News Sunday” last week where she enthusiastically endorsed all the exotic positions of the group’s national platform went viral — well beyond conservative media — because it was such a direct encapsulation of the ideas that these candidates actually believe.

DSA-aligned Wisconsin gubernatorial front-runner Francesca Hong, whose insurgent primary campaign hasn’t faced much scrutiny until recently, similarly struggled under basic fact-gathering interviews from Fox News and CNN.

In a similar vein, El-Sayed’s recent stumble when asked on CNN about his past support for defunding the police didn’t hurt him much in the Democratic primary. But you can bet his past views will be aggressively litigated in the general election, if he emerges as the nominee. 

Unlike the deep-blue districts where DSA-aligned members have won primaries, Michigan and Wisconsin are shaping up to be clear tests of whether normie general election voters have turned so anti-establishment that they’re willing to back socialists and other like-minded allies to send a message against the party in power.

And if Republicans end up prevailing in an otherwise rough environment for their party, it’s going to be because their opponents’ far-left views on crime, taxes and border security matter a whole lot more to the average voter than their views on foreign policy.