From Student Encampments to the DNC Divide

Attorney/activist Nadia Ahmad helps us trace the arc.

Two years ago, the nation and the world were electrified by the college encampments which arose to protest the genocide in Gaza. I spoke with law professor and activist Nadia Ahmad about what those protests changed, and what they revealed. This movement of conscience exposed a deep fracture within the Democratic Party, where grassroots activists and voters have moved sharply in one direction while party leadership remains entrenched in another.

Since then, public opinion has swung sharply against Israel and toward Palestine:

A staggering 80 percent of Democrats now have an unfavorable (or “very unfavorable”) view of Israel; 56 percent was to decrease or end military aid to that country (20 percent want to end it altogether).

Despite these shifts, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) failed to change its pro-Israel position at its recent meeting in New Orleans, choosing instead to appoint a “task force” that is widely seen as a delaying tactic.

The DNC conducted an analysis (an “autopsy”) of its 2024 losses but has refused to make it public. It’s widely believed that this autopsy shows that the Biden Administration’s support for the Gaza genocide was a key factor in this loss. As Nadia Ahmad, a former DNC member herself, told me: “If we’re not going to conduct an assessment of what has happened and see why we lost the election, how are we going to know how to win?”

As public opinion has shifted, the Democratic Party’s institutional resistance has hardened, as party mechanisms are deployed to block reform and avoid accountability for the 2024 loss. What emerges is a stark picture of a party caught between its moral base and its financial and political power centers. Ms. Ahmad offers important insights on these issues.

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Key Quotes

Nadia Ahmad:

“The students were right. They’re the moral compass of the country, and what happened as a result of the encampments was part of the fracture that is in the Democratic Party.”

“You can’t sell a genocide.”

“If we’re not going to conduct an assessment of what has happened and see why we lost the election, how are we going to know how to win?”

Richard Eskow:

“In no one’s moral accounting can genocide ever be ‘the lesser of two evils.’ It is the ultimate human evil.”

“For many decades it felt impossible to imagine a United States of America where public opinion was turning against Israel.”

“The Democratic party is at an impasse between its old attitudes and strategies and a new reality that they have yet to face.”

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Transcript (lightly edited by AI)

Richard Eskow: We have reached the two-year mark since the encampments to end the Gaza genocide began on American college and university campuses. We’ve also had a recent meeting of the Democratic National Committee, where, among other things, support for Israel and the relationship with AIPAC were hot topics.

Here to discuss those issues with me now is Nadia B. Ahmad. Nadia is a professor of law and an attorney. She’s also a former member of the Democratic National Committee, and she was a PhD student during the time of the student encampments, so she brings an excellent perspective on all of the above. Welcome to the program, Nadia.

Nadia Ahmad: Thank you, Richard. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Richard Eskow: Let’s start by talking about the encampments. To me, this was the most powerful upsurge of civic engagement among students — and among the people who rallied around them — that I had seen in many years, in service of a deeply conscientious cause of great moral importance. And I have to say I was disappointed by the institutional response at every level. Two years have passed. What do you think we should remember, take note of, and reflect on at this two-year mark?

Nadia Ahmad: When we look back at this moment, we have to recognize that two years ago this month, a generation of young people — a huge share of the electorate and the organizing base of the Democratic Party — gave all of it up. They sacrificed their careers and their education to put their bodies on the line, demanding that their universities and their government stop underwriting what we were watching happen in Gaza. They were met with force. They were arrested, suspended, and smeared by the very institutions that were supposed to educate them — not only the universities, but also the Democratic Party.

The party still hasn’t really reckoned with the fact that these students were right — and that the broader public has been moving in the same direction. What happened as a result of those encampments was part of the fracture now visible within the Democratic Party. Looking back two years, we saw the NYPD going into Columbia University and beating students. And now you have Mayor Zohran Mamdani sitting in City Hall. That’s telling. I’ve seen some commentary suggesting that the protests have simply gone away, but that’s not what happened. The students evolved. They’ve moved into positions of power, and they’re determined not to be dismissed or lectured anymore.

Richard Eskow: One of the striking things about the aftermath of those student protests is exactly what you just mentioned — the stark change in public opinion toward Israel and its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories. I’ve been around politics and political issues for a long time, and for many decades it felt impossible to imagine a United States where public opinion was turning against Israel, given its allies’ lock on media, politics, and so many other aspects of our institutional life. People talk a lot about how the live-streaming of horrific acts — war crimes — has changed public opinion. But to what extent would you say the students who organized the encampments deserve some credit for that shift? Do you think they helped move the tide?

Nadia Ahmad: Absolutely. Even going back to the Vietnam anti-war movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement, both were substantially led by students. Students tend to be the moral compass of the country. They’ve also been very clear about what they want: an end to military aid to Israel. And I think another thing you have to give the students credit for is that they recognized the humanity of people and held onto hope for the future. That’s part of why the tide has turned — the escalations we’ve seen haven’t proven the students wrong. They’ve proven just how right the students were.

If you look at what’s happening right now — the continuing violence, the ongoing occupation of Gaza, the encroachments into Lebanon and the West Bank — you see the big picture the students were pointing to all along. And we’ve seen figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and even Rahm Emanuel meaningfully shift their positions. This was the students’ position from the beginning. It’s about time that others are arriving at the same place.

Richard Eskow: And you mentioned Rahm Emanuel, who would seem like the last person on earth to move on this. Then there’s Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, who always seems to be looking for the path of least resistance — he recently said he wouldn’t take AIPAC money. That startled me and suggested a kind of mainstream shift. I’m not sure I entirely trust him on that, given that there are ways to accept AIPAC money without being overt about it. But it’s still a sign of a changing mood.

As this has progressed, the Democratic Party institutionally has drifted further and further from its own members — starkly so. Something like three-quarters of all Democratic voters now express more sympathy for the Palestinian cause than for Israel. There’s strong support among Democratic voters, and in the country more broadly, for ending or conditioning military aid to Israel — at minimum, making it conform to U.S. law, which it doesn’t currently appear to do. But the party leadership is not with them. It wasn’t with them when Joe Biden was president — and he was president, let’s remember, when the violent crackdowns on the encampments occurred. You mentioned the reluctance of Cory Booker to endorse Zohran Mamdani as his party’s candidate. Chuck Schumer, I believe, endorsed him only two days before the vote, which made the gesture barely meaningful. The other party leader didn’t endorse him at all.

So let me ask: are you among those who believe that this gulf between party leadership and its voters cost Democrats the 2024 election?

Nadia Ahmad: It’s absolutely clear that it did. And I don’t think the math was ever in the Democrats’ favor, even before the convention. I remember the week leading up to the Biden-Trump debate — when I looked at the numbers, there was simply no path to victory with Joe Biden. But beyond that, I couldn’t construct a scenario where any candidate could fully recover from what I’d call the blast radius of the Gaza issue, and how toxic the Democratic Party had become on that question. There was no one who could credibly step up and rebuild trust with the voters the party had lost.

So going into June, with the Electoral College already favoring the GOP, it was mathematically very difficult. And yet the DNC chair still won’t release the autopsy. As a professor, part of my job is grading exams — and if you’re not going to conduct an honest assessment of what happened, how are you going to know how to win the next time?

It’s highly likely Democrats will do very well in the 2026 midterms. But heading into the 2028 presidential election, we’re still facing the same math in key states. The presidential race is going to be a coin flip, and we need to enter it from a much stronger position than we had in 2024. Many people, including myself, fear we’re not on track to get there.

I also want to comment on what Senator Cory Booker said in Michigan this past weekend. He looked back at 2024 and essentially chastised the voters for how the election turned out — without really looking in the mirror himself. He failed to acknowledge that for many Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in Michigan, there was a very acute problem with having their tax dollars used to drop bombs on their cousins and loved ones. What happened in Michigan wasn’t some minor policy disagreement you can smooth over with better messaging. You can’t spin an F-35 airstrike to the people who lost family members in it. Without an autopsy, you don’t have the analytical framework to understand what actually happened.

I’d also note that in September 2024, the Washington Post ran an article about how Kamala Harris’s coalition was not at the same level as Biden’s in 2020. That was a very specific, nuanced signal about how voter mobilization was breaking down. But if you’re missing outreach to Latino communities, Muslim American communities, and young voters — the very students who were out there protesting — you’re missing the organizing power of the Democratic Party. Instead of mobilizing for the presidential election, those students were out fighting for humanity. So the Michigan numbers shouldn’t have shocked anyone.

Richard Eskow: I have to say I was furious about Booker’s comments, because to me they crystallize two deeply self-destructive trends within Democratic Party leadership. The first is a posture of condescension toward voters — I’ve been tracking this in interviews and reporting for at least 25 years. There’s been this persistent sense that voters would reliably vote Democratic if they were just a little smarter or better informed. I think that attitude had a great deal to do with what happened in 2024.

The second is the so-called “lesser of two evils” strategy. That broke down completely in 2024, because in no one’s moral accounting can genocide ever be the lesser evil. It is the ultimate human evil. So when someone like Cory Booker says, “We only disagree on ten percent of the issues,” and that ten percent is the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children — that’s not a rounding error. That framing collapsed.

To me, the Democratic Party is caught between its old politics of managing donors and browbeating voters into compliance, and a new reality it hasn’t yet faced. Does that analysis make sense to you?

Nadia Ahmad: It really does. If you look at Cory Booker, he’s occupying a very elite political space — and it’s not even a strategically sound one if he’s thinking about 2028. At least five Democratic presidential aspirants have already publicly stated they won’t take AIPAC money. That’s where the field is moving. If Booker is going to plant himself in the “defend Israel at any cost” camp alongside Chuck Schumer — who is increasingly isolated on this question — he’s not reading the room. That’s the core of it: where the people are versus where the party elite are.

Richard Eskow: Which brings us to New Orleans and the recent DNC meeting. There were some efforts there to bring the party’s position more in line with the views of its voters — and I want to correct myself: it’s actually a four-to-one margin, not three-to-one, among Democratic voters who are more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis. Three-quarters of Democratic voters agree that Israel is committing genocide. So there were organized efforts at the DNC meeting to align the party with those views. Am I right about that?

Nadia Ahmad: There were definitely organized efforts, though they didn’t go nearly as far as they needed to. The push for change in the resolutions was brought forward by Florida DNC member Alison Minette-Lee at the August 2025 DNC meeting. She put forward a resolution that garnered a great deal of attention. Had it not been for AIPAC and the Democratic Majority for Israel organizing behind the scenes, it might have had a chance. But as a result of their maneuvering, the resolution ran into problems. DNC Chair Ken Martin introduced his own watered-down resolution, effectively diluting Alison’s stronger version. Ultimately the resolution was voted down. But even then — before the Zohran Mamdani election — at least five DNC members abstained.

When a similar resolution came up at the April 9th meeting, it was shut down by a voice vote, specifically to avoid putting anyone on the record. Leadership wasn’t confident the resolution would pass, so they also refused to allow a roll call vote. They used quiet procedural tools to kill the momentum.

Another outcome of the August meeting was the creation of a Middle East working group — but it was stacked primarily with people who were more pro-war than pro-peace, to put it plainly. That working group became a mechanism to quietly bury any resolutions before they could gain traction. Two other resolutions that came forward were also disposed of by being referred back to that working group — which isn’t even in the DNC bylaws. It’s essentially a kill switch for any movement coming from the party’s grassroots.

Richard Eskow: As Norman Solomon wrote in Salon, Politico described that group as the DNC’s “Middle East not-working group.” It really does seem like a passive-aggressive strategy to prevent any reform whatsoever.

Nadia, I want to ask you something that may be sensitive, but I think is important. I’m not sure the Democratic Party leadership — even now — truly understands how critical this issue is to them. And I wonder whether a kind of bias plays a role in that. Before the 2024 election, I did a deep dive into the polling myself, and I concluded that neither the mainstream media nor Democratic leadership fully understood what those numbers were saying. One common error was treating Arab American polling and Muslim American polling as if they were measuring the same population, when in fact roughly one-third of Arab Americans are Muslim, and only about one-third of Muslim Americans are Arab. That means a huge chunk of a core constituency was essentially invisible in the analysis. I can only understand that as a failure rooted in bias. And I also believe they deeply underestimated the moral conscience of non-Arab Americans across the country. Given that AIPAC money is obviously a major factor, do you think bias — in the cultural sense — also plays a role?

Nadia Ahmad: It is a factor. And even setting aside Arab Americans and Muslim Americans — who are a relatively small share of the total electorate — consider Asian American and Pacific Islander voters. Even within the Democratic Party, this population is often treated as statistically insignificant, despite being well-documented swing voters.

In the organizing I did around the 2020 election, we specifically targeted Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, South Asian Americans, Muslim Americans, and immigrants — because the Democratic Party had been ignoring them. And we had real success, because these were important voters who had been left out of the conversation. If the party genuinely wants to move forward, it has to recognize and rebuild its coalition. That Washington Post article I mentioned — about the fragmenting of Harris’s coalition — is the starting point. Without releasing the autopsy, the party won’t have the analytical framework to understand what is actually happening.

What’s also worth watching is who within the party is getting the most traction. Representative Pramila Jayapal, for instance, has publicly called for the release of the autopsy. It’ll be interesting to see whether any of these resolutions actually pass at the 2026 meeting, and what happens with the broader direction of the party.

Richard Eskow: Let’s talk about the autopsy for a moment, because it’s become a major flashpoint within the party. The DNC did conduct a postmortem on the election. Now there’s a dispute over whether Chair Ken Martin agreed to release it and changed his mind, or whether he never committed to releasing it in the first place. But regardless of what he said, it’s clearly an important document to a lot of people. What makes the autopsy so contentious?

Nadia Ahmad: It’s about what the results would say — and about making those findings official. We all have a pretty good sense of what the autopsy will conclude. In fact, Norman Solomon and RootsAction already released their own version, which is likely to track closely with whatever the official document says. But you also have to understand how the DNC apparatus functions, and that comes down to who controls the purse strings.

Go back to 2016: you had the surging candidacy of Bernie Sanders, but also Hillary Clinton, who knew how the DNC operated better than almost anyone — she had watched her husband navigate it as a presidential candidate. The Clinton campaign supported the DNC financially at a time when it was in dire straits, and that financial support bought influence over how the party operated.

Fast-forward to 2024: the Rules and Bylaws Committee — which is essentially handpicked by the DNC chair, at that time Jamie Harrison — spent the previous two years systematically blocking any primary challenges. In Florida, we didn’t even have a primary. It was a highly organized legal process to shut down dissent and prevent any viable alternative from emerging. The committee also controlled which states voted first in the primary calendar, which has enormous influence over candidate momentum and viability.

The result was that the rules were structured so that no one could mount a legitimate challenge. Even someone like Gavin Newsom — who clearly looked relieved the moment that 2024 debate ended — wasn’t willing to step up and challenge the DNC. Everyone concluded it was better to wait their turn until 2028, without fully reckoning with how catastrophic four years of a Trump presidency would be. And for the DNC consultant class, frankly, a Trump presidency is quite profitable. They do very well during Republican administrations. So for them, it doesn’t really matter who’s in the White House — in some ways, Trump being there is actually better for their business.

Richard Eskow: Which brings me to my final question. It seems to me that, setting aside the vast moral stakes of genocide itself, what we’re really watching from a political standpoint is a confrontation within the Democratic Party between a politics of conscience and public will on one side, and a politics of money on the other. And there’s a lot of money on what I would call the wrong side of this issue. So here’s the question: Is this a winnable struggle within the Democratic Party? Given the financial resources aligned against it, can meaningful reform actually succeed?

Nadia Ahmad: The more people understand how the DNC actually operates, and the more that’s exposed, the more accountability becomes possible. Before the 2024 election, some news organizations published the full list of DNC members — because even within the DNC itself, it’s surprisingly difficult to organize with other members. But there’s a growing faction inside the committee that is becoming increasingly discontented with where leadership stands. And for the party to maintain control, it ultimately has to follow what the voters want.

I’d also say this: even in electoral politics more broadly, money is a significant factor, but it’s not the only deciding one. It really comes down to organizing and mobilizing voters. You can out-organize even when you’re outspent. And that’s exactly what we saw in the New York City mayoral race.

Richard Eskow: With that, Nadia B. Ahmad — lawyer, professor of law, and activist — thank you so much for your important work on these issues, and thank you for joining us today.

Nadia Ahmad: Thank you so much, Richard.