Dan Goldman and the dawn of performative politics - opinion

I looked at him and pressed further: “Apparently, in today's world, it is becoming increasingly difficult for someone like you to remain in politics.”

“If that really is the reality,” he responded, “then perhaps politics might not be for me.”

I sat with Goldman earlier this month in New York for an extended conversation.

With election season reaching a fever pitch in both America and Israel, and many Jews around the world following developments in both countries while being constantly bombarded with breaking news and political bombshells, I figured there was a story here worth telling. One that has not received the attention it deserves.

Something remarkable happened in New York this summer. One Jewish progressive defeated another in a hard-fought congressional primary. What makes the story extraordinary is not that two Jews ran against each other, but how much they actually agreed on.

Goldman and his opponent, Brad Lander, both supported Medicare for All, universal childcare, the Green New Deal, a federal wealth tax, and stronger union rights.

They shared much of the progressive domestic agenda. Even on foreign policy, and specifically Israel, their fundamental positions were remarkably similar.

Both called themselves Zionists. Both criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both opposed settlement expansion and settler violence. Both advocated respect for international law.

Both supported a two-state solution, with a safe and secure Israel alongside an independent Palestinian state, recognizing the dignity, security, and right to self-determination of both peoples. Both opposed the global BDS movement. Both said they would have voted against the Park Slope Food Coop's boycott of Israeli products.

The similarities extended even to some details of military aid.

Both supported withholding 2,000-pound bombs from Israel. Goldman said he worked with the Biden administration to stop those shipments, while Lander supported legislation that would restrict them.

They differed on the broader question of military assistance. Lander was for withholding additional American military aid while Israel violated Palestinian rights and international law, whereas Goldman supported continued security assistance while still enforcing restrictions on its use.

Yet with all that common ground, Lander still defeated Goldman by more than 30 percentage points.

Goldman himself acknowledged the central role Israel played in his defeat, telling CNN afterward that he believed the election ultimately came down to Israel and Gaza.

So what exactly separated these two men?

In large part, I believe, it came down to how far each was willing to go in embracing the rhetoric and demands of the increasingly vocal and performative anti-Israel movement.

Goldman drew a line.

He condemned the devastation in Gaza, criticized Netanyahu's government, supported Palestinian statehood, and acknowledged that some Israeli actions might constitute war crimes. But he refused to call those actions genocide without the evidence and independent investigation he believed such a legal conclusion required. Lander, on the other end, embraced the genocide terminology.

Goldman marched in the Israel Day Parade. Lander stayed away.

And those distinctions became defining political identities.

I am not suggesting that words have no significance or that which parade one goes to doesn't matter. But something is revealing about a political culture in which two politicians agree on the broad contours of a solution, yet the terminology they use and the symbolism they embrace become the ultimate measures of their political acceptability and the defining factor in the election.

Ironically, even Lander's willingness to embrace the movement's language was apparently not enough to earn him universal enthusiasm.

Absent was @Brad.Lander, despite her husband's enthusiastic endorsement of him.

And the performance continues.

Last week, less than two weeks before Election Day, Lander traveled thousands of miles to the West Bank to help Palestinian farmers harvest olives. He joined rabbis and other volunteers, was detained briefly by Israeli authorities, and became the subject of international headlines.

I am all for Palestinian rights. I am disturbed by the settler violence taking place in the West Bank. Palestinian farmers deserve to harvest their crops without intimidation, violence, or fear. I am also not suggesting that helping farmers harvest olives has no value whatsoever.

But I question the political judgment and the spectacle surrounding the trip. Humanitarian solidarity can be sincere, while the publicity surrounding it can still serve a political purpose. Both things can be true.

And what does this highly publicized confrontation accomplish politically? Does it change Israeli policy? Does it help bring peace?

Or might it give extremists like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who thrive on a siege mentality, another opportunity to reinforce their political narratives? I would not be surprised if this episode earned him a few more votes ahead of Israel's election.

Yet amid all the coverage, I have seen no reported meetings with the Israeli political leaders seeking to change the very policies he was protesting. People who, in the past, laid the ground for peace. But rather continuing the cycle of performative TikTok politics.

There is another question worth asking.

Why is a candidate for Congress, just days before an American election, making international headlines picking olives thousands of miles from home rather than spending that time in Chinatown, Borough Park, or the Lower East Side and meeting the constituents he hopes to represent?

Perhaps the answer is that in today's political environment, an overseas spectacle attracts more attention than a conversation with a struggling family in New York.

Which brings me back to Goldman.

During our conversation, I asked him about an incident that had received national attention.

The woman working there, wearing a hijab and seemingly Muslim, was exceptionally kind.

“She was acting so kind to me and my daughter,” Goldman recalled. She let his daughter use the bathroom, and Goldman, appreciating her kindness, purchased a coffee and left a generous tip.

Later that evening, he discovered that the business had posted his photograph from its security cameras, announced that it did not serve people it considered supporters of genocide, refunded his purchase, and told him never to return.

“I was caught off guard,” Goldman told me.

And that's the whole story: a Jewish congressman and a woman wearing a hijab, presumably from very different backgrounds and perhaps holding very different political beliefs, shared a perfectly ordinary moment of humanity.

She showed kindness. He showed gratitude. Just two human beings treating each other with dignity.

Apparently, the employee was not notified about the importance of performative politics. Neither was Goldman.

And perhaps that is the most revealing illustration of what is happening to our politics.

When I sat with Goldman, a congressman preparing to leave office, listening to him explain that he would rather lose his seat than let go of his convictions, I could not help asking myself whether we are witnessing the end of an era.

The end of politics centered primarily on policy, principle, and sincere conviction, and the emergence of something different: politics of performance.

Politics of which parades to attend, what ideological slogans to adopt, what the next viral confrontation can be, Instagram stories, and TikTok moments.

Of course, political theater is nothing new. Politicians have always performed for their audiences.

But what happens when the performance itself becomes the single most important measure of political virtue? When what a candidate says, wears, attends, boycotts, or posts becomes more important than the actual policies he advances?

Perhaps moderates need to catch up. But if catching up means saying things they don't believe, what exactly is being won?

Goldman lost an election. That is democracy. But if our politics increasingly rewards performance over conviction, the loss may ultimately be much larger than one congressional seat.

And sitting across from him, I encountered a man who appeared unwilling to say what he did not believe simply to remain in power. There is something worth respecting in that. And I hope that this kind of conviction is not yet history in American politics.