Jewish Michigan AG says state Dem Party ‘absolutely not’ doing enough to combat antisemitism – plans to skip convention

When the state's own attorney general, a Democrat, a Jewish woman who has spent years as one of the party's most reliable warriors, says her own party is failing to fight antisemitism, that's not a talking point. That's a confession from the inside. Dana Nessel didn't hedge. "Absolutely they're not," she said, and then decided a party convention wasn't worth her time. You don't skip your own party's big gathering over a minor disagreement.

What's telling is how unsurprised everyone seems. Michigan Democrats have spent the last two years tangled up trying to hold together a coalition that includes both pro-Israel Jewish voters and activists who treat any criticism of anti-Israel rhetoric as a betrayal. Nessel's complaint isn't abstract. It's about a party leadership that keeps choosing silence, or worse, appeasement, over standing up when Jewish constituents ask for basic acknowledgment that something has changed since October 7th.

We've said for a while now that the Democratic Party's drift on this issue isn't accidental, it's a choice made because certain factions are louder and more organized than the donors and voters they're alienating. Nessel just confirmed it from a seat most Democrats would never risk. If a sitting AG in a swing state won't show up to her own convention over this, rank and file voters have every reason to wonder who's actually being represented.

None of this means Republicans get to take a victory lap without doing the harder work of showing up consistently themselves. But credit where it's due: when the criticism comes from inside the house, it carries weight that outside commentary never will. Nessel didn't need our permission to say it. She just needed the nerve, and apparently that's rarer in her party than it should be.