This Election Day, the Left is expected to win, at most, 10 to 11 seats. There may be some surprises, but the fact of the matter is that the Labor Party is now hovering at five to six seats and Meretz is on life support. Some have pointed out that those parties have simply lost touch with mainstream Israeli voters, have refused to wake up from their failed ideologies, and have been unwilling to embrace Zionist symbols and engage Israelis from lower rungs of society and outside the main urban centers.
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These are very important factors, but the Left's failure goes beyond that. The Left could not translate the anti-Netanyahu sentiment it championed into actual voter support, despite the weekly protests next to the Prime Minister's Residence.
The Left failed to capitalize on the public's desire to invest in healthcare following the outbreak of the COVID pandemic and it failed to ride the momentum generated by Joe Biden's victory in the United States by mimicking his campaign. The Left, in theory, should have been able to pick up voters among the Arab middle class and to use the supportive mainstream media to win hearts and minds, but it failed.
The Left should have not been in this situation. So what went wrong? It appears that its voter base of socialists who want to give away land to the Palestinians ultimately decided to park their support with the bourgeois and mediocre party Yesh Atid, which caters to the middle class. Labor leader Merav Michaeli should be blamed for this – she has essentially tried to compete for the same bloc of voters that has traditionally gone to Meretz. On top of that, Labor's candidates have repeatedly embarrassed the party, but the Left has not changed course.
Michaeli could have put some political heavyweights on the party's candidate list, but she refused. She began to replicate Meretz's campaign themes rather than make her own case, contributing to the Left's self-destruction.
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