After a four-year honeymoon with US President Donald Trump, the Israeli political system on Sunday began gearing up for the expected change in the White House.

Blue and White ministers offered their congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden, while Labor leader Economy Minister Amir Peretz thanked Trump "for his unconditional support for Israel and his contribution toward achieving peace agreements with Arab countries."

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Peretz expressed hope that the Biden administration will continue the wave of peace agreements and help resume the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, stalled since 2014, so as to facilitate the two-state solution. "President-elect Joe Biden has proven throughout his years of public activity that he is a true friend of Israel and is committed to maintaining its security," he noted.

Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel also offered his congratulations, saying, "I congratulate president-elect Joe Biden. I am convinced that he will continue to be a true friend of Israel. Thank you, President Trump, for the friendship and wonderful term during which you advanced peace in the region through strength. The shared values of Israel and the US will always remain above politics."

A senior Likud minister told Israel Hayom that Biden is committed to Israel's security and acted so when he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Former Jerusalem mayor Likud MK Nir Barkat tweeted, "I congratulate Joe Biden on being declared president-elect of the United States and believe that under his leadership the courageous and positive relationship between the two countries will continue. I want to President Trump thank from the bottom of my heart for his incredible friendship and tremendous contribution over the past four years. President Trump will eternally be remembered as a true friend and a supporter of the State of Israel."

Political sources said that for Israel, the critical question is who will be on Biden's transitional team and later, his administration.

"People like [former US Ambassador to Israel] Daniel Shapiro, [former Deputy National Security Adviser] Antony Blinken, and [career diplomat] Nicholas Burns are true supporters of Israel, good people who we can work with even if disagreements arise. If the relationship with Israel will be managed by people from the party's radical wing, like [former US envoy to the UN] Susan Rice, it will be more complicated."

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For the Trump camp, this was significant. The Des Moines Register poll is considered one of the most reliable in Iowa, which many look to during the primaries as well as later on, to get an idea of the political atmosphere in the state. Its pollsters, in contrast to the others in the state, predicted that Trump would win the 2016 election by seven points. And they were right: Trump ended up winning the Hawkeye State by nine points.

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Trump has shot up in this most recent poll and now leads his Democratic opponent Joe Biden 48% to 41%. This lead is beyond that of a margin of error, which stands at 3.4 points. Moreover, Trump's spike in the polls comes as Joni Ernst, the Republican senator from Iowa, is also pulling ahead of her Democratic rival Theresa Greenfield, now leading her by four points. In addition to the encouraging news from Iowa, Trump continues to maintain a statistical tie with Biden according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, which also shows Biden's lead shrinking in Pennsylvania.

The Des Moines Register poll is an anomaly in the state, where other polls point to a tie between the two candidates and is a reflection of independent voters deciding to lean right and cast their ballot for the president. And if they're doing that in Iowa, they may do the same in other Midwestern states – just as they did in 2016, when they handed Trump a victory at the very last minute.

This is the scenario that Biden dreads and Trump is betting on.  The Democratic candidate can take solace in knowing there are far fewer undecided voters this time around and that support is greater for him than it was for Hillary Clinton in 2016 in the Midwest, as well as nationally, although the latter is irrelevant to the US election system.) The bottom line is that anything can happen, and maybe Trump is gaining momentum at precisely the right time, while Biden, on the other hand, is losing steam.

Over the weekend, the Trump campaigned announced it would cancel plans to hold an Election Day party on Tuesday night at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, with the president instead likely to take in the results from the White House. While the move was immediately interpreted by the city's Democrats as a sign that Trump was feeling down and out, it seems they forgot the party would have violated the restrictions in place on mass gatherings due to the coronavirus outbreak. Trump was also forced to cancel plans in Nevada last week when that state's Democratic governor refused to allow them to hold a mass rally, leading the president's team to hold one of the rallies on the Arizona border instead.

Trump is optimistic – despite all the restrictions, despite all their attempts to sabotage him, and despite the fact that people are grasping onto poll averages that are not in his favor. Yes, Trump is optimistic, some would even say very optimistic. The polls point to Biden emerging as the victor, but four years ago, they pointed to Clinton. Truth be told, Trump is in a relatively good place. According to one calculation, he is poised to garner 280 electoral votes and win the race, and that's even if he unable to win in Michigan and Wisconsin, which he won with a razor-thin margin in 2016, this time around. Trump will win 280 electoral votes as long as he succeeds in winning in the rest of the states he won in 2016, chief among them Pennsylvania and Florida. The polls indicate this scenario is most definitely possible since in some of these states, he and Biden are in a statistical tie.

Biden stays close to home

If the Independents continue to skew in his favor, and if the Republicans continue to show up for their party, given the passion out in the field, we could in fact see a victory with 280 electorates. One mustn't forget that although Biden is seen as the harbinger of change in many states, in Pennsylvania and in the Midwest, he is seen mainly as the man who will bring about the eradication of the fracking and coal mining industries, and in the minds of independent voters, that is to his major detriment.

All thisת along with the fact that Trump is still seen as better suited to managing the economy once a vaccine for the coronavirus is found, mean Trump is well situated to garner 270 electorates, if not more, and he is determined to use the final days in the lead up to the election to create optimistic momentum.

The president has been holding rally after rally where he assures Americans that the country's golden days still lie ahead while repeatedly warning that Biden will drag America into "endless foreign wars." At every rally, by the way, the crowd goes wild whenever he mentions the pro-Israel steps he has taken, including moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. But Trump main focus at the rallies is on warning voters that Biden will destroy their industries. In Michigan, he told attendees, "A vote for Biden is a vote to extinguish, demolish, and wipe out Michigan's auto industry" while noting he had brought in factories and prevented others from leaving the state. In Pennsylvania and the rest of the Midwest, the president warned Biden would "destroy" the oil industry.

On Sunday, the second to last day before the election, Trump had rallies planned in no fewer than five states: Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The last event, in Florida, where he is also a resident, is expected to kick off at 11:30 p.m. local time. Biden, in contrast, has decided to stay in Pennsylvania, just a stone's throw from his home state of Delaware, for the entire day.

Over 90 million US citizens have already cast their vote, meaning almost half of all registered voters in all 50 states and some two-thirds of the total number of ballots cast in 2016. Most states have already reported record-breaking turnout in the early voting stage. Naturally, the million-dollar question that must be asked is: Who does this benefit? In the coronavirus era, early voting models are no longer relevant, and because early voting is so widespread, no pollster is willing to say who they believe has gained from the phenomenon outright.

At his drive-in rallies, Biden draws a few hundred, and sometimes only a few dozen, cars. Trump draws tens of thousands of people. I have been to his rallies. The people love him. They know he is not responsible for the coronavirus. They know he did good things for the economy, they know his heart is in the right place, and most importantly, they know that while he may talk and tweet, he also takes action.

And so Trump carries on with his crazy process, as one man entering the fray and taking on everyone on his own. As far as the atmosphere on the street is concerned, and the number of Trump masks that abound regardless of Halloween, Trump has won. And that is true even in the country's Democratic capital.

At the airport in Washington on Sunday, two passengers stood next to me in line to rent a car; one a lawyer, the other working for an insurance agency, both proudly donning Trump face masks.

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"He's good for the economy, and he's good for America," John, the lawyer from New York, not exactly the reddest of states, tells me. "I'm convinced he's going to win because ultimately, you want a president that will bring the receipts," he says.

"Biden is the worst candidate the Democrats could have offered, while Trump is Trump. I just hope that after the election, the Democrats will be able to lose with dignity. America can't go on with this division for long," he said, summing up what many have said about Biden. They're not turned off by him like they were with Clinton, but they don't hold him in high regard either. Trump, on the other hand, is appreciated, on both sides of the aisle.

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Five Democratic presidential candidates addressed thousands of attendees on Sunday and Monday at the national conference of J Street, founded in 2007 as a liberal counterweight to Washington advocacy that its leaders saw as aligning US policymakers with the Israeli government exclusively enough to limit the prospects for meaningful peace with Palestinians. The candidates' attendance – in addition to videos sent to J Street by five other hopefuls who could not attend – underscores the importance of the Democratic-leaning Jewish American voting bloc.

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President Donald Trump's long embrace of Benjamin Netanyahu has helped the conservative Israeli prime minister with the battles for his political survival amid two deadlocked elections and a looming indictment threat. But the Trump-Netanyahu alliance has also strengthened J Street's case for Democrats to stand against the Israeli leader's pursuit of settlement expansion and annexation in the West Bank.

So far, at least three Democrats vying to replace Trump – Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders – have said they would consider using US aid to Israel to help press its government to take a less hawkish tack.

Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said Monday at the conference that US support for Israel should not "turn into a go-ahead where we would be endorsing anything like annexation." He took a slightly more measured approach about whether US aid to Israel should be used to help curtail its settlement enterprise.

The prominence of the Democratic debate over how to pressure Israel marks a victory for J Street, which this week launched a push to add "formal opposition to Israel's ongoing occupation of the West Bank" to the Democratic Party's 2020 platform. Separately, the establishment liberal group Center for American Progress released recommendations Friday for a "progressive policy alternative" that includes conditions on US aid to Israel.

Yet the ascendancy of Jewish American progressive organizing under Trump isn't limited to J Street's agenda, with newer groups gaining ground to its Left, including some that focus on domestic issues. As Trump mobilizes his base by calling Jewish Democrats "disloyal" to their faith and to Israel, however, the group's core argument – that Jews can support their faith and Israel while criticizing the Israeli government – has resonated more widely, according to J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami.

Trump's polarizing effect makes it "easy to understand" that criticizing a US leader is not the same as anti-Americanism, Ben-Ami said in an interview. "The same thing goes for Israel."

Buttigieg made a nearly identical case during his Monday remarks, saying that just as "deeply patriotic" Americans can still criticize Trump, they can be "committed to the US-Israel alliance" while not signing onto every "individual policy choice by a right-wing government." Warren said the same in a video message to the conference.

Sanders, a vocal advocate for using US aid as leverage to help bring Israel-Palestinian relations closer to peace, was more direct: "It is not anti-Semitism to say that the Netanyahu government has been racist," he told the conference. After Sanders similarly derided the Israeli government earlier this year, a cabinet member in Netanyahu's party pushed back in an interview with an Israeli TV station, defending its voters' choice of conservative leadership.

Michael Koplow, policy director of the more centrist Israel Policy Forum, said that Trump's "deep unpopularity with American Jews has translated to a more critical attitude toward Israel." But he chalked that up less to a Trump-inspired impetus to criticize Netanyahu and more to the two men's closeness.

"I think people who dislike President Trump tend to project that dislike onto Netanyahu and the Israeli government," Koplow said.

But Jewish Americans, who polls show favor Democrats, are not in agreement when it comes to Trump's Israel-Palestinian policies: A Pew Research Center poll conducted in April found that 42% of them said Trump is favoring the Israelis too much and 47% said he's striking the right balance, while just 6% said he's favoring the Palestinians too much.

For all the momentum behind a Democratic discussion about conditioning US aid to Israel, the idea counts limited support from the party's left-wing in Congress, including pro-Sanders Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). Two other presidential candidates who spoke at the J Street conference, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), declined to endorse the option, while a third, former US Housing Secretary Julián Castro, de-emphasized it. And the political clout of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the capital's long-standing and more bipartisan vehicle to promote the US -Israel partnership, remains strong.

In addition, some Jewish American leaders who share J Street's opposition to settlement construction are not convinced that discussing contingencies on US aid alone is the best way to achieve those goals.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said in an interview that it's important to communicate that "Israel's safety and security are not mild or passing constraints." Jacobs added that he welcomes a "robust debate" on Democrats' approach to Israel that he described as in its early stages.

As that debate grows louder in the US presidential campaign, with Netanyahu's political future hanging in the balance, J Street will also continue to get its pressure from more left-leaning Jewish American groups that want to see more than rhetoric standing against Israeli policies that have undercut relations with Palestinians.

"If there is a Democratic president in (2021)," said Emily Mayer, political director of the liberal Jewish American group IfNotNow, "the question will be on the table of not only how will they reverse the damage Trump has done ... but also, how would they go beyond what Obama did?"

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