The latest round of polling from AP/NORC on Joe Biden’s handling of the situation in Israel and Gaza delivers yet another dose of bad news for our doddering commander-in-chief. But this week’s survey focused solely on members of his own party, holding possible implications for his ability to be the party’s nominee next year. The results show a Democratic Party that is almost evenly split on the situation in Israel and how Biden is dealing with it. The numbers further indicate that his support is slipping and Democrats are increasingly siding against Israel. But behind the scenes, Biden’s team likely isn’t terribly worried about this, or at least they shouldn’t be, as we’ll discuss below.

Nearly half of Democrats disapprove of how President Joe Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research — showing a deep divide within his party over the war.

The poll found 50% of Democrats approve of how Biden has navigated the conflict while 46% disapprove — and the two groups diverge substantially in their views of U.S. support for Israel. Biden’s support on the issue among Democrats is down slightly from August, as an AP-NORC poll conducted then found that 57% of Democrats approved of his handling of the conflict and 40% disapproved…

The war could complicate Biden’s reelection effort as he faces having to balance factions of his party with very different views on the conflict and who is ultimately responsible.

A little more than a month into the war, just 50% of Democrats approve of how Biden is dealing with it. Nearly as many (46%) disapprove. Almost no Democrats are undecided or lack an opinion. So Democratic support for Israel has dropped seven points in a fairly short period of time since the previous poll. It’s likely that all of the antisemitic and increasingly violent protests in the streets may be swaying more Democrats over toward the side of Hamas.

And we should be clear that these results are not truly a referendum on the details of how Biden is dealing with the conflict. For most respondents, this was almost certainly not a question of whether Biden is sending too much aid or too little aid to Israel or whether we should be more or less directly involved on the ground. This was a stark question for Democrats to declare whether the President should be siding with Israel or Hamas. And a disturbing number of them are going with the terrorists.

But as I noted above, this shouldn’t impact Biden’s decision-making process significantly based solely on political considerations. It’s not as if any Democrat responding to this poll will turn around next November and vote for the Republican based on this single issue. The Republicans, if anything, will be supporting Israel even more loudly and aggressively. And the Democrats don’t have some viable second choice waiting in the wings who will publicly abandon Israel. Some of them might wish we were “less involved,” but they aren’t going to turn around and demand we start funding and rebuilding Hamas. (Or at least I pray the country hasn’t devolved to that point.)

Joe Biden has a much safer path to walk politically if he simply allows Israel to carry on and take care of its business, provided we can prevent this from spilling out into a regional or global conflict, dragging America into a direct shooting war. That’s a tricky tightrope to walk, but it’s doable. Leaving Israel aside as a campaign issue, Joe Biden has much bigger fish to fry as he tries to deal with the multiple, serious crises that his policies have brought upon America back at home. But the Democrats are not going to abandon him en masse and start donning MAGA hats over his support of Israel.