It’s the day after the 2024 Michigan primary. With 95% of the vote counted, more than 100,000 voters in the Michigan Democratic Primary have voted “Uncommitted” as part of a campaign to express dissatisfaction with Biden’s handling of Israel’s war with Palestine.
The Detroit Metro Times put it this way in their endorsement for Listen to Michigan’s Uncommitted campaign: “Biden cannot afford to lose their votes in Michigan, which is once again shaping up to be a swing state in 2024. In 2020, he won by more than 150,000 votes here, home to some 300,000 people of Middle Eastern ancestry. That doesn’t even cover the many more people who disapprove of the war in Gaza, especially young people.”
As the final votes are being counted, I’m proud of my state and the organizers who have poured their grief, despair, outrage, and humanity into this campaign. Yet, the inevitable question haunts my mind already: “What next?”
The campaign’s hope has been that by attracting enough voters to the cause, the Biden campaign will recognize this sizable bloc that could make or break the November election. And with over 100,000 votes, they have more than accomplished this. Recall that the margin of victory for Donald Trump in 2016 was 10,704 votes. True, Biden’s margin exceeded 100,000 in 2020. However, that was an exceptional election. The urgency of Covid-19 brought even people like my own father, who had never before voted for a Democrat, to hold his nose and support Biden.
This year’s general election feels a lot more like 2016. Much of the Democratic establishment is already asking us to fall in line, with figures like Governor Gretchen Whitmer suggesting that a vote for “Uncommitted” in Michigan’s primary somehow equated to support for Trump.
Democrats have been somewhat lucky in their recent electoral success. In 2018, their massive gains in the US House were fueled by a united American left that was desperate for a check on Trump’s power. In 2020, as mentioned, the former president’s inability to handle the pandemic gave voting an unparalleled sense of urgency. Then in 2022, the US Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade activated voters concerned with reproductive rights.
This year, Democrats are keen to unite the left around the narrative that Donald Trump is a threat to American democracy. This strategy may work—but it failed in 2016. No matter how many outrageous, reckless, and offensive things Trump said in 2016, they rolled off his back like water on a duck. Will things be any different this time around?
Biden’s greatest hope is that the war will wrap up in the next month or two and fall out of the headlines so that he can double down on this line of attack. But what is the uniting factor that will bring people together in November? Will he be able to give voters something to vote for rather than against? Right now, at the end of February 2024, we don’t have a pandemic or a Supreme Court case that will unite us all at the general election.
Were the president able to show leadership and solidarity with both Israel against the October terrorist attacks and the people of Palestine, that could bring a significant number of voters solidly back into the fold. Many voters are hungry for the United States to show consistent moral leadership, rather than the hypocrisy of supporting Ukraine’s right to self-determination on the one hand, while denying this right to Palestine. Even without leadership from the top giving a voice to the cause, Americans already support a ceasefire and de-escalation of violence.
Unfortunately, I fear that what’s next will be the same strategy we saw from the Democratic establishment in 2016, which was largely condescending and belittling toward progressives and dismissive and demeaning toward Trump supporters (many of whom had voted for Obama—twice!).
American voters deserve better than to be talked down to, especially those who hesitate to vote because of their convictions that all people deserve to live freely and fairly in the world. The bloc of young, progressive, Arab, and Muslim voters who are protesting and advocating for peace won’t go anywhere—we won’t stop talking, we won’t stop protesting, we won’t stop raising our voices. What’s next? Well, that’s largely in Biden’s hands.