President Biden and his allies had reason for both hope and concern after a primary in Michigan that exposed the party’s painful divisions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and confronted him with the greatest level of Democratic opposition yet.
He avoided the direst predictions of his worried supporters by winning Tuesday’s primary election 81 percent to 13 percent, defeating a “non-committal” movement that emerged to protest his support for Israel. Still, more than 100,000 voters have expressed their disapproval of him, indicating widespread discontent among Arab Americans, young voters and progressives as he tries to reassemble his winning 2020 coalition.
Democrats’ unease over Mr. Biden’s handling of the Middle East war will not go away as the presidential election takes place next week in more than a dozen Super Tuesday states, but his allies are optimistic that Michigan will serve as a pinnacle of resistance to the president within his party.
Although many states are offering Democrats the opportunity to cast protest votes against Mr. Biden, they are not nearly as likely as Michigan to become the national litmus test for his popularity or his handling of the war in Gaza.
No other place has such a combination of a large and politically active Arab-American community, a battleground state in the spotlight with heightened stakes in November and a week-long runway that saw Michigan host the country’s only Democratic primary.
But if Mr. Biden’s immediate election concerns have subsided after Michigan, political pressure over his position on Israel threatens to continue through the summer and fall unless there is a significant change in policy or progress in ending the bloodshed in Gaza.
Opposition to U.S. political, military and financial support for Israel has dogged Mr. Biden and other prominent Democrats at public events across the country, with frustration spreading beyond the Arab American and Muslim communities to college campuses and other progressive areas .
An apparent desire to avoid confrontations with anti-war protesters has led Mr. Biden’s campaign to wrap him and Vice President Kamala Harris in political bubble wrap and take unusual steps to maintain the focus on friendlier political issues. When Ms. Harris visited Michigan last week, she spoke about abortion rights to just nine invited people in Grand Rapids. Her previous appearances to promote the issue have taken place in front of crowds of cheering supporters – events designed to show their enthusiasm for her and the Democratic candidacy.
In Minnesota, where an “uncommitted” push began Monday ahead of the state’s March 5 primary, Gov. Tim Walz, a top Biden official, said a group of demonstrators are protesting outside his home every day against Mr. Biden’s position on Israel have. Others have protested recent events Mr. Walz attended to mark Martin Luther King’s birthday and an appearance at a community college.
“It’s concerning, as it should be,” Mr. Walz, who is also chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said in an interview on Wednesday. “That’s what the political process is supposed to do. It forces us to make sure we listen to people. You are in pain. You are frustrated. They want something done.”
The Michigan activists who organized the three-week, “uncommitted” effort with a budget of $200,000 — a relative pittance in a populous state — considered their share of the vote a success. On Wednesday, they warned again that Mr. Biden risked losing to former President Donald J. Trump if he does not end the war or break with the Israeli government.
“We ask you, President Biden, to stop killing our families before you come and ask for our support,” said Abbas Alawieh, one of the movement’s organizers.
James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute in Washington and a member of the Democratic National Committee since 1993, said Mr Biden and the White House had no choice but to engage with those angered by the war in Gaza, and to further change the government’s approach to the conflict.
“I can’t help them if they don’t want to be helped,” he said. “I’m not giving up because I don’t want to see Donald Trump in the White House again, but they have to help us help them.”
Still, Tuesday’s results suggest that Mr. Biden has managed to limit the political damage of his Israel policy.
In the six college towns that are home to Michigan’s largest public universities, the Uncommitted received 18 percent support – a share higher than the national percentage and enough to raise general election concerns, but well behind the anti- Biden-Randen in Dearborn and other areas with large Arab-American populations.
The “disengaged” organizers and the progressives who followed their lead have not advanced a broader argument about Mr. Biden’s political standing or his age, which for months have been at the center of Democrats’ concerns about his prospects in the general election.
In Colorado, which also has a primary election on March 5, former Rep. David Skaggs wrote an essay in the Denver Post last week announcing that he would vote “without commitment.” He expressed deep reservations about Mr. Biden’s political strength, warning that negative perceptions about the president’s age would “haunt the Biden campaign” and potentially doom it to defeat.
The Biden campaign has tried to carefully manage its public appearances, wary of exposure to protesters and scrutiny from mainstream and right-wing news outlets alike.
In recent weeks, the president has appeared more frequently on social media, where he has spoken about how he met Jill Biden, the first lady, and retold the heartbreaking story of caring for his young sons after his first wife and his first daughter had been killed in a car crash. The Biden campaign also joined TikTok, the Chinese social media platform that has become the primary source of news for tens of millions of young Americans.
“Campaign events are just one source of communication, and while the president and vice president are the best and most prominent messengers, they are not the only ones,” said Rep. Jennifer McClellan of Virginia, a member of the Biden campaign advisory board. “The nature of campaigns has changed in a social media world.”
The Biden campaign has long argued that the voters it needs to win over in November are not avid consumers of traditional news outlets that cover the president’s movements and public events.
“The president’s strong performances in primaries in various states show that the strategy is working,” said Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for the campaign.
Still, the political consequences of the Gaza war go far beyond simply tallying the “non-binding” votes in Michigan, warned Doug Schoen, a veteran Democratic pollster who has served as an adviser to five Israeli prime ministers.
The fracturing of the president’s coalition, Mr. Schoen said, was part of a broader sense of ineffectiveness caused by Republican intransigence in Congress, the failure of border security legislation and Mr. Trump’s somewhat specious argument that the world has been at peace during his time in office. is being reinforced and is now in chaos.
“This is less about analyzing the votes in certain key states and more about him looking weaker,” Mr. Schoen said of Mr. Biden, “which makes it all the more important for him to prove he can govern.”
While Democrats in Michigan spent the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s primaries issuing dire warnings – mostly in private – that Mr. Biden has a political problem that could last into the general election, his allies appear to be in the 15 Super Tuesday -States to be less worried.
“We’re not always going to agree on every single issue,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of California, where the primary election is next week. “If the coalition is so diverse, I may have a different perspective than the president on some issues, perhaps on the border and immigration. But I’ll still vote for him.”
Alyce McFadden contributed reporting from New York.
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2024-02-28 20:58:11
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