The concept behind the Michigan protest was simple: vote for the “uncommitted” option in the Democratic primary, instead of supporting U.S. President Joe Biden.
But the backlash at the polls has since become a national movement, with key races in the Super Tuesday primaries also revealing strong results for “uncommitted” voters in other states.
The idea, activists say, is to send the message that Democratic voters will not tolerate Biden’s unequivocal support for Israel’s war in Gaza. And this message seems to be gaining momentum.
Last week, more than 101,000 Michiganders voted “no strings attached” in the Democratic primary, for about 13 percent of the vote. This week on Super Tuesday, Minnesota saw nearly 19% of its primary votes go to the “uncommitted” category – an even higher ratio of voters, despite the nature of the last-minute protest of the State.
This comes on top of similar efforts in Super Tuesday states like North Carolina and Massachusetts to reprimand Biden at the polls. The results mean 11 delegates from Minnesota, along with two from Michigan, will represent the protest at the Democratic National Convention in August.
But numbers alone don’t tell the whole story, according to Democratic strategist Arshad Hasan. He explained that the best indicator of the movement’s growing power is the type of voters who chose “uncommitted.”
They largely include a broad coalition of Arab and Muslim Americans — overlapping but diverse groups — as well as other racial and progressive minorities.
“The problem is that all these people constitute the activist class within the Democratic Party,” Hasan told Tel Aviv Tribune. This “class” acts as a driving force to motivate others to vote: “These activists are needed to mobilize all of their networks and communities. »
“It’s important that this is actually an organized movement in some states and not just a random movement,” he said. “It means that these are people who move people. And Biden needs people who move people within his base.
A last-minute protest bears fruit
Biden faces tough re-election prospects: A March poll by The New York Times and Siena College found the Democratic president trailing his Republican opponent Donald Trump, 43 to 48 percent.
Experts say he needs all the votes he can muster in key battlegrounds like Michigan and Minnesota, where races can come down to narrow margins.
That makes the Super Tuesday results all the more striking. Asma Mohammed, the lead organizer of the “no-strings-attached” campaign in Minnesota, said the effort exceeded expectations despite few resources and a limited timetable.
She told Tel Aviv Tribune the effort only had $20,000 to reach voters. “We had eight days and some really passionate people,” she explains. “And I think a few passionate people made a big difference.” »
While organizers aimed to attract 5,000 “unpledged” votes, they got nine times that number: more than 45,000 voters cast ballots Tuesday.
Smaller margins decided recent presidential elections in states like Michigan and Minnesota. In other circumstances, Mohammed added, these voters could be mobilized in favor of Biden.
But Mohammed said she refused to support a president who supports Israel’s war, which has sparked fears of genocide and famine in the Gaza Strip. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed so far, although Biden has downplayed those numbers.
“As someone who has organized Democrats for most of my adult life, it makes my job more difficult when the president uses genocidal rhetoric,” she said.
Mohammed said she, too, was energized by the diversity of voters supporting the protest vote. The number of “unengaged” voters in Minnesota far exceeded the proportion of Muslim residents in the state, which hovers around 1 percent.
The largest number of “unpledged” votes came from the Minneapolis area, which has a large Somali American population. But Mohammed pointed out that majority-white areas have also expressed strong support for the “uncommitted” movement.
Northern St. Louis County, for example, is 92 percent white and saw 15 percent of Democratic primary votes go “uncommitted.”
“This is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-faith coalition of people saying, ‘We don’t want to fund genocide,’” Mohammed said. “And we want our president to listen now.”
Questioning the narrative
The Super Tuesday results were cheered in neighboring Michigan, another key battleground in the presidential race. The state is often considered the birthplace of the 2024 protest vote.
Abdullah Hammoud, mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, celebrated the Super Tuesday results on social media. “The movement for peace, justice and democracy is growing and making waves,” he wrote.
He highlighted not only Minnesota’s results, but also the high margins in states like North Carolina, where 12 percent of voters chose “no preference.” Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, more than nine percent of Democratic primary voters chose “uncommitted.”
But many in Michigan were hesitant to pin their hopes on outside races. They said Michigan’s February primaries offered a unique opportunity, given the state’s large Arab and Muslim population and its strong history of political organizing.
Speaking at an online forum shortly after Michigan’s vote, former Congressman Abbas Alawieh warned against the narrative that a poor performance in the next election could discredit the “uncommitted” movement.
“We need to stay focused on Michigan, because the effort here was unique and because Michigan is a key state that Biden needs to continue to pay attention to,” Alawieh said.
Leader of the Listen to Michigan movement — one of the organizations behind the state’s “no-strings-attached” vote — he predicted that members of the media would say, “This no-strings-attached thing has gained momentum in the Michigan, but then ran out of steam in Minnesota and Washington. .”
Come to the Democratic National Convention, Minnesota without obligation! pic.twitter.com/SpTiUmf8bM
– #ListenToMichigan (@Listen2michigan) March 6, 2024
“Cut to the Democratic base”
But the Super Tuesday races quickly dispelled fears that the “uncommitted” movement would become pointless.
Hassan Abdel Salam, a professor who studies Islamic law and human rights at the University of Minnesota, attended an election night event in Minneapolis, one of the state’s largest cities. A supporter of the “uncommitted” cause, he described the atmosphere as “electric”.
“It definitely exceeded my expectations, despite the fact that I worked on it,” Abdel Salam said. “I had no idea we would be able to undermine the Democratic base so significantly.”
Abdel Salam is also one of the leaders of the Leave Biden campaign, a movement that goes further than “uncommitted” protest. Its members refuse to support Biden not only in the primaries but also in the general election.
He told Tel Aviv Tribune that the group’s leaders were still discussing which candidate to support in the general election, but it would almost certainly be a third-party candidate.
Minnesota union organizer and “uncommitted” voter Ben Caswell, meanwhile, said Biden still has a way to win back his vote, provided he changes his approach to the war against Israel.
“My vote is always winnable. I think Trump represents the worst case scenario for the country,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“Biden, if he wasn’t supporting genocide right now, I think it would be pretty easy for me to vote for him. I just lost so much faith in him and the Democratic Party,” Caswell continued.
“I think there will be a lot of winning votes if he changes course, and I hope he does.”
Hasan, the Democratic strategist, agrees that Biden can still bring back some of the supporters he lost to the “uncommitted” movement. But this support depends on a complete ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaking to The New York Times after the Super Tuesday primaries, Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt sought to reassure voters in Minnesota and beyond.
Biden, she said, “shares the goal of ending violence and establishing a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. He works tirelessly in this direction.
Hasan believes Biden still has a path to victory, even if he alienates swaths of voters with his Israel policies. But he cautioned that the Democratic Party must recognize the changing political landscape that the “no-commitment” campaign has highlighted.
“The dynamic here is perhaps something that Democratic politicians are not used to,” he said. “They may not be used to seeing the Palestinians, the Arab Americans and the Progressive Democratic Party base that supports them… (being) really well organized and politically powerful. »
“These are expressions of political power.”
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