Biden’s Gaza problem will remain, but Michigan may have been unique
President Biden and his allies had reasons for both hope and concern after the Michigan primary, which exposed the party’s painful divisions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and confronted him with the greatest degree of Democratic opposition yet.
He avoided the darkest predictions of his worried supporters by winning Tuesday’s primaries by 81 percent to 13 percent because of a “disengaged” movement that emerged to protest his support for Israel. Still, more than 100,000 voters have voiced their disapproval of him, signaling deep discontent among Arab Americans, young voters and progressives as he tries to reassemble his 2020 winning coalition.
Democratic unease over Biden’s handling of the war in the Middle East won’t dissipate as presidential primaries move to more than a dozen Super Tuesday states next week, but his allies are optimistic that Michigan will serve as the high point for resistance to the president within his party.
While many states allow Democrats to cast protest votes against Biden, it is not nearly as likely that Michigan would become a national litmus test for his popularity or his handling of the war in Gaza.
No other place will have the combination of a large and politically active Arab-American community, a spotlight on the battleground with heightened stakes for November, and a weekslong runway on which Michigan hosted the nation’s only Democratic primary.
But if Biden’s immediate electoral concerns have subsided after Michigan, political pressure on his position on Israel threatens to last through the summer and fall, barring a major change in policy or progress to end 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, taking unusual steps to maintain the focus on more politically friendly topics. When Ms. Harris visited Michigan last week, she spoke about abortion rights to just nine invited people in Grand Rapids. Her previous stops to promote the issue have taken place in front of crowds of cheering supporters — events designed to show enthusiasm for her and the Democratic ticket.
In Minnesota, where an “uncommitted” attack began Monday ahead of the state’s March 5 primary, Gov. Tim Walz, a top Biden surrogate, said a group of demonstrators had protested outside his home every day against Mr. Biden on Israel. Others have protested recent events Mr. Walz attended marking Martin Luther King’s birthday and an appearance at a community college.
“It is concerning, as it should be,” Mr. Walz, who is also chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said in an interview on Wednesday. “This is what the political process should do. It forces us to make sure we hear people. They are in pain. They are frustrated. They want something to be done.”
The Michigan activists who organized the three-week “uncommitted” effort with a budget of $200,000 — a relative pittance in a populous state — judged their share of the vote a success. On Wednesday, they warned again that Biden risked losing to former President Donald J. Trump if he did not stop the war or break away from the Israeli government.
“We ask you, President Biden, to stop killing our families before you come asking for our support,” said Abbas Alawieh, one of the movement’s organizers.
James Zogby, the 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 angry about the war in Gaza and to continue to 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 back in the White House, but they have to help us help them.”
Still, Tuesday’s results suggested that Biden had managed to limit the political damage to his Israel policy.
In the six college towns where Michigan’s largest public universities are located, “uncommitted” received 18 percent support — a share higher than the statewide rate and enough to raise concerns about the general election, but far below the anti -Biden margins in Dearborn and other areas with large Arab-American populations.
The “disengaged” organizers, and the progressives who followed their lead, did not advance a broader case about Mr. Biden’s political standing or his age, which for months have been central to Democrats’ concerns about his prospects at the general election.
In Colorado, where the primaries will also be held on March 5, former Rep. David Skaggs wrote an essay in The Denver Post last week in which he announced that he would vote “uncommitted”. He expressed deep reservations about Biden’s political strength and warned 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 navigate his public appearances carefully, wary of exposure to protesters and criticism from both mainstream and right-wing news media.
In recent weeks, the president has appeared more frequently on social media, discussing how he met Jill Biden, the first lady, and telling the heartbreaking story of caring for his young sons after his first wife and daughter were killed in a car. Crash. The Biden campaign also joined TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform that has become the main 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 messengers,” said Rep. Jennifer McClellan of Virginia, a member of the Biden advisory council -campaign. “The nature of campaigns has changed in a world of social media.”
Yet the political ramifications of the Gaza war go far beyond the simple tallying of “unpledged” votes in Michigan, warned Doug Schoen, a veteran Democratic pollster who has served as an adviser to five Israeli prime ministers.
The collapse of the president’s coalition, Mr. Schoen said, is part of a broader sense of ineffectiveness, amplified by Republican intransigence in Congress, the failure of border security legislation and Mr. Trump’s somewhat specious argument that the world enjoyed peace during his reign. and is now in chaos.
“This is less about parsing votes in certain key states than about making him look weaker,” Mr. Schoen said of Mr. Biden, “making it that much more important for him to prove he can govern.”
While Democrats in Michigan issued dire warnings in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s primaries — mostly privately — that Biden had a political problem that could last into the general election, his allies in the 15 Super Tuesday states appear less concerned.
“We’re not always going to agree on every issue,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of California, who holds his primary 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’m still going to vote for him.”
Alyce McFadden contributed reporting from New York.