With each day that passes without a ceasefire in Gaza or a cessation of US aid to Israel, dissent within the Democratic party grows. In Michigan, more than 13% of Democrats voted uncommitted in the recent primary as a protest vote against Biden’s stance on Gaza—and this is just the beginning. Calls have been put forward to organize other uncommitted votes in primaries around the country. While these protest votes are unlikely to dislodge Biden from securing the nomination, it’s the underlying discontent with the Biden administration, shared by millions of Americans, that poses the real threat to his reelection. John Nichols of The Nation joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the infighting within the Democratic Party and the prospects of Biden’s reelection this year.
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
Marc Steiner: Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, it’s great to have you with us once again. Chinua Achebe, the great Nigerian author, wrote a book called Things Fall Apart. It’s about the contradictions of colonialism and when they came home to roost and began tearing the fabric of society apart and asunder. It feels like we may be in one of those moments now when Israel’s war on Gaza is profoundly affecting the political future of, not just Israel and Palestine and the Middle East, but the US and accentuating our deep divides where we face the reality of the power and the rise of the right-wing in our country. Now, it’s played out starkly in the recent Michigan primary, when over 100,000 voters, or 13.5% of the vote pulled a non-committal lever on the ballot to show their displeasure with Biden and American policies over the war in Gaza.
It’s a complex and dangerous moment. It can mean that the always-swinging pivotal state of Michigan, which has for decades been a key battleground state in American elections, could go back to Trump and the racist right-wing could be back in the White House. We’ll see. There was a record turnout in the Michigan Democratic primary that’s not been seen for a while. My colleague and friend, John Nichols, is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, and author of over a dozen books about American socialism, the Democratic Party, and more. His latest is co-written with Bernie Sanders, It’s Okay To Be Angry About Capitalism – That’s a bestseller – And his latest article in The Nation is Michigan Voters Made It Clear: Biden’s Gaza Policy Threatens His Reelection. John, welcome back. Good to talk with you.
John Nichols: It’s an honor to be with you, my friend.
Marc Steiner: So let’s take this apart a bit. This vote of the non-committed is unprecedented in terms of its size and potential impact. So talk about your analysis as you began to poke through this in your article for The Nation.
John Nichols: Sure. I went over to Michigan earlier this month and spent some time there, and there is simply no question that there’s a tremendous amount of anti-war sentiment. And it is seen as such, even though this is a distant war, which the US is financing through our military aid, but not necessarily present on the ground. And yet, especially in eastern Michigan around Wayne County, Detroit, Dearborn, and Ann Arbor, there’s an understanding that this is a war that the US is involved in. And the anti-war sentiment, as I said, is real; It’s very strong. Now, there’s a reason for that, a couple of reasons. Number one, Dearborn, Michigan is a predominantly Arab-American town. So is Hamtramck, another major suburb of Detroit. Dearborn has the highest per capita Muslim population of any city in the US. In addition, Muslims and Arab-Americans, Christians as well, have been very present in eastern Michigan for a very, very long time.
So the war in Gaza is understood as something very personal and very real there. People have family members, they have extended circles, and connections to Gaza, so there was a great deal of desire on the part of a lot of folks to send a message to Joe Biden via the primary. But Biden didn’t have a viable opponent. So about three weeks ago, a group of folks on the ground in Michigan – Including congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s sister, former US representative Andy Levin, who has been one of the most outspoken Jewish American advocates for peace in the Middle East, as well as a number of other folks, mayor of Dearborn started something called Listen To Michigan – Noticed that the Michigan ballot includes this uncommitted option, and they decided, well, we’re going to mount a campaign asking people to vote uncommitted. It’s going to be very explicit, very outright, saying if you vote uncommitted, we’re going to count that as a message that Joe Biden should change his policy as it regards Gaza.
Generally in Democratic primaries, uncommitted gets about 20,000 votes. That’s what it got in 2012 when Barack Obama was running for reelection without much opposition. So the uncommitted campaign said, yeah, we’ve got to do at least that and maybe more, but whatever we get above that, we should take as a pretty serious message of opposition to Biden’s stance. Well, they got 100,000 votes, 13.6% of the total, as you noted. They also won delegates in two congressional districts. And so this turned out to be a remarkably powerful message that there’s a lot of opposition to Biden’s policy.
Now, why does that matter? It might not matter as much in New York, although I would argue that it should be taken seriously in any state, but Michigan is the ultimate battleground state. The fact of the matter is that Michigan, when it goes for Trump, as it did in ’16, becomes essential for his victory. When it goes against Trump, as it did in 2020, becomes essential for his defeat. In this election year, when several of the battleground states are looking tougher for the Democrats, Michigan becomes more essential. And if you’ve got this substantial block of voters that are furious with Joe Biden over his stance as regards Israel-Palestine, that suggests that Michigan is at risk, politically. So a lot of things came into play with this uncommitted vote, with what happened in the primary, and I wrote a good deal about it because I think this is a very, very serious moment for Biden’s reelection campaign.
Marc Steiner: Before we started this conversation, Max Alvarez, editor-in-chief here at The Real News, showed me that on March 5, it could be on the ballot in Colorado as well.
John Nichols: A number of states, actually. I think of the Super Tuesday states. I don’t want to get it wrong, but I think it’s like seven or eight of them have some kind of option. Some states put uncommitted, some states put the term “no preference” but the bottom line is that there are openings to continue this effort to build an opposition to Biden. That is interesting because many of the people who are involved, especially in Michigan, say that as frustrating as it is for them, they will probably vote for Biden in November.
They are inclined to support Biden – People like Andy Levin – But they desperately, want him to change his stance as it regards Gaza. For moral reasons, they believe the war is wrong, and what Israel’s doing is wrong, but also for practical political reasons because they believe that the people who are engaged enough to come out and vote uncommitted, are one block of voters. But the far more significant block of voters are the folks who don’t vote in primaries, who may not vote in a lot of elections, but usually come out or may come out for a presidential election. And what they’re saying in Michigan, and what they would say in these other states, is that unless Biden changes policy, it’s going to be very, very hard to mobilize those voters for November. So there’s a lot of political nuance here, Marc, but at the bottom of it is the very real prospect stated to me by all sorts of folks in Michigan and by all sorts of folks across the country, that Biden’s Gaza stance imperils his reelection.
Marc Steiner: I’ve been covering this war since the beginning, pretty intensely. While a lot of the focus has been on the over 30,000 Gazans who have been killed and even more than that who have been wounded and missing – Many women and children among them – The effect that this war is having on the body politic in America is pretty interesting and outstanding. It’s not something that many people would’ve expected. But if you look at the polls, even in the Jewish community, it is a rise against this war. It’s pretty significant. It could affect the future of this country.
John Nichols: I don’t think there’s any question, Marc. And you’re one of the great social watchers – So to speak, for lack of a better term – You’ve had your finger on the pulse of the body politic for a very long time. I think a lot about protest movements, how they develop, and how they manifest in our politics, this is one of the great foreign policy protest movements in American history. It’s not as big as the anti-Vietnam War movement but I think it’s very comparable to what we saw with Central America and apartheid back in the 80’s. You can debate the numbers and all that, but it’s comparable to what we saw before the Iraq War.
You’ve got a tremendous number of people who are out on the streets every day in some city or another, sometimes in mass protests, multiracial, multiethnic, or multireligions, pleading for the US to support a ceasefire in Gaza and to stop funding the Israeli military. It was only a matter of time before this street-based protest movement – Which also has some significant congressional support – Would begin to have a political presence. If the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, the Israeli kibbutzim, the music festival, and then the immediate Israeli response to it, if that had come a couple of months earlier, my suspicion is – And then you’d seen the development of this anti-war movement of this protest movement – You would’ve seen a serious primary challenge to Biden from perhaps a member of Congress or some prominent figure.
But these events came later in the process and they were so shocking initially and they’ve been so shocking since, that you didn’t see the real development of a strong anti-war campaign. Marianne Williamson – To a lesser extent – And Dean Phillips, did make statements supportive of a ceasefire but they never made that central to their campaigning in a way, say as Jean McCarthy or George McGovern had done during the Vietnam War. So you end up in this situation where the primary process is rolling along, you’re well into it, and all of these people who have a passionate desire to send a message to Biden, who’s been in the streets, who’ve been writing letters, who’ve been protesting, are looking at that ballot. And they’re saying, well, how do I deliver that message? What’s happened is they’ve discovered the uncommitted line. And I sense that you’re likely to see campaigning of this kind throughout the rest of the primary process. I don’t know how far it’ll go. Remember, much of the vote in Michigan, these 100,000 votes for uncommitted, were rooted in Arab-American and Muslim-American communities, which are very large in Michigan.
But here’s the important thing to understand: The one thing to put in the mix, there were two counties that had disproportionately large uncommitted votes in Michigan; One of them was Wayne County – That’s Detroit, Dearborn, and Hamtramck – That’s the county with the largest Muslim-American population and cities, so not a big surprise there. You also have a Black community in Detroit that has been often very aligned with and very understanding of the Arab-American community for a long time. So Wayne County has a disproportionately high vote and favors uncommitted. But also, Washtenaw County next to it, that’s Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, those are the college towns, and the vote for uncommitted was just as high in those college towns. In fact, in some cases, higher than in Wayne County. Now, what I would emphasize to you is that suggests that this campaign has the potential to move across the country and get significant votes in liberal and progressive communities and college towns. Maybe more, too. I don’t want to deemphasize other prospects.
Marc Steiner: Right. You’ve been watching this body politic and writing about it and doing commentaries for a long, long time. It seems to me that for the first time, what’s happening in the Middle East, what’s happening in Israel and Palestine, could have a profound effect on the coming election. People have supported Israel for decades, since the beginning of Israel in 1948, but it’s waning. Even in the Jewish community among many young Jews, it’s changing drastically. And the more you see the devastation of Gaza, this could have an effect. This could lose the election unless Biden and the Democrats figure out how to confront it, how to confront Netanyahu and his right-wing government and make some stand to end this war. The US may be the only country on the planet that has a possibility of ending this war.
John Nichols: Right. Well, look, the US is a major factor in the Middle East and has been for a long time. This country’s chosen to be a major player in the Middle East for a variety of reasons. So yes, and as we speak, there’s little question that Secretary of State Blinken and others are trying to develop some ceasefire plan but it’s probably a temporary ceasefire, not an immediate and permanent ceasefire, which is what’s desperately needed. So even now there’s complexity rather than that clear message coming from the administration. Additionally, the Biden administration is moving massive amounts of military aid to Israel and promoting an effort to get $14 billion in new aid in Congress. That’s been opposed by Bernie Sanders and a handful of others, but by and large, you’ve got the Democratic Party that is supporting additional military aid to Israel.
So you’ve got a situation where Biden, whether he likes it or not – And I think he does try sometimes to offer a somewhat more nuanced take – He has identified with supporting Netanyahu and identified in the minds of an awfully lot of voters, with not being on the right side in their view of this struggle. And that isn’t going to end. That anger with Biden is not going to end at the primaries. At this point, the message from people like Andy Levin – Who was a Democratic member of Congress, who knows Biden, who knows all the democratic leadership – Is that this is politically dangerous, the stance he has taken. None of these people are just talking about politics, they’re also talking about morality. They’re saying this is morally wrong but they’re also saying, look, even if you don’t bend to the moral reality, the need to end the killing, you want to bend to the political reality, which is that there’s a real chance that these Israel-Palestine issues could be a major factor in November. Now, there are a couple of things to understand, Marc. Very few people, if any, will vote for Trump. It’s not a question of people going over and voting for Donald Trump. Because most people are sophisticated enough to understand that Donald Trump as president wouldn’t make anything better in this circumstance.
What there is a possibility of is this: Some portion of people might vote for a third-party candidate, like Cornell West, who’s been very, very clear on his opposition to US policy as it regards Gaza. They might leave the presidential line blank on their ballot, or they might not vote altogether. All of those factors hurt Joe Biden. They’re likely to hurt Joe Biden as a candidate for reelection, especially in battleground states in a tough reelection year. There’s something else and this is a big deal. There are hundreds and hundreds of the brightest young people, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and non-religious folks who were key players in Biden’s 2020 campaign – Who ran his digital campaigns, his grassroots organizing, his mobilization in states across the country – Who have signed letters saying he has to change his policy if he wants them to get excited and engaged again in 2024.
The other night I spoke to a woman who ran Biden’s digital campaign in Wisconsin – One of the ultimate battleground, critical states for Biden, one that he won very narrowly – She’s super smart, super skilled, she’s Palestinian-American, and she’s out of politics. She’s working in business now and doing very well because she’s very smart and very capable. But she’s passionate about politics and she’s not there right now. And that’s a big deal because often when we talk about politics, Marc, we tend to focus on the voting numbers, what we see on election day, or what we see in the polls, but political processes in the US are mass mobilizations. They are the activity in which more Americans participate than anything else.
More people vote than watch the Super Bowl – I hope I’m right about that, I think I am – Or do just about anything else. But to get all those people to vote, you have to mobilize. And that means you need those hundreds and thousands of young, generally young, activists who go out and do the work for very little pay, sometimes for no pay because they passionately believe in something. When you look at that polling data that shows overwhelming disenchantment with Biden because of Gaza, among young people especially, you can’t just look at it as a voting issue; You also have to look at it as an activist mobilization issue. At this point, Biden is imperiled because a tremendous number of the people who in 2020 elected him, are in 2024 saying they’re furious with him.
Marc Steiner: One last thing here as we close our conversation for today. No one expects Joe Biden to drape himself in the Palestinian flag, but what do you think is keeping him so stuck that he can’t move, so stuck that he can’t say we want a ceasefire now? We’re going to bring all the parties to the table, I believe in negotiations, we’re going to find a way to live together, and let’s stop. And maybe behind the scenes saying to Netanyahu, that it also has to do with military aid. This bill is not going through Congress until the war ends. What do you think is keeping him and that quarterly around him from doing that? Knowing the danger politically for the future, not just for the Israelis and Palestinians, but for us here in the US?
John Nichols: Yeah. Why doesn’t he do what George H.W. Bush and Jim Baker did back in 1990, which was say to Israel, look, we’re going to hold up loan guarantees unless you start negotiating. And look, that’s power politics, and a lot of people don’t like to play it that way, but that’s the leverage. That’s where it comes. It’s in the military aid, it’s in the loan guarantees, it’s in things like that. So why doesn’t he do that? I’ve thought about this a lot. And I’ve covered Biden for a very, very long time.
Marc Steiner: Yes, you have.
John Nichols: I’ve seen him in a lot of settings and had some sympathy for him as a politician who I didn’t necessarily agree with, but I thought was genuine in his sympathy for working-class folks, blah, blah, blah. So you can take it for what it’s worth over there. But Joe Biden is stuck in the Senate he came to in 1973, and his mentality was formed as a young man. Remember, he came to the Senate in the year… He was sworn in the year of the ’73 War in the Middle East. He was still a first-term senator in ’77, ’78, in that period there. So I think he developed a sensibility, as it regards the Middle East, that was very pro-Israel, very pro-Zionist, and very much in sync with a lot of people at that time. He sympathized to some extent with Jimmy Carter’s efforts to find peace in the region, but I think his default position has always been to be on Israel’s side and to have a limited understanding of the circumstances of the Palestinians.
That doesn’t mean he’s ignorant but it means that’s not where his head is at. He’s surrounded, especially on foreign policy, by a lot of people who are of a similar sensibility and there are many advantages to having a senior experienced figure in the presidency. You’ve been there, you’ve seen things. On a host of issues, it can be very, very beneficial, but there are times when it isn’t beneficial; There are times when your long experience locks you into a sensibility that you can’t get out of – Well, that you should be able to get out of, and many people do, but that he has not. Marc, I’ve written a lot of books about media and I am always charting the changing platforms and changing approaches to media in this country. One of the things that a lot of parents say is they wish their kids would spend less time on their phones, i.e. looking at that screen. And I’ve said, since I started this conflict, I wish Joe Biden would spend more time on his phone.
Why are young people so passionate about Gaza? Why are young Americans so passionate about changing our policies regarding Israel-Palestine? It’s because they’re seeing in real-time on their phones, on their social media feeds, and all the feeds they get on their phone, they’re seeing images of massive deaths, tens of thousands killed, children dying, and overwhelming destruction of a region of the world with great history and both human and cultural significance on this planet. There’s no place that isn’t significant, but this is one that people know. And if you’re Christian, Muslim, Jewish, you know this as a particularly –
Marc Steiner: It hits close to home in America.
John Nichols: – It does. These young people are seeing that imagery on a daily basis. I don’t think Biden’s spending enough time on his phone; If he was, I think he’d understand why these sentiments are so intense. They’re not rooted in flippancy or a casual approach to the issues, they’re rooted in knowledge. And until Biden recognizes that, I sense that he runs the very real risk of putting himself way on the wrong side of history. And standing on the wrong side of history has defeated many presidents in the long story of this American experiment.
I’ll close with one thought and that is this: Joe Biden tells us, and with some validity, that this is an incredibly important election, that we run the risk of losing not just the White House if Biden loses, but also potentially American democracy, that there’s an authoritarian threat. He talks about that a lot in his criticism of Donald Trump. Well, if it is such an important election, if it is so very vital, then why isn’t Joe Biden taking seriously the message that he could lose this election because of his failure to think more deeply about what’s going on in Gaza?
Marc Steiner: I appreciate your time, John Nichols, and I agree. We are facing a very critical moment and it’s fraught with so many complexities from the future of Palestinian people murdered, seeing all these people being mowed down, entire infrastructures being torn apart, antisemitism on the rise to boot, and all that dovetailing into a very dangerous future for the US in our election. And that means a very dangerous future for the planet. And it’s a really tense moment that we have to keep on top of and fight for the best.
John, I want to thank you for the work you do, and thanks again for joining us here today on The Marc Steiner Show. We’re going to post Michigan Voters Made It Clear: Biden’s Gaza Policy Threatens His Reelection on this podcast so you can download that and read it as well. John Nichols, thanks so much for your work, and once again, thank you so much for joining us.
John Nichols: Thanks, Marc. It was good to be with you.
Marc Steiner: Once again, thank you to John Nichols for all the work he does for this country and the work he writes and shares with all of us. We’ll continue our reporting about the Gaza War of Annihilation and on the election we face this year in the US. Thank you all for joining us today. Thanks to David Hebden for running the show and editing this program, the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. We’ll link to the work of John Nichols on our site here at The Real News, and I’ll bring you more conversations and stories about the War on Gaza and the fight for peace in the holy land. Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, and what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Stay tuned for more conversations about Palestine and Israel here on The Real News. Thanks for joining us today.
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