When I read or listen to white people in the media talking about
Biden’s approach to this crisis—I’ve heard pundits call Biden’s trip to
Israel his “finest hour”—I’m left with the impression that they just don’t know or haven’t considered how electorally disastrous
it could be for Biden to lose Muslim and Arab American support. There
are over 200,000 Muslims living in Virginia; there are 150,000 Arab
Americans; in 2020, Biden won that state by around only 500,000 votes.
In Michigan, there are over 350,000 Muslims; 200,000 Arab Americans live
in the state; Biden won that state by around only 150,000 votes. Any
significant weakening of this support puts Virginia in play, and makes
Michigan functionally unwinnable for Biden. And I shouldn’t have to tell
you that there is simply no path to Biden’s Electoral College success
without Virginia and Michigan.
If we broaden things out beyond the Muslim and Arab American
populations, there are other dangers. If young, college-age people of
color sour on Biden and stay home, Biden has problems across the upper
Midwest. And anything less than overwhelming and enthusiastic support
from African American voters costs Biden Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Perhaps in response to this basic electoral math, Biden has in recent
days appeared to soften his tone. In an address to the nation from the
Oval Office on Thursday night, Biden tried to express empathy for both
Israelis and Palestinians. He denounced anti-Semitism and
Islamophobia. He said that we “can’t ignore the humanity of the
Palestinian people,” and said that Israel would follow the “laws of war”
and protect Palestinian civilians “as best they can.” During his visit
to Israel last week, Biden said that Israel should not make the same
mistakes this country made after 9/11, an extraordinary statement both
because American presidents don’t often admit to war mistakes,
particularly on foreign soil, and because this particular American
president was, in fact, a cheerleader for our post-9/11 wars of
vengeance.
The president used nice words, but it escaped no one’s notice that he
was saying all of these appropriate words regarding the dignity and
humanity of the Palestinian people while justifying his request to send
billions of dollars in military aid and weapons to Israel. Biden did not
call for a cease-fire, did not call for a de-escalation, and did not
even call for “peace.”
I know that some people, establishment politicians especially, want
this speech to be enough. They want to acknowledge the humanity of
Palestinians, while treating the government actively denying them human
rights as a passive force without alternative choices. But that frame
simply isn’t working on voters of color who know all too well how
powerful governments justify killing us. From where I sit, his speech
did nothing to instill confidence in voters of color that Biden will
take a stand against war crimes. His “bear-hug Bibi”
strategy (which is to say, the idea that Biden should get close enough
to the Israeli government that he can use soft power to restrain it)
might play well in diplomatic circles and among voters who are inclined
to give Biden the benefit of the doubt, but, on the street, all people
are seeing is the blank check Biden appears to be giving to Israel, and
none of the restraint. This isn’t a “messaging” problem for the Biden
administration. The problem is that Biden’s actions scream to the world that he values an Israeli child more than a Palestinian one.
It also must be said that Biden’s lack of support for Palestinians is
being viewed in the context of his enthusiastic support for Ukraine.
The situations are far from analogous, but Biden literally linked his
support for Ukraine and support for Israel together in his Oval Office
address. It’s a politically tone-deaf comparison for Biden to make,
because linking the two doesn’t work in his favor. It’s simply not lost
on voters of color that when a white country was invaded, Biden sent
guns and missiles and money, while all he seems to have for Palestinians
is some bottles of water chucked at them from Egypt, and the hard-won
pronouncement that not every single one of them is a terrorist who
should be deleted from existence.
Remember too that, whenever the Republican House of Representatives
stops beclowning itself as comic relief for the rest of the world, the
very first thing they’re going to do is pass a massive aid package, at
Biden’s request, that sends literal billions of dollars to Ukraine and
Israel. I can tell you right now, that package is going to go over like a
bag of bricks among Black voters. While Biden is functionally making it
rain on foreign allies, the child poverty rate—which
disproportionately affects Black families—has doubled. Is it fair to
blame Biden for Manchin’s inconceivable decision to let American kids go
hungry? No. Is it easy to explain to a struggling Black family why we
have money to aid Ukraine and Israel but not Detroit and Philadelphia?
No, it is not.
Let me first say that, as a Black person, I
am getting really sick of white liberals using Trump as a specter who
will emerge from white people’s closets to punish Black people for
anything less than full-throated support of Biden. Just ask Jim Jordan
how threatening people you need to vote for you works out.
Moreover, I feel like white commentators too easily forget that we
live in a country where Trump is a looming threat only because a
significant majority of their own cousins and uncles and spouses are
set, once again, to vote for a raving orange clown, no matter how many
times he gets indicted for crimes. White folks are the ones threatening
the future of American democracy: To save it, Democrats need
supermajorities of Latino, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Arab
American voters, and they need Black people to continue supporting
Democrats by well over 80 percent margins, and they need all those
groups to turn out. So, just maybe, the white anti-Trump crowd could
listen to voters of color with some respect when they try to tell you
what’s wrong with their political approach.
In any event, the “Trump would be worse” argument, while
unquestionably true, isn’t the slam-dunk white Democrats want it to be.
At least not now, when Biden is the one in charge, and Biden is the one
standing with a hard-right foreign regime that is perceived as denying
political participation, freedom, and basic human rights to an oppressed
population.
Of course “now” is an important word when discussing the politics of the moment. A reasonable defense of Biden’s political
calculus is, perhaps, not that his position is defensible to voters of
color but that in 13 months many of those voters won’t care about his
indefensible positions. I’ve certainly noticed that at least some of the
people who are suddenly concerned about a free Palestine couldn’t have
found the Gaza Strip on a map before Hamas killed over a thousand
Israelis. People who didn’t care about the intolerable conditions in
Gaza three weeks ago might well not care about the situation there 13
months from now. If there is one thing I know for a locked fact about
the American electorate, white, Black, brown, or other, it’s that we are
a fickle, ill-informed, deeply unserious people.
And yet, the fact is that this war has scarcely begun. Israel is preparing for a ground invasion (one that Biden has given his “private backing”
to, of course), and when it invades, its soldiers will be fighting an
urban war against a terrorist group using guerrilla tactics. It will not
be quick. It will not be pretty. Civilians will die. Pictures of the
dead will be shared on the Internet. And even if the war does somehow,
remarkably, end soon, the larger situation will remain far from
resolved.
I don’t think Biden or his administration knows how bad it has been
for him with his non-white base over the past few weeks. I know that
while some people have tried to get the message through privately, many
of the people, like me, who would normally be raising the alarm publicly
have been terrified of saying anything. Speaking for myself, I’m
worried that anything less than full-throated support for the Biden
administration and the Israeli government will be amplified by
anti-Semites to justify the slaughter of Jews, and I’m also worried that
anything less than full-throated support for the Biden administration
and the Israeli government—literally any sympathy for the plight of
Palestinians—will be twisted in such a way as to label me a terrorist
sympathizer who stands with Hamas. For the first time in my life, I’d
rather be writing about Clarence Thomas.
But I write because I want Biden to get reelected, and that simply
cannot happen without the overwhelming support of young people and
people of color. I write because the Arab American activist who has to
go door to door in their community to drum up votes for Biden in
Michigan is getting no help from the administration. I write because the
Black voter registration volunteer who is trying to get people excited
to vote for Biden is getting laughed out of the apocryphal barber shop. I
write because Biden is losing, and if he continues to only listen to
white media pundits who go on Fox News to laud his speeches, he will spend 2025 working on his presidential library from Delaware.
If you see Biden running around next October playing defense in
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, you’ll know that he got this
message too late. Democrats have a nasty habit of listening to non-white
voters for only six weeks every four years. If Biden tries that
strategy this time, Black and brown voters might stay home, and white
people will elect Trump to unleash Armageddon.
