United States: Joe Biden has won the Democratic primary election in Michigan amid facing significant opposition over his support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
A campaign to vote “uncommitted” emerged a few weeks before the primary as a form of protest against his support for Israel’s war on Gaza. The campaign signalled deep anger and betrayal among some Arab Americans who sympathise with Biden and the state’s young voters.
A group named “Listen to Michigan” encouraged voters to choose “uncommitted” in the primary elections. Their goal was to receive 10,000 uncommitted votes, which is roughly the same margin that Biden won in Michigan in 2020.
Nevertheless, “uncommitted” received almost 23,000 votes, which is 17 percent of the total votes. For context, in the 2012 election, then-President Barack Obama ran unopposed, but nearly 21,000 people voted “uncommitted” against him in that state’s primary, for a total of 1,94,000 votes.
After the polls closed and the results came in, the Listen to Michigan campaign gathered at a banquet hall in Dearborn. There have been several people who have so far embraced and celebrated the “uncommitted” campaign, many of whom have donned keffiyehs in black and white. Listen to Michigan spokesman Abbas Alawieh holding a moment of silence in honour of “every human life that was taken from us too soon with the use of US taxpayer funds and bombs.”
The organisers of the “uncommitted” effort have defined the results as their campaign’s success in showing opposition in the critical swing state to Biden’s relentless backing for Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Layla Elabed initiated the campaign at the beginning of February. She said that, “Thank you to our local and national progressive organisations and our voters of conscience, who used our democratic process to vote against war, genocide, and the destruction of a people and a land.”
Andy Levin, the former congressman and an early and main local backer of the push to vote “uncommitted”, named the movement “a child of necessity” and stated that the turnout so far was “a huge victory.” “There is no hope for security and peace for the Jewish people without security and peace and freedom and justice for the Palestinian people,” Levin added.
The “Listen to Michigan” campaign aimed to caution President Biden to reconsider his unchanging backing for Israel’s military actions in Gaza. This campaign holds particular importance in Michigan due to the substantial population of Arab Americans residing in the state, who supported Biden significantly during the 2020 election.
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