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
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here in 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. And 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 United States 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 that 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, who’s a national affairs correspondent for the nation, author over a dozen books about American socialism, Democratic Party, and more. His latest co-written with Bernie Sanders, It’s Okay To Be Angry About Capitalism, that’s a bestseller. And his latest article of The Nation is Michigan Voters Made It Clear Biden’s Gaza Policy Threatens His Reelection. And 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 really 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 in. And yet, especially in eastern Michigan around Wayne County, Detroit, Dearborn, Ann Arbor, there’s just an understanding that this is a war that the United States 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, an other major suburb of Detroit. And in fact, Dearborn has the highest per capita Muslim population of any city in the United States. In addition, Muslims and Arab Americans, Christians as well, have been very present in eastern Michigan for a very, very long time.
And so the war in Gaza is understood as something that is very personal and very real there. People have family member. They have extended circles and connections to Gaza. And 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. And 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. And they 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 policy as regards to 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.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
John Nichols:
And 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 a 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.
And so a lot of things came into play with this uncommitted vote, with what happened in the primary. And obviously, as you note, I wrote a good deal about it because I think this is a very, very serious moment for Biden’s reelection campaign.
Marc Steiner:
Just before we started this conversation, Max Alvarez, editor-in-chief here at The Real News, just showed me that on March the fifth, 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 on, 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 that are involved, especially in Michigan, say that as frustrating as it is for them, they will probably vote for Biden in November, right? They are inclined to support Biden, people like Andy Levin, but they desperately, desperately want him to change his stance as regards Gaza for moral reasons, they believe the war is wrong, 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, that’s 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, may come out for a presidential election.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
John Nichols:
And what they’re saying in Michigan, and I think 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. And 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:
So I’ve been covering this war since the beginning pretty intensely. And 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, and many women and children among them, but the effect that this war is actually having on the body politic in America-
John Nichols:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
… that I think 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 really affect the future of this country.
John Nichols:
I don’t think there’s any question, Marc. And obviously, you’re one of the great kind of 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, and I think a lot about protest movements and how they develop and how they manifest in our politics. And this is clearly one of the great foreign policy protest movements in American history. It’s not as big as the anti-Vietnam War movement,-
Marc Steiner:
Right.
John Nichols:
… but I think it’s very comparable to what we saw as regards Central America and apartheid back in the 80s. It’s comparable, I think, not… You can debate the numbers and that, but comparable, I think, to what we saw before the Iraq War. And so 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, multi religions, pleading for the United States to support a ceasefire in Gaza, and also to stop funding the Israeli military. And it was only a matter of time before this protest movement, this street-based protest movement, which also has some significant congressional support, would begin to have a political presence.
And I think that if the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel, Israeli [inaudible 00:09:49] and the music festival, and then the immediate Israeli response to it, if that had come a couple months earlier, my suspicion is, and then you’d seen the development of this anti-war movement of this protest movement, I think you would’ve seen a serious primary challenge to Biden from perhaps even 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, Dean Phillips, did make statements supportive of ceasefire, but they never really made that central to their campaigning as a way, say a Jean McCarthy or a 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’ve 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?” And I think what’s happened is they’ve discovered the uncommitted line. And my sense is 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, this 100,000 votes for uncommitted was rooted in Arab American, Muslim American communities, which are very large in Michigan.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
John Nichols:
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, and Dearborn and Hamtramck. That’s the county with the largest Muslim American population and cities, right? 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, disproportionately high vote and favor uncommitted. But also, Washtenaw County next to it, that’s Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. That’s the college towns.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
John Nichols:
And the vote for uncommitted was just as high in those college towns, in fact, in some cases higher than over 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, and 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 actually have a profound effect on the coming election because people have supported Israel for decades, since the beginning of Israel in 1948, but it’s waning. And 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 literally 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 kind of stand to end this war. I think the US may be the only country on the planet that even has a possibility of ending this war.
John Nichols:
Right. Well, look, 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. And so yes, and as we speak, there’s a little question that Secretary of State Blinken and others are trying to develop some sort of ceasefire plan, but it’s probably a temporary ceasefire, not an immediate and permanent ceasefire, which is obviously what’s desperately needed. And 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.
And 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, whether he likes it or not, he has clearly identified with supporting Netanyahu, clearly 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 [inaudible 00:14:54]
Marc Steiner:
Right.
John Nichols:
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. Now again, none of these people are just talking politics. They’re also talking morality, right? 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’s 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,
Marc Steiner:
Right.
John Nichols:
Right? 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, that 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 regards to Gaza, or they might just leave the presidential line blank on their ballot, or they might not vote altogether. All of those factors hurt Joe Biden, right? They’re likely to hurt Joe Biden as a candidate for reelection, especially in battleground states in a tough reelection year. And then finally, there’s something else. This is a big deal. There are hundreds and hundreds of the brightest young people, Muslims, Christians, Jews, non-religious folks who were key players in Biden’s 2020 campaign, who literally ran his digital campaigns, his grassroots organizing, his mobilization in states across the country, they have signed letters saying he has to change his policy if he wants them to get excited and engaged again in 2024.
Just the other night, I spoke to a woman who ran Biden’s digital campaign in Wisconsin, one of the ultimate battleground states, critical state 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, 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 just on the voting numbers and what we see on election day or what we see in the polls, but political processes in the United States are mass mobilizations. They are the activity in which more Americans participate than anything else, right?
More people vote than watch the Super Bowl. I hope I’m right about that. I think I am. Or then do just about anything else. But to get all those people to vote, you have to mobilize, right? 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 a activist mobilization issue. And so at this point, I think 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:
So one last thing here as we close our conversation for today. No one expects Joe Biden to drape himself from 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 to cease fire now. We’re going to bring all the parties to the table. I believe in negotiations. We need peace in the Middle East. We’re going to find a way to live together, and let’s stop,” and maybe behind the scenes saying Netanyahu, “It also has to do with military aid. This bill is not going through Congress until the war ends”?
John Nichols:
Right.
Marc Steiner:
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 United States?
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,-
Marc Steiner:
Right.
John Nichols:
… unless you start negotiating.” Right? 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:
And I’ve seen him in a lot of settings, and actually 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 I think that Joe Biden is stuck in the Senate he came to in 1973, and I think that 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.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
John Nichols:
He was still a first term senator in ’77, ’78 in that period there. And so I think he developed a sensibility as regards the Middle East that was… It was very pro-Israel and very Zionist, frankly, pro-Zionist, and that was very much in sync with a lot of people at that time. And I think that he sympathized to some extent with Jimmy Carter’s efforts to find peace in the region. But I think he still at… His default position has always been to be on Israel’s side and to have a limited understanding of the circumstance of the Palestinians. That doesn’t mean he’s ignorant, but it just means that’s not where his head is at. And I think he’s surrounded, especially on foreign policy, by a lot of people who are of a similar sensibility, right? And there are many advantages to having a senior experienced figure in the presidency. You’ve been there, you’ve seen things.
I think 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. And one of the things I always say… Marc, I’ve written a lot of books about media, and I am always kind of charting the changing platforms as changing approaches to media in this country. And 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 because why are young people so passionate about Gaza?
Why are young Americans so passionate about changing our policy as regards to Israel-Palestine, our policies as regards to Israel-Palestine? I think 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 death, tens of thousands killed children dying, overwhelming destruction of a region of the world, 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 one 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. And I think 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. I think they’re rooted in knowledge. And I think that until Biden recognizes that, my sense is 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.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
John Nichols:
And I guess I’d close with just one thought, and that is this, Joe Biden tells us, and I think 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. I think that 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 just being mowed down, entire infrastructure being torn apart, antisemitism on the rise to boot, all that kind of dovetailing into a very dangerous future for the United States in our election, and that means a very dangerous future for the planet. And I think that it’s a really tense moment that we have to keep on top of and fight for the best. And John, I want to thank you for the work you do, and thanks again for joining us here today on this Marc Steiner Show. And 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 and for all the work he does for this country and the work that he writes and shares with all of us. And we’ll continue our reporting about the Gaza War of Annihilation and on the election we face this year in the United States. And once again, thank you all for joining us today. And thanks to David Hebden for running the show and editing this program and 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. So please, let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. And stay tuned for more conversations about Palestine and Israel here on The Real News. Thanks for joining us today.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.