{"id":1541055,"date":"2024-03-07T11:56:44","date_gmt":"2024-03-07T11:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/03\/uncommitted-vote-joe-biden-reelection\/"},"modified":"2024-03-07T12:14:43","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T12:14:43","slug":"support-for-uncommitted-runs-deep-enough-to-threaten-biden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/07\/support-for-uncommitted-runs-deep-enough-to-threaten-biden\/","title":{"rendered":"Support for \u201cUncommitted\u201d Runs Deep Enough to Threaten Biden"},"content":{"rendered":"\n  \n\n\n\n<h3>Drilling down into the county results and behind the scenes details of Tuesday\u2019s results shows Michigan wasn\u2019t a flash in the pan. Democratic disgust with Joe Biden\u2019s genocide support is deep and widespread \u2014 enough to seriously threaten his reelection.<\/h3>\n<hr\/>\n\n<figure>\n  <img alt src=\"https:\/\/images.jacobinmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/07115150\/GettyImages-2008453483-900x600.jpg\"\/>\n  <figcaption>\n    Joe Biden speaks on the Senate's recent passage of the National Security Supplemental Bill, which provides military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, on February 13, 2024, in Washington, DC.(Anna Moneymaker \/ Getty Images)\n  <\/figcaption>   \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n  \n  <p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2024\/03\/11\/joe-bidens-last-campaign\">central<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/article\/joe-biden-2024-election-strategy-trump.html\">conceit<\/a> of the 2024 Joe Biden reelection campaign is that the president can ignore voter anger over his support for Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza, but that he will still turn out the broad, historic voter coalition that brought him to power four years ago simply because Donald Trump is his opponent. That gamble got another major dent on Super Tuesday, when voters turned out in droves in several Democratic primaries to register their indifference to his reelection by voting \u201cuncommitted\u201d or \u201cno preference.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Organized over the space of a week and on what could at times only generously be called shoestring budgets, the hundreds of thousands of voters that antiwar activists were able to turn out for the effort across the country is a testament to the deep dissatisfaction among key parts of the Democratic base with President Biden only eight months out from the election, particularly over his handling of Israel\u2019s war. More alarming for Biden and the Democratic establishment, it shows there are enough disgruntled voters around the country to potentially cost him key states in November and jeopardize his reelection, if he doesn\u2019t change course.<\/p>\n\n  \n\n    \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>Great Shakes<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>As of the time of writing, nearly forty-six thousand voters (18.9 percent) chose \u201cuncommitted\u201d over the president in Minnesota, leaving the state on track to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox9.com\/election\/uncommitted-voters-minnesota\">send eleven delegates<\/a> to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August. In what should be an ominous sign for the Biden reelection campaign, that number is higher than the slim 44,593-vote margin that Hillary Clinton won the state by against Trump in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s another remarkable result for the \u201cuncommitted\u201d movement, which <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/02\/michigan-primary-uncommitted-joe-biden-gaza\">sent tremors<\/a> through the White House and Democratic Party circles last week by turning out nearly 101,000 voters (13 percent) in purple Michigan, after only three weeks of organizing and only $200,000 of funding. This time, the \u201cuncommitted\u201d campaign \u2014 driven by a coalition of Muslim Americans, anti-Zionist Jewish groups, young voters, and left-wing organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) \u2014 had even less to work with: eight days and only $20,000. Many of the state\u2019s pro-cease-fire voters called up by phone-bankers in advance of the vote didn\u2019t even know about the campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, after making hundreds of thousands of calls in the days leading up to the vote, the campaign was responsible for the president\u2019s weakest result of the night, with Biden far underperforming the last two times an incumbent president was on a primary ballot in the state. The 2012 Democratic primary in Minnesota <a href=\"https:\/\/electionresults.sos.mn.gov\/Results\/Caucus?ersElectionId=84&amp;partyid=1&amp;Scenario=CaucusForSingleParty\">saw<\/a> \u201cuncommitted\u201d get only 3.7 percent (643 votes) against Barack Obama, while the closest equivalent in the 2020 GOP primary (write-in votes) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sos.state.mn.us\/elections-voting\/election-results\/2020\/2020-presidential-primary-results\/\">drew<\/a> 2.3 percent (3,280) against Trump.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--right\"><q>Minnesota was far from the only bright red warning sign for Biden Tuesday night, suggesting that the campaign\u2019s looming troubles in the Midwest are creeping beyond that region.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p>\u201cUncommitted\u201d pulled in its strongest showings in the populous Hennepin (26 percent) and Ramsey (24 percent) Counties, respectively home to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. The president\u2019s dominance in both was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mprnews.org\/story\/2020\/11\/05\/2020-demonstrates-power-limits-of-dfl-urban-dominance\">crucial<\/a> to his ability to successfully nullify Trump\u2019s advantage in the state\u2019s rural areas in 2020, Hennepin County in particular, where Biden ran up\u00a0 a massive lead of 322,000 votes on the back of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mprnews.org\/story\/2020\/11\/06\/high-voter-turnout-a-sign-of-fraud-not-really\">surging voter turnout<\/a> in urban counties. Tuesday night, Hennepin delivered Biden his single worst performance in all of the state\u2019s counties.<\/p>\n<p>But Minnesota was far from the only bright red warning sign for Biden Tuesday night, suggesting that the campaign\u2019s looming troubles in the Midwest are creeping beyond that region.<\/p>\n<p>On the East Coast, another battleground state, North Carolina, saw 88,021 voters (12.7 percent) check \u201cno preference\u201d on the Democratic primary ballot. As in Minnesota, that result was achieved after only a week of organizing, according to Travis Wayne, cochair of North Carolina Triangle DSA, one of several of the organization\u2019s chapters that formed the coalition of groups driving the No Preference Y\u2019All campaign. What followed was a \u201cfuriously quick campaign,\u201d he says, that unlike both Minnesota and Michigan was driven entirely by unpaid volunteer work.<\/p>\n<p>The total of \u201cno preference\u201d votes in North Carolina far outdid the 20,085 voters (2.5 percent) who in the 2020 GOP primary pulled the lever for \u201cno preference\u201d over Trump, who still won the state that year for the second time in a row. More significantly, it also beat the 74,481-vote margin by which Trump beat Biden in the state later that year. According to Wayne, the campaign set that particular number as its target \u201cto demonstrate the power of North Carolinian voters to send a message to Biden that the demand for a ceasefire is strong enough to decide the election for him, in the heart of the South.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can swing an election entirely with antiwar votes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n        \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>A New \u201cNo Preference\u201d Electorate<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>The No Preference Y\u2019All campaign was centered on three core strategies: targeting voter outreach to mosques, organizing on campuses, and speaking to voters at the polls, or \u201cpoll greeting.\u201d According to internal numbers from North Carolina Triangle DSA, locations where poll greeting took place ended up with an average \u201cno preference\u201d vote of 29.3 percent, roughly ten points higher than voting sites where there were none.<\/p>\n<p>The White House may be soothed by the fact that \u201cno preference\u201d fell far short of the total it <a href=\"https:\/\/er.ncsbe.gov\/?election_dt=05\/08\/2012&amp;county_id=0&amp;office=FED&amp;contest=1120\">racked up<\/a> against Barack Obama in the state\u2019s 2012 primary, when it won nearly 201,000 votes (20.8 percent). But that was a year in which Obama\u2019s reelection chances were widely viewed as in peril, with the then president\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/the-fix\/post\/obama-loses-more-than-40-percent-of-kentucky-primary-voters-to-uncommitted-option\/2012\/05\/22\/gIQAlYHEjU_blog.html\">dramatic<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/centerforpolitics.org\/crystalball\/articles\/obama-and-the-primaries-more-here-than-meets-the-eye\/\">underperformance<\/a> in primaries in North Carolina and the rest of the South \u2014 though <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/the-fix\/post\/the-anti-obama-democrats\/2012\/05\/22\/gIQArS7MiU_blog.html\">not only<\/a> the South \u2014 flagged by analysts as a dangerous sign for his general election chances.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond that, Obama\u2019s 2012 underperformance in North Carolina was also largely driven by dissatisfaction among the white, rural areas that Democrats no longer prioritize in their voter coalitions, and which Trump has dominated in the past two elections. This year, it was North Carolina\u2019s most urban and populous counties, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsobserver.com\/news\/politics-government\/article246983722.html\">responsible<\/a> for a large share of the Democratic vote in the state the last two presidential elections, that drove the \u201cno preference\u201d vote against Biden.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--left\"><q>Joe Biden stands to lose substantial voter turnout in the only parts of North Carolina left that still vote heavily for Democrats.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p>The seven populous counties that delivered Clinton and Biden the lion\u2019s share of their respective vote totals against Trump in the state \u2014 Wake, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth, Cumberland, Durham, and Buncombe \u2014 were responsible for just shy of half (49 percent) of North Carolina\u2019s \u201cno preference\u201d votes against Biden. In 2012, they delivered a little under a quarter (23.5 percent) of the total \u201cno preference\u201d votes against Obama, and at a time when Democrats were more competitive in rural areas.<\/p>\n<p>Another foreboding sign: the racially diverse Robeson County, for decades a Democratic stronghold that went twice for Obama before swinging hard for Trump the last two cycles, was responsible for Biden\u2019s single weakest showing in the state (63 percent) and the strongest for \u201cno preference\u201d (37 percent). Four years ago, Robeson moved <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wunc.org\/news\/2020-11-12\/in-robeson-county-a-place-that-once-voted-strongly-for-obama-trump-made-the-biggest-gains\">further toward Trump<\/a> than any other county in the state, with twelve of its fourteen Native American\u2013majority precincts going for the then incumbent.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, if the \u201cno preference\u201d vote is a sign of things to come in the general election, Biden will not just have forfeited North Carolina\u2019s rural voters \u2014 he stands to lose substantial voter turnout in the only parts of the state left that still vote heavily for Democrats.<\/p>\n\n        \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>Mountain of Opposition<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>The \u201cuncommitted\u201d and \u201cno preference\u201d vote carried threatening omens for the president come November in other states, even when the results were less dramatic.<\/p>\n<p>Massachusetts saw \u201cno preference\u201d take 9.3 percent of the vote, one point less than its share against Obama in 2012, though only in percentage terms. In terms of raw vote total, nearly fifty-nine thousand voters (9.3 percent) came out to the polls on Tuesday to rebuke the president, nearly four times the number of voters who felt the need to do so twelve years ago, and fourteen times the number of GOP voters that similarly rebuked their president in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>As elsewhere, the Massachusetts campaign achieved this with little time and even fewer resources. The coalition only met for the first time last Friday morning, says Massachusetts Peace Action executive director Cole Harrison (though some of the groups involved had begun organizing around the issue earlier that week), and raised the bulk of the $5,000 they used to fund the campaign between Sunday night and Monday morning this week. The result was a \u201cmeaningful showing\u201d on the night, Harrison says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to change the policy, we want a cease-fire, we want them to stop sending arms, we want immediate effective humanitarian aid,\u201d he says. \u201cWe saw a change in tone from the vice president on Sunday, and that was positive, but there\u2019s no policy change yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--right\"><q>We saw a change in tone from the vice president on Sunday, and that was positive, but there\u2019s no policy change yet.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p>Over in Colorado, which went overwhelmingly blue the last two cycles, the \u201cnoncommitted delegate\u201d took 8.8 percent of the vote as of the time of writing, or just under fifty thousand votes. This was the first year the option was available on Colorado\u2019s Democratic ballot, and the state\u2019s 2012 primary was a caucus that Obama, because of the unique nature of that system, won with 100 percent of the vote, making this particular number somewhat difficult to interpret.<\/p>\n<p>The incumbent Trump\u2019s performance in the state in 2020 may offer a point of comparison, though. Trump won 92 percent of the Colorado vote that year, with his five challengers taking 6.8 percent between them, or 52,381 votes. By contrast, with a bit less than a fifth of the vote still to be counted, \u201cnoncommitted delegate\u201d and Minnesota representative Dean Phillips, the sole other Biden challenger on the ballot, has already taken a markedly higher share (11.9 percent) and total (67,599) of votes against Biden than Trump\u2019s rivals had against him. As it stands, \u201cnoncomitted delegate\u201d will be going into the DNC with seven delegates.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUncommitted\u201d was also on the ballot in solid red Tennessee, Alabama, and Iowa, where it drew 7.9 percent, 6 percent, and 3.9 percent of the vote, respectively. In Hawaii\u2019s caucus, it drew 29 percent of the vote, or 455 votes, netting \u201cuncommitted\u201d another seven delegates. That puts the total number of delegates opposed to Biden\u2019s support for the Israeli genocide who will be at the DNC this year at twenty-seven \u2014 a potential embarrassment for the president come August.<\/p>\n\n        \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>A Tale of Widespread Disgust<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>One key takeaway from the result is that support for \u201cuncommitted\u201d among Democratic voters is far broader than the heavily Muslim and Arab American parts of Michigan many assumed it would be limited to. Tuesday\u2019s vote shows that, just as in Michigan, it\u2019s the critical demographic of young voters who are helping drive the protest vote against Biden.<\/p>\n<p>Minnesota saw \u201cuncommitted\u201d win big in counties with large Somali American populations like Hennepin and Ramsey, but those counties also happen to be where many of the state\u2019s colleges and universities are clustered. Other Minnesota counties with higher-learning institutions also ran up large totals for \u201cuncommitted,\u201d like Rice County (22 percent), home to Carleton College; Olmsted County (16 percent), site of the University of Minnesota\u2013Rochester; and St Louis County (15 percent), where the University of Minnesota\u2013Duluth is located.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, North Carolina counties home to large numbers of college students were among those that most contributed to driving up the \u201cno preference\u201d vote in the state. Wake County, home to eight colleges and universities, including North Carolina State University, saw the single biggest vote total against Biden of any county: 13,499 votes (12.7 percent). Durham County, the location of North Carolina Central University, saw the \u201cno preference\u201d vote jump by 6 percentage points and three thousand votes since 2012. In the typically solid blue Orange County, which contains the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, support for \u201cno preference\u201d leapt by eight points.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, in Massachusetts, \u201cuncommitted\u201d had its best showings in cities and towns with institutions of higher learning and high numbers of college-age voters, including Somerville (23 percent), Cambridge (17 percent), Northampton (16 percent), Medford (15 percent), and Boston (14 percent).<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--left\"><q>The results of the past two weeks show there are enough left-leaning voters disgusted with the president\u2019s backing of the Israeli genocide to imperil his chances.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p>This is no comfort for the Biden team. The president\u2019s 2020 win was powered by a <a href=\"https:\/\/circle.tufts.edu\/latest-research\/election-week-2020#youth-voter-turnout-increased-in-2020\">massive spike<\/a> in youth turnout from four years earlier and provided critical vote margins for Biden in battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, all of which Clinton lost to Trump. In fact, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/articles\/how-millennials-voted\/\">only presidential election<\/a> that Democrats have won this century <em>without<\/em> turnout among under-thirties exceeding 50 percent was Obama\u2019s fraught 2012 effort, with Democratic nominees falling to the GOP in 2000, 2004, and, famously, in 2016.<\/p>\n\n        \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>Picking a Side<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>As the Israeli destruction of Gaza continues, with famine and disease now rapidly spreading among survivors and a planned invasion of Rafah set to make an already <a href=\"https:\/\/electronicintifada.net\/content\/history-will-record-israel-committed-holocaust\/45006\">unspeakable<\/a> humanitarian crisis <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/03\/05\/israel-rafah-humanitarian-aid-us-cable\/\">virtually apocalyptic<\/a>, \u201cuncommitted\u201d organizers are looking to build on the momentum from the results where they deployed the most resources. The campaign is now <a href=\"https:\/\/actionnetwork.org\/events\/minnesota-uncommitted-and-beyond-mass-mobilization-call?&amp;link_id=1&amp;can_id=1a6902fc37ceba670b8a7ff65c6d3035&amp;email_referrer=email_2233704&amp;email_subject=minnesota-was-a-big-victory-join-our-mass-call-thursday-to-keep-the-mov\">recruiting<\/a> volunteers to phonebank and get out the vote for next week\u2019s primaries in Washington state and Wisconsin.<\/p>\n<p>If the \u201cno preference\u201d total is taken as a proxy for Democratic voters who plan to stay home in November, the Biden team should be very worried. The results of the past two weeks show there are enough left-leaning voters disgusted with the president\u2019s backing of the Israeli genocide to imperil his chances\u00a0 in both blue and purple states Democrats have won the last two cycles, and push those they have narrowly lost further out of reach.<\/p>\n<p>Though there are <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/03\/kamala-harris-gaza-cease-fire\">signs<\/a> the White House is listening, it remains stubbornly committed to not changing course in practical terms. After <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/our-columnists\/michigans-uncommitted-democrats-send-a-message-to-biden#:~:text=In%20a%20statement%20that%20Biden,is%20what%20makes%20America%20great.%E2%80%9D\">refusing<\/a> to mention the \u201cuncommitted\u201d vote after last week\u2019s Michigan primary, the Biden campaign <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/03\/05\/us\/politics\/biden-uncommitted-protest-vote-minnesota.html\">issued a statement<\/a> after Minnesota affirming that \u201cmaking your voice heard and participating in our democracy is fundamental to who we are as Americans,\u201d and insisting that Biden is \u201cworking tirelessly\u201d toward \u201can end to the violence\u201d \u2014 even as he continues <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national-security\/2024\/03\/06\/us-weapons-israel-gaza\/\">circumventing Congress<\/a> to send Israel weapons and just <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/03\/kamala-harris-gaza-cease-fire\">told<\/a> Israeli officials to \u201chelp us help you\u201d keep the war going.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the president issued a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/metzgov\/status\/1765395873767313476'\">statement<\/a> yesterday praising <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/02\/nikki-haley-trumpism-gop-nomination\">hard-right<\/a> GOP candidate Nikki Haley and warmly telling her voters that \u201cthere is a place for them in my campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n\n        \n           \n    \n\n   \n  <hr\/>\n  \n\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2024\/03\/uncommitted-vote-joe-biden-reelection\/\">Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The central conceit of the 2024 Joe Biden reelection campaign is that the president can ignore voter anger over his support for Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza, but that he will still turn out the broad, historic voter coalition that brought him to power four years ago simply because Donald Trump is his opponent. That gamble [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1445,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1445"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1541055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1541056,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541055\/revisions\/1541056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1541055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1541055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1541055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}