DEARBORN, Michigan — Political fallout from the deadly Israel-Hamas war is reverberating strongly 6,000 miles away in this Detroit suburb, and it’s possibly threatening President Joe Biden’s reelection chances.
Dearborn, with about 110,000 residents, has the largest proportion of Arab Americans in the United States. People of Middle Eastern or North African ancestry make up the majority of the city’s population, 54.5%, per 2020 census data.
Many are none-too-happy with the Biden administration’s support for Israel in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza after the Oct. 7 attacks in the nation’s southern tier claimed about 1,200 lives. An estimated 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed amid Israel’s efforts to root out Hamas from the area, though Israel says a significant minority of those killed are Hamas terrorists.
Some locals in Dearborn and surrounding southwestern Michigan communities are threatening to withhold support from Biden in the looming rematch against his vanquished 2020 Republican rival, former President Donald Trump. Michigan is key to any Democratic plan to nab the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House. After Trump narrowly won Michigan in 2016, cracking the longtime “blue wall” when combined with his upset victories in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Democrats came roaring back in 2020, with Biden beating Trump 50.62% to 47.84%.
Yet key demographics that helped Biden’s 2020 winning coalition in the state are now creating electoral complications. A protest vote against Biden organized by members of Michigan’s Arab and Muslim community, supported by many younger Democrats, dominated headlines regarding the state’s Democratic primary last month.
More than 110,000 Democrats marked themselves as “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Feb. 27 primary, which Biden won with 81.1% of the vote. The “uncommitted” column constituted 13.2% of the vote.
That was more than 10 times the modest aim of the “Listen to Michigan” campaign, the highest-profile protest vote effort. Listen to Michigan was led by Layla Elabed, sister of Israel-hostile Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the only Palestinian American in Congress. Tlaib was recently censured by the House in part for using the phrase “From the river to the sea,” a longtime rallying cry of terrorist groups such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Low Democratic enthusiasm?
But even if Biden did address all of such concerns with the Israel-Hamas war and U.S. foreign policy regarding Israel, he still has to contend with low enthusiasm for his candidacy among Michigan’s important black and working-class constituencies.
The Middle East conflict “is a problem for Joe Biden. I just don’t think it represents the largest problem, even within this community, for Biden in November,” Michigan State University Institute for Public Policy and Social Research Director Matt Grossmann said in an interview.
That’s because black Michigan Democrats, though sympathetic concerning the humanitarian crisis for Palestinians in Gaza, are emphasizing other priorities.
“The black community, the problem is violence, guns, unemployment, etc.,” Detroit-based Democratic political commentator Adolph Mongo said.
“The Gaza Strip is at 11th, 12th, 13th, or the 20th in line,” Mongo said in an interview. “The people that I talk to think about, they’re thinking about how we can stop 11-year-olds from getting shot in their homes by drive-bys, high incarceration rates, drugs running rampant. Those are the issues that we need to be addressed.”
No place for Democrats to go
The Biden campaign, while keeping a watchful eye on Michigan, like other swing states, doesn’t seem particularly worried about defections to Trump or even dampened Democratic voter participation in the general election. Supporters know the alternative would be another Trump term. Trump, as president, oversaw the “Muslim ban” of people to the U.S. from certain countries, which the Supreme Court upheld in its third iteration. And Trump’s foreign policy was arguably even more pro-Israel than Biden’s has been.
Although Vice President Kamala Harris recently called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Biden campaign appears confident that “uncommitted” Michigan Democrats will back the president. While those associated with the Listen to Michigan campaign have indicated that is a possibility, those with the Abandon Biden campaign have underscored the opposite. That thinking also does not account for Democrats or independents who decide not to vote at all when, in polling that considers third-party candidates, Trump averages a 4-point lead over Biden in the state, 46% to 42%.
“I’m not going to be scared into voting for Biden, and I think it’s a real insult to Muslims in the United States to act as if we don’t know what living through a Trump presidency would mean,” said Samra’a Luqman, the Abandon Biden campaign Michigan co-chairwoman. “What the primaries showed is that we are already successful, and if this continues, Biden will definitely lose Michigan.”
That’s likely wishful thinking, with support for Israel strong nationally and in most other parts of Michigan. Votes lost to those angry over Biden administration support for Israel are likely to be made up for and then some by suburbanites in and around Detroit, Lansing, Grand Rapids, and other Michigan cities. And that could extend to suburban voters, prized by both parties, in other swing states such as Arizona, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Swaths of Michigan Democratic voters, such as Jackie Kelly-Smith, are ready to support Biden. She’s broken with a former one-term Democratic congressman from the area, Andy Levin, who is a sharp critic of Israel over its military tactics in Gaza.
“The situation that’s going on with Israel and Palestine breaks my heart. But I’m not in agreement with some Democrats, like Andy Levin, suggesting that we vote uncommitted. Because anything that can give Donald Trump an opportunity to become our president again is detrimental to my family,” said Kelly-Smith, Macomb County Democratic Committee’s black caucus chairwoman and a retired UAW worker.
Michigan Republicans are a mess
Democrats in 2024 aren’t facing the most organized bunch when it comes to the Republican opposition. Any advantage Trump may have in Michigan could be undermined by disunity within the state’s Republican Party. The Michigan GOP is grappling with a civil war between two pro-Trump people claiming they are chairperson after complaints the original chairwoman, 2022 Michigan Secretary of State nominee Kristina Karamo, mismanaged the group.
Former Republican Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra has tried to replace her. And Hoekstra, U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration, has been endorsed by the former president and the Republican National Committee.
“We will have a strong campaign effort to assist candidates up and down ballot,” Hoekstra said in a text message. “Lots of groups willing to help. We have a unique opportunity to be successful in 2024.”
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The party infighting comes on top of already desultory election results for Michigan Republicans in recent years. Since Trump’s upset win in 2016, Michigan “has moved back toward the Democrats,” the Almanac of American Politics 2024 notes.
“First in the 2018 midterm elections, when the Democrats flipped the offices of governor, attorney general and secretary of state; then in 2020, when Joe Biden defeated Trump in the state by 154,188 votes,” the almanac says. “And finally in 2022, when voters recoiled at the prospect of reimposition of a 1931 abortion ban and at a Republican ticket enmeshed in election denialism, handing Democrats unified control of state government for the first time in 40 years.”