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Arab And Muslim Americans Key To US Election – OpEd
By Ray Hanania
There is no doubt that US President Joe Biden’s much-criticized performance in last month’s debate with former President Donald Trump raised concerns among many Democrats about his ability to win November’s election.
However, the truth is that we did not need to see Biden’s debate performance to know that he was in trouble. His unelectability had already been determined in the primary elections as a consequence of the #AbandonBiden movement, which encouraged Democrats to withdraw their support of Biden in several key swing states.
This movement siphoned Arab and Muslim votes away from Biden in states such as Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Georgia, New Jersey and Nevada. Without their return, Biden’s reelection hopes were doomed.
Monday’s momentous decision by Biden to withdraw from the race and not seek a second term in the White House should put the spotlight on the role Arab and Muslim American voters will play in the election.
Without the support of Arab and Muslim Americans, Biden would have lost those key states, even if they did not switch to Trump and instead voted for a third-party candidate such as Dr. Jill Stein, a progressive Jewish independent who opposes Israel’s government and supports the two-state solution for Palestinians.
Instead of recognizing this fact — that the abandonment of Biden by Arab and Muslim voters doomed his reelection bid — the media and politicians are focused only on Biden’s dismal debate performance.
Arabs and Muslims are among the most marginalized voter constituencies in America. They are ignored by the mainstream news media and by the political system.
This was demonstrated in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas violence against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Tel Aviv has used that act of violence, which was one of a series of violent acts perpetrated by both Hamas and Israel, as justification to seek the ethnic cleansing of Gaza’s Christian and Muslim Palestinians, hoping to push them out in order to annex the important coastal land.
The Biden administration subsequently failed to use its influence to force Israel’s government to restrain its response, which has resulted in the murder of at least 39,000 Gazans — and perhaps as many as 186,000 — and the destruction of the homes and lives of more than 1.5 million.
Demands in the early weeks of the Israeli carnage for a ceasefire that might have prevented so many deaths were ignored by the Biden administration. This angered Arab and Muslim Americans so much that they significantly undermined Biden’s election chances by not voting for him in the swing state primaries. Instead, they voted for other candidates or even cast blank votes for “undecided” or “uncommitted.”
Now that Biden has withdrawn from the election, there is a campaign by some Democrats to put Vice President Kamala Harris in his place. Biden has endorsed Harris to replace him on the ballot and Harris announced her intention to run. But for Arabs and Muslims, Harris is no different than Biden. She was silent on the call for a ceasefire and has been in lockstep with Biden.
Alternate candidates are expected to surface as contenders to succeed Biden, including third-party independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Sen. Joe Manchin, former First Lady Michelle Obama and former Democratic hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Yet, no matter who the party rallies around to succeed Biden, no Democratic candidate can win the White House unless they address the concerns of Arabs and Muslims and the powerful voter display seen during the primary elections.
Without a major realignment of American foreign policy toward Palestine, Israel and the Middle East, the Democrats are in for an uphill election fight they are almost certain to lose.
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Ray Hanania
Ray Hanania is an award-winning Palestinian-American former journalist and political columnist. Email him at rghanania@gmail.com.
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