The US election looms. Arab Americans feel stuck between a rock and a hard place
For The Guardian, I wrote about how Arab, Muslim and younger voters face a choice between Biden, who does little to stop mass Palestinian death, and the xenophobic Trump.
We have a chaotic and unpredictable election year ahead. That would normally elicit anxiety, but mostly I’m feeling hopeless.
The election is less than a year away, and Joe Biden’s approval rating has sunk to its lowest level yet, clocking in at a paltry 38%, according to a recent Washington Post average of 17 different polls. Biden’s unblinking support for Israel and unwillingness to demand a ceasefire has made dear Uncle Joe appear to many as just another callous politician, numb to Palestinian suffering.
And that’s had a staggering effect on the key coalitions Biden will need to win a second term. If you move in Arab American or Muslim American circles, as I do, support for Biden’s re-election is rapidly crumbling: the Arab American Institute found that only 17% of Arab Americans say they will vote for Biden in 2024, down from 59% who did in 2020. Muslim Americans recently began an #AbandonBiden campaign, focusing on the sizable Muslim American communities in swing states such as Michigan, Arizona and Georgia.
As Axios notes, Biden won Michigan in 2020 by 154,000 votes, but there are at least 278,000 Arab Americans in Michigan. Biden took Arizona, a state with an Arab American population of 60,000, by only 10,500 votes. In Georgia, Biden prevailed with a margin of 11,800 voters, in a state that has an Arab American population of 57,000.
While it is true that not all Arab Americans are eligible voters (some may not be citizens, some may be too young), it’s also true that the 2024 election is expected to be won on razor-thin margins. Every vote, including every Arab American and every Muslim American vote, matters.
Disaffection with Biden isn’t limited to Arab and Muslim Americans, either. The president also has a young voter problem: according to NBC News, a November poll by Lake Research Partners, a Democratic polling firm, found that only 61% of voters under 30 would support Biden if the election were held today, and 56% gave him a “poor” rating on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
So we are faced with a dilemma: on the one hand, there’s a Democratic establishment that seems to believe disgruntled voters will choose Biden out of “a lesser of two evils” thinking. But that line of thinking is not just insulting to these voters. It is also so politically cynical – and explicitly harmful to Palestinians – that it’s hard to believe Biden holds himself to any values besides ruthless political calculation.
On the other hand, we have the presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump, who promises not only to revive his abominable Muslim ban but also to implement “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”. Trump has also described people coming across the US’s southern border as “poisoning the blood of our country”, and told Sean Hannity that he would be a dictator, but only on “day one” of his presidency.
I’m feeling nauseous. Why have our political choices sunk to supporting unconscionable violence or electing cartoonish fascism? Adding to my nausea is a feeling of paralysis that I haven’t been able to overcome for the last two months, a sense of profound helplessness in the face of such horror.
I know I’m not alone…
Read the rest here.