Activist Says Gaza May Cost Democrats in November
03:46 GMT 05.12.2023 (Updated: 09:24 GMT 05.12.2023)
© Jacquelyn Martin
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Joe Biden’s support among Arab Americans has plummeted over Gaza. In 2020, 59% of Arab Americans voted for the future President, even higher in swing states like Michigan, but by the end of October, just three weeks after the war began, support for Biden fell to just 17% among Arab Americans nationwide.
US President Joe Biden’s unwavering support of Israel may hurt Democrat chances in November, Anthony Rogers Wright, the spokesperson for Movement for Black Lives and the Black Hive told Radio Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Monday.
Talking with hosts John Kiriakou and Michelle Witte, Wright argued that the conflict in Gaza is likely to hurt Biden in critical swing states with large Arab populations, in particular Michigan which he says is likely to determine the next President of the United States.
Kiriakou noted that Presidential elections are typically decided on the strength of the economy, but Wright said that foreign policy and the economy are no longer mutually exclusive in the minds of voters.
2 December 2023, 23:48 GMT
“I think more and more residents of the United States are becoming very wary of blank checks being sent to Ukraine and now a good amount of money, $14 billion being proposed to be sent to Israel,” Wright explained.
“Then you start looking at your local neighborhood,” Wright continued, “you start looking at your local situation, the housing situation in the bay area and Los Angeles, the migrant situation in New York City, and it's like ‘wait a second, we are sending all of this money abroad for a conflict we don’t necessarily understand and then there are no local investment to take care these local issues that are affecting my everyday life’ so I think people are becoming more wary about that.’”
Wright noted that Michigan in particular has a large Arab population and that Muslim and Arab groups are starting to organize against Biden, pointing to the recently launched Abandon Biden campaign as evidence.
“You have a population of people who are essentially saying that this issue in Gaza... is enough to get them not to vote for Joe Biden,” noting that unlike previous years there are likely to be more anti-Zionist options on the ballot. He said that the “paternalism” of liberals won’t be enough to get Arab voters to overlook credible accusations of crimes against humanity by Israel.
“Rather than saying ‘oh my goodness, let’s reach out to these people’ they are trying to scare them ‘Fine you can have Trump then’ and that is almost even worse than the situation that is causing them not to vote for Biden in the first place,” Wright explained. “It seems that the attitude of Democrats and their consultants, their multimillion dollar consultants… is that [those voters] will come along because where else are they going to go?”
However, Wright points to alternatives that might be on the ballot in November.
“Now you have third party and anti-war candidates like Brother Cornel West, like Sister Jill Stein, and maybe people will turn that way, because this is a visceral issue,” he said.
Earlier in the interview, Wright discussed a potential second term for Donald Trump, and how worried leftists and marginalized groups should be about his recent comments that Kiriakou described as increasingly “authoritarian.”
“Of course we should be concerned about his rhetoric. It is also a call to action for people to get very locally invested and state-wide invested... It is looking more and more that we are going to have to create local and state force fields to protect ourselves in case there is a massive catastrophe at the federal level,” Wright said, pointing to the Attorney General lawsuit against Trump’s previous Muslim ban and New York’s offer to help out of state women receive contraceptive care in the wake of Roe v Wade being shot down by the Supreme Court.
“It really is about preparation right now,” Wright explained.
