Earlier this month, US surveys indicated that Joe Biden may lose five major swing states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada – in 2024. Simultaneously, pollsters warned that support for the incumbent president among non-white voters is also growing thin, blaming Joe's age, his ability to do his work, and the poor economic performance of his administration.
Meanwhile, another trend is gaining pace: Arab American and Muslim American voters are expressing dissatisfaction with Biden's support for Tel Aviv amid the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the Gaza Strip. What's more, they threaten not to show up on Election Day, or even vote against Joe Biden.
"I'm telling Arab Americans not to vote for the top two candidates. Vote down-ballot, but don't vote for Biden, and especially not for Trump. Biden lost our vote, and you're going to see Michigan and Georgia change," Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News, the largest Arab American newspaper in the US, told Axios.
This is not a trivial matter, according to the US media: if Biden is deprived of Arab and Muslim American votes, he could be seriously hurt.
The media drew attention to the fact that Joe won in 2020 due to his slim victories in major battleground states. For instance, he won Michigan by 154,000 votes; Arizona by 10,500 votes; and Georgia by 11,800 votes. The states' Arab American population amounts to 278,000 (Michigan); 60,000 (Arizona); 57,000 (Georgia). That means that even if some of those Arabs do not cast their ballots for Joe, this could spell trouble for him.
Back in 2020, Arab and Muslim Americans stood by Biden at least partially because of his rival Donald Trump's harsh migrant policies, dubbed at the time as a "Muslim ban" (under Executive Orders 13769 and 13780 signed by Trump in January and March 2017, respectively, the number of refugees to be admitted into the US was limited, while asylum seekers with passports from seven Muslim-majority countries were banned).
Now, after the beginning of the Israeli ground operation in Gaza and the US military buildup in the region, their attitude appears to have changed. In particular, Biden is accused of a lack of sensitivity to the deaths of Palestinian civilians, including elderly and children, due to the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) bombing campaign. The president has also been lambasted for his apparent indifference to the suffering of Gazans, who have lived under Tel Aviv's blockade for over a decade.
It's unclear whether this sentiment will last until November 2024; still, given that Biden has already a lot on his plate, the trend could make his path to reelection a thorny one.
Indeed, there is currently a strife within the Democratic Party between progressives and moderates over the Palestine-Israel conflict; some Democratic senators are pushing for conditioning Israeli aid on Tel Aviv's handling of the Gaza war (which comes in contrast with Team Biden's Israel policy); JPMorgan Asset Management warns that the risk of a US recession is still there, being "delayed rather than diminished"; the GOP is closing in on Joe Biden in their broad impeachment inquiry into his family's apparent influence peddling and his alleged involvement. Even though the GOP is believed to have little if any chance of impeaching the president, bad publicity imposes pressure on Joe Biden and his backers in the Democratic Party.