The "uncommitted" protest vote against President Joe Biden — supported by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the lone Palestinian-American member of Congress — will play a role in Tuesday's primary in Michigan.
The state has the largest percentage of Arab-Americans in the U.S., and the city of Dearborn, Michigan, is majority Arab-American, making this voting bloc pivotal in a key 2024 presidential election battleground state, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
The pro-Palestinian activists in Michigan want to reduce Democrat votes for president in protest of Biden's support for Israel in its war on Hamas after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
"This is a buildup of the continued attempt to silence the community," American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee National Executive Director Abed Ayoub told the Journal. "Our voice is going to be heard through this vote. That's the one thing they can't silence — they can't silence us at the polls."
While this is not a vote for former President Donald Trump, the activists want to send a message to Democrats to not take the Arab-American voters for granted amid the Middle East unrest.
The "uncommitted" protest is named because Muslim and Arab-American votes will no longer go "reliably" to Democrats, as they vote to vote for third-party candidates or boycott voting at all, according to the Journal.
"You have to pay attention," Grassroots Midwest CEO Adrian Hemond told the Journal. "The margins were tight here in 2020 and the president doesn't have many votes to lose."
A target point for the protest is to sap 15% of Biden's vote with the "uncommitted" movement — roughly 10,000 votes, which was the 2020 Biden victory margin in the state — mostly located around Dearborn and Michigan's college campuses, where antisemitic protests in support of Hamas tend to be louder, according to the report.
Biden's State Department, Defense Department, and White House are pushing Israel for a cease-fire negotiation with its terrorist attackers, along with a two-state solution that Israeli officials told Newsmax would only reward Hamas' terrorist goals from Oct. 7.
But Biden operatives are concerned it has not been enough to stave off the Arab-American voter protest in the key "blue wall" state of Michigan.
Wayne County Democrat Jonathan Kinloch is urging Arab-Americans to "be responsible and vote Biden."
"I understand the pain, but this is a prelude to upending the November election," he told the Journal. "I never play games with my vote."
Wayne County Commissioner Sam Baydoun told the Journal that Biden's failure to turn Israel around during its war on Hamas in Gaza will cost him votes, if not the election. The Arab-American majority of Dearborn lies in Wayne County.
"They keep threatening us that if you don't vote for the president, you're going to hand over the election to Trump," Baydoun told the Journal. "You know what? It's not on us, it's on the candidate."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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