PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN'S chances of being re-elected next year are becoming increasingly problematic. With the presidential contest likely to be a tight affair (with or without Donald Trump), every vote will count. But Biden will be unable to count on either the support of the Muslim community or the American left. Biden's embrace of Israeli's genocidal military campaign against Gaza has angered both crucial voting blocs. He is now in serious danger of being removed from the White House.
While the number of Muslim voters is relatively small, the loss of the Muslim vote in crucial swing seats could topple Biden. For the majority of Muslim voters his support for Israel's military assault against Gaza is the final straw: throughout the term of his presidency Biden has done little to rein in the far-right Israeli government and its support for settler violence -violence that reached the highest level since 2006 this year.
A Muslim journalist has encapsulated the anger many Muslims feel for Biden:
'The man who offered his 'rock solid and unwavering' support to Israel’s genocide of two million Palestinians in Gaza will not get my vote.
'The man whose administration circulated memos prohibiting staffers around the world from calling for de-escalation or restraint in the face of ethnic cleansing cannot remain president.
'The man who is spending billions of our taxpayer dollars to fund an Israeli war machine that considers Palestinians 'human animals' and denies drinking water and food to a million Palestinian children belongs at The Hague, not the White House.'
There has always been a pervasive feeling among American Muslims that the Democratic Party takes its votes for granted. But, in 2024, the majority of Muslims will simply not vote for a President that has allowed Israel to flout international law. Its actions have included collective punishment, the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure, and the utilization of weapons like white phosphorus bombs—all of which human rights organisations have identified as war crimes.
Biden will also not be able to count on support of the American left. In 2O20 it grudgingly swung in behind Biden in order to remove Donald Trump from the Oval Office. But in 2024 it will not be prepared to back him for a second term.
The left, dominated by millenials, young people and people of colour, wants an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. That demand has been rejected by Biden. On Capitol Hill, the left's anger has been most forcibly expressed by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian American in Congress. She has accused Biden of aiding and abetting the carnage in Gaza: 'We will remember where you stood' she wrote in a social media post tagging the president.
Similarly, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become noticeably more critical of Biden as the number of deaths in Gaza have continued to mount. On October 29 she posted on X (formerly Twitter):
'Two million people. Half children. Starved. Bombed. Cut from communication. Have those facilitating this thought much about the future this leaves us? No. Some may dismiss a ceasefire as naive or worse. Yet who has a plan for what follows this destruction? What do we call that?'
Both Tlaib and AOC are members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest socialist organisation in the United States with over 100,000 members. While it supported Joe Biden's bid for the presidency, that support was not unanimous. It came only after a long and sometimes fractious debate within the DSA about whether it should support Joe Biden as the 'lesser evil' or focus on building an independent working-class movement with the aim of eventually forming a mass workers' party.
But given Biden's continued support for Israel, including the supply of weapons, it will be difficult for anyone within the DSA to argue that Biden still represents the 'lesser evil'. As one DSA activist recently said: 'Biden's crossed a moral line with nearly every Muslim, Arab and anti-war young voter I know.'
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