The Harris Campaign’s Missed Opportunity on Palestine Voters

Well, the election is finally here, and the scenario that has been painfully obvious for some time may be about to take place: In a tight election, the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous policy of supporting Israel’s genocide for over a year, a policy that is significantly unpopular among Americans in general and Democrats in particular, might cost them the votes needed to hang onto the White House.

In no place has this dynamic been more likely to play out than in Michigan. Michigan is a key swing state, central to the election of a Democrat, and will be decided by a slim margin. It is also home to the largest concentration, perhaps half a million, of Arab Americans. Should that vote go largely in one direction, it could have an outsize impact on whether the state, and consequently the presidency, is awarded to a Democrat or a Republican.

But before we go further, it is crucial to understand that voters alienated by the Biden-Harris genocide policy are not only Arab and Muslim Americans, they are all sorts of people from all faiths and backgrounds. The uncommitted vote in Michigan, which was a product of a campaign during the primaries to signal to Democrats that voters could bolt over their genocide policy, pulled thousands of votes from all over the state, not just in the Dearborn area, which has a major concentration of Arab American voters.

Polls show us time and again that younger people and people of color, key constituencies in the Democratic base, feel more strongly about this issue than other groups. That does not mean that all young voters or voters of color will hold back their support for Harris when ballots are cast, but it could mean that a sliver of them do. If one looks only at voters of color, just 10 percent of them is more than the entire Arab and Muslim American eligible voter population. If you add in 10 percent of voters under 30, then the numbers are even higher. Given this, it is probably more accurate to speak about a different category of voter. We can call it the Palestine voter. The Palestine voter is not necessarily Palestinian or Arab or Muslim. In fact most of them are probably not, but rather they are voters who are attuned to the suffering of Palestinians and outraged over it enough to cast their ballot based on it.

If it seems hard to understand the Palestine voter, it is likely because Palestine voters have been living very different lives from most Americans over the past year. These voters likely exist in a unique information environment where they are seeing firsthand news reports from the ground in Gaza in their social media feeds that most Americans are not seeing because American media is failing to accurately capture the scale of suffering and destruction U.S. policy is enabling in Gaza, or worse, making excuses for it. Palestine voters go to sleep every night after seeing the mutilated bodies of children ripped apart by U.S.-supplied weapons fired by the Israeli military. In the morning, new horrific scenes await them.

This has repeated day in and day out for over a year. When they sit down to eat, they look at their plate differently, knowing that families in Gaza are being starved to death with the help of their government. They don’t feel right sharing joyful news they would usually post about. What meaning do our photos of joyous family gatherings have when we know there are over 900 entire families who have been exterminated—without even a lone survivor—thanks to our tax dollars?

Adding to the Palestine voters’ pain is the feeling that so many of them are experiencing it alone. Every day, the Palestine voter ventures to work or school with the knowledge of genocide hanging like a cloud over their head, while the entire nation around them carries on with business as usual. On top of all of this is the inescapable reality that they are financing the very horror they are desperately begging their representatives to stop.

The sniper’s bullets fired by Israeli troops into the heads of Palestinian children in Gaza, the tanks that Israeli soldiers have told the media they used to roll over the living and dead bodies of Palestinians in Gaza, and the bombs being dropped from Israel’s death machines in the air blowing Palestinian children to pieces are all paid for by American taxpayers. A new study by the Watson Institute at Brown University found that the U.S. taxpayer has covered some $22.5 billion for Israel since October 2023, which amounts to 70 percent of the cost of Israel’s war on Gaza.

It is because of the failure to understand the perspective and experience of the Palestine voter for the past year that so many of the arguments made to them to vote for the Harris campaign fall flat, including several made by Harris supporters who have been critical of the Netanyahu government, like Bernie Sanders and even from some Palestinian Americans. For the Palestine voter, voting for Harris despite the Biden-Harris administration’s genocide policy is a vote to legitimize genocide. This is not merely a moral question; it is also a practical one. What leverage does this constituency have over their elected officials if not through the ballot box? They do not have the $100 million that Mariam Adelson can spend on the Trump campaign or the $100 million that AIPAC can spend to sink Democrats who happened to have a conscience. The only leverage they have is their vote, and that leverage happens to carry a bit more weight every four years. To fail to use it sends the message to lawmakers that there is no political cost to supporting the genocide of Palestinians. This makes the next genocide of Palestinians more likely while another has not even ended.

Palestine voters also feel that American democracy simply isn’t working. They know that most Americans oppose continued weapons to Israel, they know most Democrats view what is happening as a genocide, they know most Americans wanted to see a cease-fire a year ago; and yet despite where public opinion is, they see government officials who only want to send more weapons to Israel and make excuses for every Israeli war crime while ensuring impunity for Israel in international fora as well. Their pleas to their representatives have been overwhelmingly ignored. Political officials even ignore U.S. law to ensure weapons can still flow to the genocide and are willing to stall existing processes of accountability over and over again. So when these voters are told to set aside the genocide and vote for Harris because American democracy is on the line, they wonder what democracy that is.

Then there is the argument that the election always comes down to choosing the “lesser evil.” But for Palestine voters, the vast majority of whom followed that rationale and cast their ballots for Biden in 2020 to defeat Donald Trump, the past year of Biden-Harris policy has been the worst evil they have ever witnessed in their lifetime. Every time the Palestine voter closes their eyes they see the indelible image of Shaban al-Dalou, burning alive from an Israel strike on a hospital while still attached to the IV drip in his hospital bed. They hear the faint voice of 5-year-old Hind Rajab begging for help on her murdered cousin’s phone just before 355 rounds fired by an Israeli tank silenced her forever. When they open their eyes they see the choices before them with perfect clarity and still refuse to believe there is an evil greater than genocide.

Another argument is that a vote for Harris is necessary because Trump wants to coerce, repress, or even deport people who care about Palestine, among others. There is no denying the danger of a Trump presidency. Yet at the same time, telling voters their choice is to vote for one candidate or risk deportation or imprisonment is effectively telling voters that democracy is already dead.

Palestine voters also know that a Trump government might leave them particularly vulnerable in the United States, especially those among them who are voters of color or Arab or Muslim. At the same time, many Democrats might blame them for a Harris loss. Blaming vulnerable minorities, a tiny percentage of the electorate, for outcomes determined by tens of millions of others from larger and more powerful constituencies and campaigns, is precisely what you’d expect from fascists.

Most frustrating about all of this is that the Harris campaign has missed repeated opportunities to avoid losing this constituency. From deliberately excluding Palestinian speakers, even those endorsing Harris, from the Democratic National Convention stage to repeatedly failing to indicate any sort of shift from Biden policy in support of the genocide over several months, Harris failed to capitalize on the opportunity to demonstrate to the Palestine voter constituency that she actually represents some semblance of change.

At the same time, characterizing this approach as a missed opportunity might be too generous. When one looks at the strategic direction of the Harris campaign, it seems less like they missed an opportunity to reach the Palestine voter; rather it seems they deliberately sought to insult them. One can see this in many of the statements Harris has made on policy toward Israel where she steadfastly refused to put any distance between her policy and Biden’s. But it is also perceptible in her campaign’s approach in places like Michigan and elsewhere.

In Michigan, the Harris campaign sent surrogates to make the case for her with other constituencies who included the likes of Ritchie Torres, a congressman who might as well have been designed in an AIPAC laboratory; Liz Cheney, whose biggest qualms with Trump’s GOP might be his unwillingness to invade even more Middle Eastern nations; and Bill Clinton, who never misses an opportunity to blame Palestinians for their own suffering. If I had to pick three individuals who didn’t include Benjamin Netanyahu most likely to alienate Palestine voters, these three would be near the top of the list.

It seems the Harris campaign didn’t want Palestine voters and perhaps calculated that they could best grow their numbers by trying to bring Nikki Haley Republican primary voters into their camp. Polls do not suggest that is the smartest strategy, as party ID continues to be the most important determinant of voting choice. Banking the most important election in history on peeling Republicans away from Trump despite them being his most loyal voters is a strategy for sure but a very risky one. In doing this, Harris cedes the antiwar lane to Trump, which he has been happy to step into.

We will know soon enough if the Biden-Harris policy of backing Israel’s genocide will cost Democrats the White House and Americans what is left of their democracy, and make Donald Trump the most powerful man in the world again. There is also a chance that Harris ekes it out without this constituency. Either way, the historical record should reflect that it didn’t have to be this way and that the leaders of the Democratic Party could have chosen a different path but they chose not to.