Biden, a supposed foreign policy pragmatist, doesn’t seem bothered that the US is one of the few states that continues to wholeheartedly sustain Israel’s war on Gaza. In fact, Biden has staked his political future on his support for Netanyahu and Israel – and Biden is losing. In this year’s presidential election, where he will most likely face Donald Trump once again, Biden has already lost support among young progressives, Black and Arab American voters, who are all rightfully angry at his refusal to restrain Israel.
Biden allies are raising the alarm that he could lose Michigan, a swing state with substantial Black, Arab and Muslim American voting blocs, because of his Middle East policies. Congressman Ro Khanna, a Biden supporter and progressive Democrat from California who has tried to mediate between Biden’s campaign and Michigan Democrats, warned his team this week: “We cannot win Michigan with status quo policy.”
The Biden administration has consistently underplayed the leverage it has over Israel and Netanyahu. “I think that sometimes people pretend that the United States of America has a magic wand that it can wave to make any situation in the world roll out in exactly the way that we would want it to and that is never the case,” Matthew Miller, the state department spokesperson, said at a press conference on 12 February.
Miller’s flippant comment raises an important question: if Biden can’t use billions of dollars in military aid – and the ability to literally cut off Israel’s supply of bombs – to force Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire, what could Biden do with a magic wand?
Reminder that Biden will lose more votes the longer this Genocide continues. People are not “getting over it” the opposition is only growing.
If you want Biden to win, stop being in denial that people are going to lesser evil him and start advocating for him to force a permanent ceasefire. (and stop Veto’ing UN resolutions)
Post your “But Trump’s” down below.
… but Trump is infinitely worse?
Then let’s hope that continuing the Genocide isn’t more important to Biden than handing the election to Trump.
Because we can clearly see that continuing it will lead to Biden losing the election.
Just for context, there were 100K protest votes but Biden won Michigan by over 150K in 2020
Biden is losing Michigan according to the polls. In fact, he’s losing 5/6 battleground states that he won last time.
It’s looking grim for him in November. His only hope is Trump gets thrown in jail or has a stroke.
spoiler
Or stop committing Genocide
deleted by creator
Stop trying to make President Genocide happen. It’s not going to happen.
100k protest votes from the primary, which usually had less turnout compared to the general election. In this year’s primary you had uncommitted as 13% of the votes. Can Biden afford to lose 13% of his voters in the general election?
Michigan primary voters in 2020: ~1,6 Million
Michigan primary voters in 2024: ~900 Thousand.
The one where Bernie “lesser evil’d” everyone over the line to vote for Biden is not a good comparison. This one is looking a lot more like the 2016 Hillary one than the 2020 one.
Let’s not forget the Biden campaign spent significant money on ads in Michigan and still ate dirt.
The numbers I quoted were for the general, not the primary. We can’t draw too many conclusions from a protest vote in a state where they all knew he was gonna win anyways. It’s one of the reasons they were able to voice their concerns like this. Biden wasn’t really being challenged so why not use your voice to put a number on just how many people aren’t all-in on Joe?
Remind me who won Michigan in 2016 because they decided they could just ignore it. Was it Hillary Clinton?
Friendlly reminder for people who are about to drop those “but Trump’s” down below:
These warnings are because we care and want to defeat Trump, too. But Biden is on a losing trajectory. the results of the Michigan primary show that.
In the democrat primary, there were 762,697 votes. Biden received 618,426 votes, or 81%. “uncommitted” received 101,100, 13.3%. Williamson and Phillps together received a combined 5.7%
It should be noted that the “Listen to Michigan” campaign is a direct result of that- specifically using the primary to protest Biden. Exit pollsters suggested that, none of the ‘uncommited’ were just that; but rather that they all showed up specifically to protest Biden. (it is ‘normal’ for 20k, give or take, to be uncommitted.)
For comparison, the republican primary; there were a total of 1,104,385 votes, of which Trump received 753,003 votes, or 68.2%. Hailey recieved 292,750 or 26.5, with the remaining candidates receiving the remaining ~5.2%.
On the surface, it looks like biden is more solid than trump- 80% is better than 68%, after all. the reality is, though, fewer democrats showed up. the total number of democrats was only 10k more than trump’s received votes. now, it should be noted that half of Niki’s voters, according to poles, are professed never-trumpers. (I am skeptical that it’s that high…) It should be noted that Hailey received 292,750 votes- so even if all of the dem uncommited all into line… Democrats simply don’t have the sheer numbers.
It’s… unwise… to draw any specific conclusions from this, except to say that Biden cannot afford to lose any votes. And even if he does manage an about face; there’s plenty of other issues. Immigraiton is the next biggest that comes to mind. he’s moved us incredibly far to the right on that; basically giving republicans what they wanted. (“oh but it’s a bluff and he called it!”… yeah. now try and claw that back to something… ethical and moral. Pubies rejected it because they realized they can hold out for even more assholerly)
And lets be honest here, Biden isn’t going cut Israel off. They’re going to keep getting money, arms, he’s going to keep pushing whatever he can to keep the AIPAC donations flowing.
These warnings are because we care and want to defeat Trump, too. But Biden *is* on a losing trajectoryBecause people are too dumb to realise that the options are support for Israel or support for Israel + tons more bullshit that will directly make their own lives worse.
and all you’re doing is alienating voters. Blaming voters, all the rhetoric like this… it does not persuade voters to turn out. That’s what we’re trying to tell you. It didn’t work for Hillary, it won’t work for Biden. Doubling down, bullying people. It just makes them more determined to not show up.
if Biden wants to get re-elected; he needs to change course. If you want Biden to get elected… well, there’s not a lot you can do about it, but maybe write a letter or something. I know I have. maybe he’ll listen to you instead of his AIPAC checkwriters.
Well these electors are just Trump electors then because if you don’t vote it means you’re supporting whoever wins.
You deal with the electoral system you’ve got and in the USA it’s a system where you might need to pinch your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils in order to not let the worse one win.
Want a different system? Fine. You’re still dealing with the system in place in the meantime.
Yeah. See.
That’s exactly the rhetoric that doesn’t work.
no. really. It’s not persuasive. particularly when it turns hostile. Something needs to change. There’s a few things that can- Biden can drop out (it really isn’t too late, particularly if he then started campaigning for another candidate; mitigating 90% of the loss of incumbency.); Biden can reverse course on key policies… Gaza, immigration. flak harder on important policies. And ineffectually, messaging to promote the stuff Biden has done. (which IMO is largely… trying to fight a flood with a mop. but there are some rare gems.)
He absolutely needs to change his actions on Israel- and address why it took so long in a way that mitigates the damage already done in messaging.
If facing the facts doesn’t work for you, nothing else was going to. I’ll keep talking about reality, thanks.
A permanent ceasefire would do it for us.
Why won’t Biden do the one thing that would guarantee victory?
Exactly. There a lot of morons like me who are wayyyy too stupid to understand what you just said. We are completely out of touch with reality and cannot be reasoned with nor convinced otherwise.
So either Biden stops the Genocide or loses all these stupid voters that will not vote for Genocide.
We had a nice exchange yesterday but I do think it’s worth pointing out that anyone who would otherwise have voted for Biden, but refuses to vote, is effectively just voting for genocide by different means. That’s not to say you shouldn’t stand on your principles, but the outcome of Biden losing the election is that things stay the same or get worse in Gaza, and definitely get worse in the US.
I completely support acknowledging all that and still making a principled choice, but I do think it should be acknowledged. You aren’t just choosing not to support Biden’s complicity, you are choosing to enable Trumps complicity and enabling the actions Trump will take in the US and elsewhere, none of which are going to be an improvement over what we would get from Biden.
You folks want Biden’s complicity acknowledged? Fine, I’m on board. But you can’t fail to acknowledge the likely impacts of not voting or not voting Biden in November if I"m supposed to take your position seriously, because if you fail to do so you are ignoring the externalities of your decision as much as anyone you might criticize.
The ends do not justify the means.
It is the same loigic that israel uses to commit Genocide. “If we don’t kill them all now, they’re going to kill us all later! We are doing the lesser of evils!” Preventing another possible Genocide by enabling an existing one is not a viable option and will only lead us further down a path of darkness.
We are laying down the ultimatum now. Joe Biden is the person that can decide whether Genocide is more important to him than winning the election.
That’s not what I said.
It is not what you think you said. But it is what you said.
Your desired end is “America not falling to Tump so he “doesn’t Genocide us”” and the means you are willing to use for it is “commit Genocide on another population.”
There is no nuance nor rationalization to justify having little kid their legs sawn off without anesthetics and starving as if it’s the fucking Holocaust.
The genocide ends when enough people shed themselves into being deluded to support Genocide. And people like me will help you by making the first step and saying that we will make 100% certain that Biden loses if the Genocide doesn’t stop.
Not whatsoever. Yes, I do think Trump will do a variety of bad things domestically - but he’s ALSO going to do exactly what Biden is doing in Gaza or worse.
Please reread what I quoted with this context in mind, as the rest of your reply here doesn’t really fit that context.
How’s he supposed to force a permanent ceasefire when neither side wants to even agree to a temporary one?
The Palestinians already have a deal on the table for a permanent ceasefire.
Israel just doesn’t need to accept it because Joe Biden keeps sending them more weapons to commit Genocide with.
What deal? Both sides just walked away from a temporary ceasefire deal this week.
There was no “deal” this week. Just a nothing-burger.
Israel refused the permanent ceasefire that was offered by Hamas. Then they said “Give us all the hostages and then we will continue to kill you after a few weeks” to which Hamas said “no that’s stupid I’m not going to give up my leverage”.
The deal that was presented by Hamas a few weeks ago is still on the table. But Netanyahu didn’t want that because it would end his war.
Was that the deal that fell through because Hamas doesn’t want to release everyone? It’s really getting hard to keep track.
And I think you can tell that at the end of the day Biden can’t force jack shit. Taking away resources is not going to lead to peace it’s going to make everyone more desperate and irrational.
That deal seems to be a similar deal from israel as they one they presented before the permanent ceasefire offer from Hamas.
The article this post is about sure thinks otherwise:
Congress WANTS to send that money. Biden can’t just unilaterally cut that off without risking big consequences back home, like a government shutdown.
Also, those last 2 paragraphs you quoted sum up the problem quite well.
Biden bypassed congress to send weapons to israel. Because Congress did not want to pass the bill with those weapons (not for the most moral reason but at least they blocked it).
And Biden most certainly can single handedly cut off the weapons supply by just saying israel commits war crimes. Which would by law prevent America from giving them more weapons.
maybe by not vetoing the UN’s security council resolutions.
Twice. (and yes. that’s his decision to make.)
Maybe by vetoing any domestic spending bills that include support for Israel (and signalling this to both houses of congress. yeah. Support for Israel is going to be a rider with Ukraine, so it’s going to be more complicated. edited to fix this,)
Maybe by sanctioning Israeli leaders involved in the Genocide.
maybe by not going out of his way to expedite arms sales.
Ya lost me at not supporting Ukraine funding.
And why no mentions of forcing Hamas to release all the hostages?
That was a brain fart on my part, I just fixed it.
Because that’s pretty fucking self-evident? Not sure what releasing the hostages would do, besides freeing the hostages- which to be clear is important on it’s own- but as far as the Genocide… Israel doesn’t care about the hostages except as a propaganda piece. Which is why they’ve killed orders of magnitudes more than they’ve freed.
Edit: it should be noted that Hamas has a standing offer to free their hostages if Isreal frees the 5k “prisoners” they keep without due process. (many of whom were swept up on the same day of the last exchange.)
The answer to your question could just have been this:
That’s what flipped me around on the issue.
Can he singlehandedly tell Israel what to do? Maybe I guess, but probably not. Israel knows we aren’t going to send the US Army in to defend Gaza. But he absolutely could have not sent the order to veto those resolutions. And he could have refused to send further weapons to Israel until there is a change.
Those measures would not be enough to satisfy many people, but they would demonstrate that he’s doing more than not speaking as glowingly about Israel as he would have prior to October 2023, which is about all he seems to have done so far. It would be possible to defend his decisions at that point. Currently I don’t see how it is.
Thrice even. They blocked another one last week: US blocks ceasefire call with third UN veto in Israel-Hamas war