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THE MOST COMMITTED ARE THE UNCOMMITTED  
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Jeet Heer

The Nation
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_ A growing movement of “uncommitted” Democratic voters are
making it impossible for the Biden White House to remain complacent
about Israel’s war on Gaza. _

People gather at an Uncommitted Minnesota watch party during the
presidential primary in Minneapolis, Minn., on Super Tuesday, March 5,
2024., Stephen Maturen / AFP

 

With his lifelong history as perhaps the most ardently pro-Israel
politician
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the United States (not an easy feat to achieve), Joe Biden has every
reason to resent the “uncommitted” voters, who have made visible
the growing dissatisfaction within the Democratic Party of the
president’s near-total support for the Israeli assault on Gaza. The
Biden presidency seemed to be working on the assumption that they
could disregard polls that find Israel’s war to be deeply unpopular
with the base of his party, notably an _Economist_/YouGov poll in
January showing
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49 percent of Democrats think that Israel is committing genocide in
Gaza (while only 21 percent think the current war is not a genocide).

But it’s unlikely that voters who think their president is
supporting a genocide will be enthusiastically rushing to the ballot
box in November. Nor does Biden have a deep well of personal
popularity (of the sort enjoyed by Barack Obama) to counteract a
deeply unpopular policy choice. On Tuesday, the polling aggregator
FiveThirtyEight reported
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Biden’s favorability is at an all-time low of 37.4 percent, one of
many polls showing a reelection campaign currently on the path to
losing
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Biden’s adamant refusal to shift policy despite this dire number has
puzzled many. In a February interview with CNN, former MSNBC host
Mehdi Hasan said
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“I think it’s crazy that Joe Biden is willing to wreck his
presidency, potentially, and American democracy if Trump gets back in,
for Benjamin Netanyahu.” One answer to Hasan’s incredulity is that
the Biden reelection campaign has developed an elaborate system of
denial to wave away bad news. As documented in an extensive _New
Yorker_ article
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Evan Osnos published on March 4, Biden and his team have convinced
themselves that the polls are flawed and that voters, including Arab
American voters in crucial swing states, will see the light soon
enough.

Underlying this complacent strategy seems to be the assumption that at
the end of the day voters are rarely motivated by foreign policy and
that hatred of Trump would overwhelm any qualms about Biden. The
president is in effect playing a game of chicken with his own voters,
doing what he wants in defiance of their pleas and daring them to vote
for Trump if they don’t like it. The underlying premise of this
dangerous game is that voters will put the issue aside come Election
Day because it will have become less important to them than domestic
politics. This premise, of course, ignores the reality that for many
voters Israel’s war on Gaza is not a foreign policy issue but a
civil rights issue, as well as a matter of survival for those with
loved ones in Gaza and other occupied territories.

The complacency of the Biden reelection campaign is one of the biggest
factors that could put Trump back in the White House. Ironically, with
the growing movement of “uncommitted” voters, the Democrats who
are angriest at Biden are trying to save the president from his worst
instincts of overconfidence and smugness. By showing that there is a
significant block of Democratic voters who are willing to make a
stance in the primaries expressing dissatisfaction with Biden, the
“uncommitted” movement has made it impossible for Biden to bury
his head in the sand.

_Washington Post_ columnist Perry Bacon Jr. notes
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in recent weeks the Biden administration has shifted on Israel, at
least on a rhetorical level, with a greater willingness to openly
criticize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and use the words
“cease-fire.” Bacon argues that “activists in the United States
calling for Biden to rethink his Israeli-Palestinian policies are
running a very smart protest movement, using tactics that are building
momentum for their cause and increasing dissatisfaction with the White
House’s handling of this issue.”

Bacon called attention to the movement’s “smart tactic” of
“organizing Democrats to vote ‘uncommitted’ in the primaries.
Polls have shown for months that a large bloc of Democrats oppose
Biden’s Gaza policy. But having more than 300,000 people in several
states vote against the president
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that those polls reflected a reality on the ground.”

At least on the Hill, the ground is shifting. On Thursday, Senate
majority leader Chuck Schumer, scarcely less perfervid in his Zionism
than Biden, sharply rebuked
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and called for new elections in Israel.

The “uncommitted” movement deserves a large share of the credit
for this newly critical tone, but it is hardly satisfied by it. In a
phone conversation on Thursday, Layla Elabed, one of the leading
organizers and a campaign manager of Listen to Michigan, told _The
Nation_ that the evolution of the Democrats has so far been merely
rhetorical. The movement, she insisted, wanted “action” and not
“words.”

The movement was ignited by a memo written in early January by Waleed
Shahid, a veteran Democratic strategist. In the memo, Shahid noted
that the media was turning its eye away from Gaza to focus on the
presidential primaries. Since then, the “uncommitted” voters have
kept the carnage of Gaza front and center of media and political
attention during the primaries.

In an interview
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the podcast _Chapo Trap House_ that was posted on March 8, Shahid
observed that “the main purpose of the uncommitted campaign was to
literally get the political class and the media class to listen to the
voices of Palestinian Americans, Arab American, [and] young people who
are pissed off about President’s Biden’s funding of a genocide in
Gaza. And I think we’ve been enormously successful at getting the
media to pay attention to the voters who are currently uncommitted to
the president’s reelection unless he dramatically changes course and
ends funding to the war.”

The “uncommitted” campaign is trying to save Biden from his own
self-destructive mulishness. The name of the movement is a misnomer.
“Uncommitted” suggests a feckless unwillingness to make a choice.
But “uncommitted” voters are super committed. Even as they loath a
major foreign policy of the president, they are engaging with the
political process to make their voices heard. They are avoiding the
easier path of disengagement and non-voting.

The primaries aren’t over, and the movement still has work to do.
The big prize coming up is Wisconsin on April 2, a swing state with
the base of organizing that could score a victory comparable to
Minnesota (where “uncommitted” got 19 percent of the vote), Hawaii
(29 percent), and Michigan (13 percent).

Because elections are run by state parties and have ramshackle rules,
it’s not always possible to vote “uncommitted.” But even in
places where that isn’t an option, such as New York State, voters
can still send a message by handing in a blank ballot, which will be
counted in the final tally.

The political analyst Josh Cohen has posted a useful voter’s guide
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the upcoming primaries showing the best way to register protest in
each one. If your inclination is to show your commitment by voting
“uncommitted,” he offers an essential road map for the primary
battles to come.

_JEET HEER is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and
host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters
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the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms
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of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with
Art Spiegelman [[link removed]] (2013)
and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles
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Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New
Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American
Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe._

_Copyright c 2024 THE NATION. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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Distributed by PARS International Corp
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_Founded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the
breadth and depth of political and cultural life, from the debut of
the telegraph to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical,
independent, and progressive voice in American journalism._

_Please support progressive journalism. Get a digital subscription
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The Nation for just $24.95!_

* Gaza
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* Israel
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* Joe Biden
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* elections
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* Vote Uncommitted
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