Biden's Black Eye In Michigan

A strong show of discontent may just be the tip of the iceberg.

You aren’t alone.

Yesterday, the state of Michigan held its primary for the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States. It should not have been worth any note whatsoever. Regardless of whatever other issues he may have, the one thing Biden has always been able to count on is staunch loyalty from hardcore Democrats. They are the ones who won him the nomination, won him the presidency, and have been powering his party to strong margins in low-turnout elections across the country. Their devotion to him is supposed to be so absolute that it may make everything from primary polling to the predictive power of special elections near-useless. These voters should have been set to make last night’s race a show of force for the current administration. It should not have been a night for the disillusioned and discontented.

Yet it was. When they first began their campaign, those pushing for an uncommitted vote against Joe Biden set a goal of 10,000 votes. They ended up winning more than 100,000. Just by itself, the effort won two cities outright, carried some precincts near-unanimously, and is on track to receive delegates to the Democratic National Convention. When you add in the votes received by named non-Biden candidates, you get a raw vote total that nearly matches Biden’s margin of victory in the state in 2020.

Nobody seems to know what to make of this. National media outlets, perhaps leaning towards the more sensational story, have made the size of the pro-Palestine vote front-page news, directly (and correctly) connecting the protest vote to Biden’s Israel policy. On the other hand, many political analysts, including some employed by these same outlets, have been far more dismissive, writing it off as expected and unimpressive. Some have even mocked the uncommitted vote for failing to meet completely arbitrary benchmarks. You may expect me to go on and say that both sides have correct points here, and that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. That undoubtedly would be the easy way to do it.

It’s just not what I think.

I’m willing to go all out here. In my opinion, the size of the uncommitted vote last night was genuinely significant. The total was far more than I expected going into the night. It exhibited real, broad-based strength. It showed unprecedented strength for a movement long spoken of as untouchable. There will be a lot more to process as the primary continues, but, for now, here are my main takeaways.

It wasn’t just Dearborn—far from it.

In the leadup to the Michigan primary, right as the uncommitted campaign was making real headway, pro-Biden commentators immediately began trying to downplay it. But since they couldn’t deny that the campaign would do well in the state’s Arab communities—that, at least, was obvious—they began to smugly declare that Dearborn and Hamtramck were all that the vote would get. “Sure,” they said. “Those Hamas-sympathizing, socially retrograde, alien voters might abandon our President, but nobody else will. In fact, this effort will just end up showing just how weak the pro-Palestine cause is! Relegated to 2 or 3% of the vote statewide, only capable of appealing to total demographic outliers, these activists will only prove themselves to be incapable of winning over a broad coalition.”

Once the results started coming in, it became clear that this was not going to be the case.