Prominent Muslim-American Democrats are defecting from the once-reliable base for reelecting President Joe Biden.
A Newsweek poll released Monday shows Biden’s approval among Michigan voters at 35 percent overall, his handling of the war between Palestine ruling party Hamas and Israel is dismal.
“Despite 48 percent of Michigan voters saying they are sympathetic to the Israeli side of the conflict compared with 37 percent who sympathize with the Palestinians … Biden has a -18 percent approval rating about his response to the war. Forty-six percent disapprove and 28 percent approve of his response,” Newsweek reported.
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“Michigan has the highest number of Arab Americans in the country and in 2020, 64 percent of Muslim voters nationally supported Biden, compared with 35 percent who supported Trump, according to Associated Press VoteCast. If Biden loses this key base, Michigan could flip to the Republicans in 2024 once more,” Newsweek continued.
Michigan U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib last month announced her disapproval of the Biden administration’s support of Israel in the latest Middle East conflict. The Palestinian-American representative accused the Biden administration of supporting “genocide” of native Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The Newsweek poll puts Tlaib’s approval rating at 30%, five points lower than Biden’s approval rating.
Last week, Nasser Beydoun, a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Dearborn, published an op-ed in the Detroit News titled “I’m a Democrat and I won’t be voting for Biden.”
Beydoun wrote: “President Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict has thrown his presidency into a tailspin with anti-war, Arab American and Muslim voters. These key constituencies in swing states overwhelmingly supported him in the last election.”
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He continued, “He has failed at every turn to show me and my community any sense that he hears us and cares at all about making our voices heard” before concluding, “I am a Democratic candidate for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, and I will not support Biden’s re-election. It would be the equivalent of buying a ticket on the Titanic. If the Democratic party wants any chance to win in November, President Biden must not be the nominee.”
The U.S. House of Representatives last month censured Tlaib by a 234-188 vote for tweeting the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and urging a prolonged ceasefire between the two warring parties, which most analysts acknowledge will benefit the Palestinian ruling party Hamas far more than Israel.