Until now, the story of Michigan’s role in the election has centered on Arab Americans’ profound discontent with the Democratic Party over Israel’s relentless devastation of Gaza. The war has left deep emotional wounds.

Israel’s recent military incursion into Lebanon feels like another twist of the knife, intensifying the sense of betrayal and alienation of one of the most critical voting constituencies in the country.

Kamala Harris’s chances of winning the presidency will plummet if she loses Michigan, and current polling shows she and Donald Trump are neck and neck there.

Come November 5, I think we may look back on the weeks after Israel invaded Lebanon as the moment Harris lost significant ground in the race.

  • fukhueson@lemmy.world
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    20 days ago

    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/uncommitted-voting-kamala-harris

    In what follows, I will further explain why many “Uncommitted” voters should consider voting for Harris-Walz, by distinguishing between different kinds of “Uncommitted” voters and the different sorts of moral and political commitments that might lead them to be electorally “uncommitted,” and that also might lead them to commit the singular act of casting a vote for Kamala Harris.

    My hope is that this will persuade at least some readers that the defeat of Trumpism is an urgent moral and political imperative that should be important even to many who are understandably outraged by the Biden administration’s deafness to the demands of “Uncommitted” citizens.

    In a way, what I am saying is very similar to what leaders of the “Uncommitted” initiative have themselves said, by publicly refusing to “endorse Harris” but declaring that their movement “opposes a Donald Trump presidency, and urging supporters “to vote against him and avoid third-party candidates that can inadvertently boost his changes.” Indeed, Ilhan Omar, one of the strongest pro-Palestinian advocates in the U.S. government, has even endorsed Harris, even as she continues to support “Uncommitted” demands. Those leaders obviously have more credibility than I do, and what they are saying strikes me as wise. In what follows I simply elaborate on some of the reasons why others might consider it wise.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      I had a fun person yesterday basically say that all the Palestinians who say to vote for Harris are supporters of Palestinian genocide. They didn’t come right out and say it, but that was the gist of what they were saying.

      It was some real white savior stuff though.

      • fukhueson@lemmy.world
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        20 days ago

        Quite the privileged perspective, shaming Palestinians for trying to get what is arguably the best outcome for Gaza out of all the likely options. “Voting with your conscience” always seemed like a worse move than “voting with your brain.”

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago

          It was very much a “the only Palestinians that matter are my Palestinians” perspective and it was quite disturbing.