MICHIGAN: The US state of Michigan votes on Tuesday in a presidential primary that is expected to be another showdown for Republican Donald Trump – but could give Democratic front-runner Joe Biden a bloody nose over the war in Gaza.
Biden faces no serious opposition to being nominated for a second term in the White House.
But as civilian casualties mount in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, he has seen support among Muslims and Arab Americans erode, a bloc crucial to his narrow victory over Trump in 2020 in Michigan.
Activists in the key Midwestern battleground — where Biden’s margin of victory four years ago was just 150,000 votes — want Michigan residents to vote “nonbinding” in protest, pressuring the president to back away from his support for Israel and call for an immediate ceasefire.
“President Biden funded bombs falling on people’s family members right here in Michigan — people who voted for him, who now feel completely betrayed,” said Layla Elabed of the Listen to Michigan campaign.
The group’s goal is to rally 10,000 “uncommitted” voters to deliver a “powerful, unequivocal message” that funding and supporting the war is “contrary to the values of the Democratic Party.”
Biden is headed for the Democratic nomination, with his main potential rival, Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips, polling in the single digits.
But activists deny that the “non-committal” campaign is merely symbolic, given their importance in the election, which was decided by narrow margins. “Ten thousand votes is about the same as Donald Trump’s margin over Hillary Clinton in 2016,” Elabed said.
The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli figures compiled by AFP.
But concern has grown over the high civilian death toll in Israel’s retaliatory campaign, which now stands at nearly 30,000 in Hamas-run Gaza, according to the health ministry.
White House officials have portrayed Biden as frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
US weapons continue to flow into Israel, even as efforts continue to broker a second pause in the fighting.
Biden has asked Congress for billions of dollars more in military aid, and his administration has vetoed several UN Security Council calls for a ceasefire.
A similar campaign calling for a ceasefire during the New Hampshire primary went nowhere, but Michigan has a significantly larger Muslim and Arab population.
“With each day that passes, with each minute that the president fails to do the right thing, the faith that I and many others have invested in him diminishes,” wrote Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of the heavily Arab American suburb of Dearborn. in The New York Times last week.
“With every American-made bomb that Israel’s right-wing government drops on Gaza, a cruel numbness will cover everything and limit any room for faith to grow.”
On the Republican side, Trump has swept early voting states, and Michigan is not expected to derail his march to the nomination.
His only remaining challenger, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, lost her home state of South Carolina to Trump over the weekend, but refused to quit, saying she did not believe Trump could defeat Biden.
Haley was dealt another blow Sunday when a network of wealthy Koch families announced they were halting their campaign contributions.
Both parties have ballots Tuesday, though Republicans have adopted a complex hybrid system that closes the contest four days later through caucus-style caucuses in each of the state’s 13 congressional districts.
More than two-thirds of the Republican delegates — individuals appointed by each state to endorse candidates at the party’s summer nominating convention — will be awarded on March 2.
