Biden has 8 months to fix Michigan.

CNN
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Joe Biden could lose reelection if Democratic voters in Michigan and a handful of other battleground states feel less confident in November.

Tens of thousands of Democratic primary voters protested the president’s support for Israel in Tuesday’s primary, and he faces a battle for his coalition and political base to defeat presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. He made it clear that he was facing a crisis and had to win. .

The stakes couldn’t be higher, as there’s a good chance that the candidate who wins Michigan in the fall will return to the White House for a second term.

But while Biden can try to alleviate his problems with the state’s thousands of Arab American voters in the suburbs, it is beyond his control to alleviate his vulnerability. Something, namely, to restore peace to the Middle East, and Israel’s operation against last October’s Hamas terrorist attack has ended.

Democratic primary voters in Michigan have the option to mark their votes as “uncommitted.” In 2012, even President Barack Obama had 20,000 such asylum seekers. It was just a moment before being re-elected. But on Tuesday night, Biden received an unmistakable message. Biden received 81% of the vote, with only 61% of the vote. However, more than 67,000 voters made their case known by casting unqualified votes.

The scale of the no-commit vote, after a coordinated campaign by Arab Americans and progressive critics of Biden’s Middle East policy, is the clearest sign yet of how the war in Gaza is tearing apart the Democratic Party’s fabric. This is a sign.

The Biden campaign released a statement late Tuesday in the president’s name about his victory in Michigan, but made no mention of the uncommitted vote in the state. Hours later, a senior campaign aide sent an out-of-the-blue message directly addressing the issue.

“President Biden shares the goals of many who voted indifferent: to end violence and achieve a just and lasting peace,” a senior Biden campaign adviser said. “That’s what he’s working towards.”

The primary election to be held in February will not determine the outcome of the general election. And it is impossible to predict how Biden will fare in a rematch with Trump. Mr. Trump has indicated he would try to reimpose a travel ban on Muslims in his second term, which looks even worse for Arab voters.

Mr. Trump should also be concerned about his liability in the general election, but that’s before he could be convicted in four criminal trials. His last remaining rival, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, received nearly a third of the vote in Michigan. This comes despite the former president having a 100% record for victory so far in this year’s party’s nomination race, with more than 225,000 Republicans calling her the Republican nominee as of Tuesday night. This means that he wants to place him at the top of the list. She was the third consecutive Republican president to receive the nod.

But Biden had a bigger headache, at least on Tuesday night.

Even a largely uncontested primary election can reveal weaknesses in the incumbent president’s appeal. The Michigan results will only intensify questions about the strength of Biden’s coalition and the enthusiasm of key Democratic voters, including minority voters, young voters and progressives. These groups were among those who reacted most viscerally to the massacres in Gaza.

In 2016, Trump won a shocking victory over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by about 11,000 votes, paving the way for the most destructive presidency in modern American history. Four years later, Biden rebuilt the blue wall and led Michigan by about 150,000 votes. There are every signs that the race will be close this time around, due to Biden’s unpopularity and intense scrutiny of the incumbent. If thousands of unopposed voters don’t return to Biden on Tuesday or stay home in November, it could have a huge impact on the fate of the White House.

What Democrats see as the worrisome possibility of a second term for Trump has spurred the Biden campaign into an eager effort to reduce the blame exposed in the primaries, where he won 80% of the vote. That should be enough to get you started.

Biden has dispatched campaign and White House aides to Michigan to explain his policy toward Israel. He supports the right to defend the country, but has repeatedly advocated for a temporary ceasefire to rescue Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas. Nearly 30,000 additional civilians have been killed in Israeli military operations, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

But after a life punctuated by personal tragedy, the president, who often emphasizes his ability to understand the grief of others, has yet to directly comfort many Arab American voters whose families have been caught up in the horror. , do not explain their lack. He succeeded in limiting the scale of Israeli operations.

Such a visit appears to be a step the president will have to take sooner or later. And as Mr. Biden seeks to mend rifts with some of his party’s voters and win support from some Haley voters who despise Mr. will likely rely heavily on the Democratic turnout machine.

“I think he needs to be there for this community,” Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell told CNN on Tuesday night, adding that seeing so many Palestinian deaths has left her constituents alone. Many were “raw” and “heart-wrenching,” he added.

Another prominent Democrat, California Rep. Ro Khanna, told CNN that Michigan voters are sending the president a compelling message and that Democrats need to better “understand” the coalition. .

The signs that the Democratic coalition government is about to collapse raise important questions.

–Are the Democrats who showed up Tuesday to vote against the president prepared to return to their party in November?

–If Biden is successful in negotiating a ceasefire, will it appease the many voters who expressed anger on Tuesday? Or has the conflict already caused him irreparable political damage?

–The undeniable electoral price Biden faces is to give the most pro-Israel American leader in decades an attitude toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his apparent desire to prolong the war. Will it harden?

–If that happens, will Arab-American and progressive voters angry at Biden begrudgingly support anti-Trump causes?

It is clear that Mr. Biden needs to alleviate the domestic political headwinds caused by his Middle East policy. But the prospects for decisive intervention in the conflict are even more uncertain. For example, the president said on Monday, on the eve of the Michigan primary, that he was optimistic that a pause in fighting could allow Hamas to release more Israeli hostages and spare civilians. It became a hot topic. Agreed by next week. His comments appear to have caused consternation in the Middle East, although the president’s optimism remains unwarranted despite weeks of ceasefire negotiations.

After decades of sparring between Biden and Netanyahu, the two leaders’ political interests now appear to be drifting apart. Since Tuesday, the president has increased the need for an early end to the fighting and to provide evidence that the desire for a Palestinian state shared by many American Muslims is no mirage.

But many analysts believe Prime Minister Netanyahu, who heads a fragile coalition government, will seek to avoid the possibility of a general election, which polls suggest he will lose after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. I believe that they have a strong political interest in prolonging the hostile relationship. The worst days in Israel’s history occurred on his watch.

In some ways, the fall of Netanyahu’s government may help Biden’s re-election prospects and the possibility that the war in Gaza will lessen in intensity. But that’s something no one in the White House dares to say out loud.

“The president of the United States can’t say who he wants as prime minister of Israel,” Biden campaign official Mitch Landrieu told CNN after the Michigan results were announced. The former New Orleans mayor said Michigan Democrats are making their views known. . But he acknowledged that the president does not have full control over “very complex and difficult issues that we are not really dealing with.”

In that sense, the Middle East crisis and its domestic political headwinds are typical of overseas crises that greatly hinder incumbent politicians in their re-election efforts.

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.