An “undecided” voter holds a sign protesting President Biden’s policy toward Israel’s war in Gaza, outside a polling place in Dearborn, Mich., ahead of the state’s presidential primary in February.
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Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images North America
Hundreds of thousands of voters cast “no pledge” ballots in this year’s Democratic primary to protest President Biden’s policy on Israel’s war in Gaza.
Now that Vice President Harris has replaced Biden as the head of the ticket, organizers of the movement are expressing cautious optimism about the possibility of working with Harris.
“There are initial signs that they are ready to join our movement, which is a change from how we previously addressed our demands,” Abbas Alawieh, co-founder of the uncommitted movement, told a press conference in recent days.
“So I choose to continue to hope that the vice president will not miss the opportunity to unite our party.”
Layla Elabed is another co-founder of the uncommitted movement and says Harris’ candidacy opens up an opportunity.
“Vice President Harris has shown that she is a little more sympathetic to our movement. She has talked about Palestinian self-determination. She has talked about the suffering that Palestinians are going through right now,” Elabed said in an interview. “And so that’s a little bit of a language shift from what we’ve seen from President Biden and his administration.”
Elabed and other leaders are quoted Vice President’s Comments after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a trip to Washington in late July, just days after Biden ended his campaign.
Harris affirmed Israel’s right to self-defense, but added that “how it defends itself is what matters.”
“The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for a second, third or fourth time,” Harris said. “We cannot turn a blind eye to these tragedies. We cannot become numb to suffering, and I will not be silent.”
An important move in an important state
The non-committal movement grew out of the “Listen to Michigan” campaign ahead of the state’s presidential primary in February. The goal of the campaign is to send a strong message to Biden that he needs to do more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza. The organizers’ main demands are an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to U.S. arms transfers to Israel.
Michigan has a large Arab-American population and in the presidential primary more than 100,000 voters voted for “no commitment”, accounting for about 13% of the total vote.
Biden won Michigan in 2020 by just 154,000 votes, and it remains a key swing state.
Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, speaks at a campaign rally at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Wednesday.
Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images
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Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images
This week, Harris met briefly with two leaders of the movement ahead of a campaign rally in Michigan.
Alawieh said it was a brief meeting backstage in a reception line. He said he told Harris that previously uncommitted voters wanted to support her, but needed to know she would take a different path on Gaza.
“And I asked her, ‘Will you meet with us so we can discuss the arms embargo?’” he recalled. “And the vice president very quickly said, ‘I would really like that.’ And we took the picture and I said, ‘Thank you very much.’”
This is not a commitment to specific policies, he said, but rather to continue to meet to address these pressing concerns.
Phil Gordon, Harris’s national security adviser, later emphasized a post on X that, “She does not support an arms embargo on Israel.”
There were some pro-Palestinian protesters at a rally in Michigan this week who interrupted the vice president with chants of, “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide. We will not vote for genocide.”
Harris initially gave them time to speak, but as the interruptions continued, she cut them off, implying that Donald Trump’s election would actually be detrimental to their cause.
“If you want Donald Trump to win, then say so. If not, I will say so,” Harris said.
What voters are looking for from Harris
It is not yet known whether Harris’ policy on Gaza will differ significantly from that of the Biden administration.
Organizers of the noncommittal movement insist that changing the language is not enough. They continue to push for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, along with an end to U.S. arms sales to Israel. And they have called for a doctor who has worked on the front lines in Gaza to speak at the Democratic National Convention later this month.
Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, Mich., a city where the majority of the population is of Middle Eastern or North African descent, praised Harris’s remarks after Netanyahu’s visit, but said: “What we want is not just a rhetorical tough guy. We want a policy tough guy. From our perspective, our values have not changed. The policy positions that we have advocated have not changed.”
Elabad, one of the co-founders of the uncommitted movement, said she wanted to see assurances that Harris would reverse Biden’s policies and said the Palestinians “cannot go back on their word.”
The core of the uncommitted movement is Arab Americans and young voters. Many are still deciding what they will do in November.
Kole Cuderna, 18, of Holland, Mich., voted uncommitted in February. He said he would likely vote for Biden in the general election, but reluctantly.
“With Biden, I’m not excited,” he said. “But with Harris, it’s like, yeah, I’m excited. I’m excited about Harris. I feel like she can win.”
But Jennifer Schlicht, 41, was more subdued in her response, saying she was waiting to see if Harris would make any policy changes toward the Middle East.
“Would I vote for her? Probably,” said Schlicht, of Ypsilanti, Mich. “But I would feel much better about voting for her if she followed through on what she said to Netanyahu, and stood for something that respected the Palestinian people’s right to life.”
There are also voters like Hank Kennedy, a teacher trainee from Hazel Park, Mich., who said a new candidate doesn’t change his calculus.
“There needs to be a change in policy, not just change at the top,” said Kennedy, 27.
Kennedy said if the election were held tomorrow, he would probably vote Green. (Organizers, for their part, have not pledged to recommend that voters support a third party.)
While Kennedy also said he was concerned about what another Trump presidency could bring for Palestinians, he said he did not feel Democrats had done enough to stop the death and destruction in Gaza.
“If we have to vote for the lesser of two evils? I mean, which is the lesser of two evils? That’s the way I look at it,” he said.
