The American state of Michigan votes on Tuesday in a presidential primary which should, on the Republican side, once again endorse Donald Trump, but where on the Democratic side, Joe Biden faces a protest vote for his role in the crisis in Gaza.
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The president faces no serious opposition in his camp to his nomination for a second term.
But as civilian casualties rise in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, he has seen his support erode among Muslims and Arab Americans, a bloc that had been crucial to him in 2020 against Donald Trump. Trump in Michigan.
Activists in this key Midwestern region, where Joe Biden’s margin of victory was just 150,000 votes four years ago, are calling for blank votes in protest, aiming to put pressure on the president to he reverses his support for Israel and calls for an immediate ceasefire.
“President Biden is funding bombs that are falling on loved ones of families right here in Michigan, people who voted for him and who feel completely betrayed,” says Layla Elabed of the Listen to Michigan campaign ( Listen Michigan).
- Listen to the American political column with Professor Luc Laliberté via QUB :
10,000 votes
The group wants to mobilize 10,000 voters to deliver a “powerful and unequivocal message” that financing and supporting the war in Gaza is “contradictory to the values of the Democratic Party.”
The campaign is not just symbolic, activists say.
“Ten thousand votes is about the same as Donald Trump’s margin compared to Hillary Clinton in 2016” in Michigan, underlines Layla Elabed.
White House officials are displaying growing frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his conduct of the war in Gaza.
However, the United States continues to deliver quantities of weapons to Israel, while leading intense efforts to negotiate a second truce in the war provoked by the bloody attack by Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil.
Joe Biden has asked Congress for billions of dollars in additional military aid for Israel, and his administration has vetoed several UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire.
A similar campaign demanding a ceasefire during the New Hampshire primary in January achieved nothing, but Michigan has a large Muslim and Arab population.
“It’s about holding President Biden accountable (…). What we want is a change of course and a just solution for the Palestinian people,” Abdullah Hammoud, mayor of Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with a large Arab-American population, said on Instagram. The Democrat supports the “Listen to Michigan” campaign.
Fatima Elzaghir votes blank, she told AFP on Tuesday.
“It is obvious that appealing to empathy has no influence on most politicians. So perhaps the fact that (Biden) wants to win Michigan will push him to a cease-fire,” says this young nurse.
Joe Biden’s only opponent for the Democratic nomination, Dean Phillips, a wealthy parliamentarian from the state of Minnesota, is below 10% in voting intentions, according to polls.
Trump on his way
On the Republican side, Donald Trump has already won handily four states that have voted, including South Carolina on Saturday, and Michigan should not interrupt its march towards the Republican nomination this summer.
Her only remaining opponent, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, lost in her home state of South Carolina, but she refuses to give up, saying she doesn’t believe Donald Trump can defeat Joe Biden in November.
She suffered another blow Sunday when the wealthy Koch family network announced it was stopping donations to her campaign.
Both parties hold polls on Tuesday, although Republicans have opted for a complex hybrid system that will conclude four days later.
