Should Joe Biden be worried?
The American state of Michigan votes, Tuesday, February 27, 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.
The president faces no serious opposition in his camp to his nomination for a second term in the White House.
But as the number of civilian casualties rises in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, his support is eroding among Muslims and Arab Americans, a bloc that had been crucial to him in 2020 against Donald Trump in this same state of 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 pressure President Biden to he reconsiders his support for Israel and calls for an immediate ceasefire.
See also Gaza: Americans of Arab origin swear to “punish” Biden at the polls
“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 to Michigan).
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."
They deny that their campaign is purely symbolic.
“Ten thousand votes is about the same as Donald Trump's margin compared to Hillary Clinton in 2016” in Michigan, underlines Layla Elabed.
Billions of dollars in additional military aid
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 pause 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 government has vetoed several resolutions calling for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council.
Also read: NATO – United States, a relationship marked by more than one crisis
A similar campaign demanding a ceasefire during the New Hampshire primary in January achieved nothing, but Michigan has a much larger Muslim and Arab population.
“Every day that passes, every minute that the president does not do the right thing, the trust that I and so many others have placed in him diminishes,” Mayor Abdullah Hammoud wrote last week in the New York Times. from Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with a large Arab-American population.
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.
Nikki Haley refuses to give up
On the Republican side, Donald Trump has already won handily four states that have voted, including South Carolina last Saturday, and Michigan should not interrupt its march towards the Republican nomination this summer.
Her only remaining opponent, former United Nations 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.
Also readRepublican primaries: what is Nikki Haley playing, the candidate who persists against Trump?
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.
More than two-thirds of Republican delegates – the people designated by each state to elect their candidate at the party's nomination convention – will be chosen on "Super Tuesday", Tuesday, March 2.
With AFP
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