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More ignorant uninformed questions about the American presidential election!
So - Gaza? Palestine? Palestinians? Israel? Will this affect the Democratic vote, or is this just more journalists trying to spin straw into gold?:
Whatever about Michigan, on a national level is there a bunch of undecided/uncommitted voters who won't vote for Biden in the election (not going to vote for Trump or third party, but not voting as a protest on this one issue)?
If there are, are there enough to make a difference?
Or is it that it doesn't matter, the usual Democrat voters will turn out in enough numbers for a drop off in voting by a single-issue minority not to matter?
Will Gaza even be a live issue by the time the real election finally rolls round?
Michael Tracey, who has a good track record of predicting presidential winners, is saying Michigan augurs badly for Biden but not for the conventional reason most people are citing, i.e. the uncommitted vote is a bit overrated but looking at a larger set of indicators the picture changes.
Given that Israeli generals have said that the war will continue at least for this year (albeit in lower intensity), I suppose so. In addition, there are negotiations underway for an extended ceasefire to do a prisoner exchange. And all of this ignores a potential blowup in the North with Lebanon.
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As a first order effect, this is just internal political elbows.
From Michigan, there's a scenario where this could matter a lot in the fall, but it's pretty context dependent. Here in Michigan, the south of the state is essentially Democratic, it's where all the big cities are etc. But within the Democratic party, the battle is between the huge, corrupt, ancient racial regimes of the rust belt cities, the 75 corridor, and the more radical university-centered wing of the party headquartered in Ann Arbor and Lansing. Geographically and socially, the muslim community sort of connects these two groups.
Dearborn is at the conjunction of all the highways from Ann Arbor to Detroit. The heavily muslim community is strung out along the 94. The newer or poorer ones work on the Detroit side around the 95% black population, and the older families, with kids at the universities maybe, move toward the lilly-white suburbs of academia.
Same thing my ancestors did, only mine went north, along the 75 to the border with The North, where Republicans live.
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The General Election vote is still 9 months away, I'll be surprised if the Israel/Palestine conflict is in the same place then that it is today. Hard to predict what it will be but I wouldn't assume it affects that election the same way it affects primaries.
Furthermore the way people vote on a foregone-conclusion primary is generally not what they will do in a heated election. Unless Trump has some brilliant plan for peace that he somehow convinces progressive democrats he will implement and solve everything, I don't think these people will want Trump any more than they want Biden on this issue.
This like many other things is a relevant indicator of low enthusiasm for Biden among Democratic voters, which is certainly relevant to the general election. But I wouldn't try to draw any more direct analogies than that.
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Presidential primaries are not just about who wins the nomination and general election. They're also about policy. While it's obfuscated, the primary selects actual people to attend the nominating convention which both selects the candidate and negotiates exactly what appears on the party platform.
I doubt most of the pro-Gaza agitators honestly think they are going get Biden off the ballot, but they might think they can put enough pressure on him and the Democratic Party to change their official position on Gaza. They're probably wrong, but I'm sure there's people inside Biden's campaign watching this and considering what threshold of protest votes would make them consider what changes in policy. I suspect that threshold is much higher than we're seeing, but I'm really not sure.
I think the threshold is so high that it effectively does not exist. From everything I understand about the operation of hte US government, the combination of the Israel lobby/AIPAC, the MIC and the CIA exert far more power and influence over government policy than any number of voters.
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To state the obvious: Biden will not lose the primary. He’s an incumbent with a, true, not that good approval rating, but the other democrats are clowns, so it doesn’t matter that much.
I think the more interesting question is ‘will enough Arabs not vote for Biden to swing the Michigan general election’, which is much more of an open question. Personally I don’t expect so; if trump wins Michigan he’ll probably have won regardless of Arab support, and switching from Biden to trump is not what one does to find a less pro-Israel candidate.
I notice that my state broadcaster, whose staff care more about american goings on than they really should, have not even bothered to write about who the other candidates are, while I distinctly remember pieces being run about Bernie and Elizabeth Warren back in 2020. It is by and large assumed by everyone Important that Biden will be the democractic nominee.
Because in 2020 there were candidates like Warren and Buttigieg who were neither ‘who?’ Nor nut jobs. Doubtless yang and Marianne williamson didn’t get write ups.
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That's pretty typical, at least here in the US. The incumbent president is generally considered guaranteed to be the party nominee. Whereas in 2020, Biden was not really sure to be the nominee even though he had previously been VP.
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The difference is that in 2024 Biden is the incumbent; 2020 was an open primary. Incumbents running for re-election are generally accepted by everyone as the de facto nominee before the primary even begins. And the party machine begins closing ranks early. Biden was essentially the Democratic nominee from the moment he announced he was running again. It was the same with Trump in 2020. There were some minor candidates running a token opposition campaign. American media might make hay of the drama on a slow news day. But most Americans will not care, and it's no surprise your foreign state broadcaster would not even bother.
It's actually become accepted wisdom among political consultants that strong primary challenges against incumbents presage bad results in the general election. Ford and Carter were both primaried before they lost in the general elections, for example. So, in practice, the party machines have increasingly worked to prevent primaries against the incumbent. Legally, nothing can stop someone from filing to run for a major party nomination. But nobody is going to buy-in. This is why RFK gave up seeking to win the Democratic primary and decided to run as an independent: even though he had a decent fraction of Democratic support, nobody in the party would defect to supporting him, and so he was limited in how much progress he could really make.
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Correct. For the first time in a while, we have a dead primary season with, effectively, two incumbents. Election coverage has gotten used to circus primary campaigns that last forever and have tons of candidates. This is also why you get people making hay out of Haley's primary performances pretending that pulling in 20% represents a serious threat to Trump instead of admitting that 95% of them will vote for Trump in the general. They need something to talk about.
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This seems like a general complaint with Dems/Socialist/Commies ability to build coalitions. When you are running let’s call it a spoils systems (not a perfect fit here) you run into internal bickering over who gets the better spoils. In this case it’s closer to who is the oppressor/oppressed and the top oppressed in the social pyramid.
I tend to think Trump has this election won just because of how close the last election was an on the margins Israel/Hamas and inflation memories should swap some votes. The counter is the lawfare angle but the left has claimed Trump is a bad man for almost a decade now so getting some NY courts to declare him a bad man doesn’t to me feel like it moves the needle.
Don't forget there have been four more years for old Republicans to die and new young Democrats to come of age. The old pipeline of people moving right as they age has stalled.
On the other hand, Trump is doing much better than expected among young voters:
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/26/biden-trump-gen-z-millennial-poll
The hell? I’m in that bracket and there’s no way Trump has 50% support among young people. How could that even come about?
maybe they are in the closet? wouldn't surprise me, with the vitriol any whiff of right wing gets among lefties.
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I dunno, I've picked up some Trump support among younger people that would otherwise be politically disengaged.
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In practice most delegations to the DNC practice block voting anyway, where they swing all their votes one way so as to be more attractive to those trying to whip votes. Sometimes it’s a vote within the delegation that determines what the vote will be reported as to the DNC, sometimes the delegation chair just decides.
Following this primary there will be a process to elect delegates. The ones that win uncommitted slots are either going to be rookies who have no idea what happens at convention, or fake uncommitteds that are actually experienced party members. At convention both will have about the same impact on Biden’s nomination. In the super slim chance of a brokered convention it’s the party leaders that matter.
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I think the Gaza effect is real in terms of driving down Biden's poll numbers currently.
By the time the election rolls around? Probably not. Arabs might remain resolutely anti-Biden but there's not that many of them and the white lefties who also hate his support for Israel will come back home once the dust settles. And I'll be surprised if the war continues for more than another month or so.
The big problem with peeling off parts of the Democratic base is Trump himself. He's going to shoot himself in the dick before then. He was born with a golden foot in his mouth. If Trump could maintain message discipline, it would be easy. But that statement already made me laugh.
I think Trump has handled the Gaza issue about as well as possible from a political perspective, by shutting the hell up about it and not reminding angry leftists that the Republican party supports Israel even harder.
I don’t know. Being quiet helps the chance that voters stay home. Being loud and angering leftist would make them more aggressive and twist the knife into the Democrats between Hamas and Israel supporters.
A Jewish realignment to the GOP seems in the cards now as the risks from the left to them seem a lot more more serious than a handful of actual Nazis. Trump coming out loud would force this a lot more.
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Yes, but I highly doubt we'll get to November without a planned revival of the Muslim Ban, or some similar project, which will drive Arab turnout to the left.
After seeing what’s happening at protest I am 100% in favor of Muslim ban. It just seems more and more our society and their society are not compatible outside of some elite worldly people interacting.
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I'm not sure what point you're making here. Both sides-ism doesn't really matter for examination of the dynamics of one side.
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Biden is great at message discipline. His issue is that he needs to keep the Democratic coalition together (or believes he does) and that impedes his ability to go after the swing voters he needs to win.
Joe Biden is a politican infamous for speaking off-the-cuff and putting his foot in his mouth. It's one of his best-known qualities. I would even call it charming. Obama was a politician known for reading from the script. Hillary Clinton was a politician known for reading from the script. Joe Biden is not. I presume, then, that "message discipline" just means he reads off a teleprompter sometimes and has his aides run his twitter.
Really, it's actually a charming quality. Nobody actually cares that Biden challenged a fat man to do pushups, or gaffed a senator in a wheelchair to stand up. And while Trump has said many controversial things, nobody's vote is really going to be changed anymore because he said something else off-color. These are actually qualities people want. It's one thing that separates Trump and Biden from their many competitors: they aren't going to stand up and give you a tired hackneyed cliche speech about, "The will of the American People," "principles and values," "our democracy," etc. etc.
"Message discipline" doesn't mean you don't put your foot in your mouth. It means you consistently emphasize your strong issues, de-emphasize your weak issues, and present a consistent framing and position on the issues.
When Trump says "covfefe", that's a funny typo, but not a lack of message discipline. When he proposes the death penalty for criminals like the ones that he pardoned, that's a lack of message discipline.
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An election is like a giant Prisoner's Dilemma. A small group's collective decision to cooperate or defect can make all the difference in who wins. The politicians trying to get elected have to convince all their factions to cooperate and not defect. But whoever threatens to defect most convincinfly can hold the whole election hostage. And this is how power is won.
MAGA has proceded to (slowly) take over the Republican party because they are willing to defect. MAGA will vote for Trump, but not anti-Trump. People have decried MAGA for this behavior, calling them "cultlike" and other things. MAGA is blamed for election losses. But, MAGA is winning the Republican Party. And MAGA is growing, so that other factions are finding they can't threaten to defect with the same force that MAGA can.
Never Trump wants to defect from MAGA, and has tried several times to defect. But it turns out they're not really large enough to make much of a difference. They have other powers to compensate, like a lot of influence over the politicians and donors. But without a large voting bloc behind them, those powers are dwindling. MAGA is stronger than ever, and Never Trump is the weakest it's ever been.
The dynamic on the Democrat side is almost the opposite. A strong culture of "Vote Blue No Matter Who" has taken hold, because everybody agrees that a Trump/Republican victory is so bad that nobody wants to risk defecting. The result is that the Democratic base is sidelined and taken for granted. Bernie couldn't win, but neither could his voters shake Democratic politicos hard enough to extract meaningful concessions. The result: the Democratic party of 2024 is largely the same as the Democratic party of 2020, 2016, and 2012.
And Democratic voters seem to like it that way. Joe Biden is winning hundreds of thousands of votes in largely-uncontested primaries, because it seems that the Democratic base is concerned that no onesees defecting as a viable option. It's important that everyone stands firm against Trump.
So, for the Uncommitteds -- they're breaking a big taboo here. By "throwing away" their votes, they are signaling that they would rather throw Michigan to Trump than continue to support Biden without concessions. How serious of a threat is that? Some of these Uncommitted voters are surely already planning to vote for Joe in November; some are not. Negotiating how strong this force really is determines how much the party really needs to concede. The stronger the voters defect, the more the Democrats have to give them.
Of course, it may not be possible for the Democrats to concede enough. Leaning on Israel to stop the war in Gaza might bring Michigan's Uncommitted voters back into the fold, but alienate other voters. It might not be possible for Biden to do what the Uncommitted faction wants. Or Biden and his people may simply be unwilling to. (The story I'm seeing is that the people in the White House already feel that they've done a great deal for Gaza, and if only they could "communicate" this to voters, everything would work itself out.)
My surmise is that the Uncommitted faction right now is not large enough to extract real concessions. The overwhelming sentiment on the Democratic side is that defecting will lose elections, and should be punished. I don't think there will be a large-scale policy shift that will satisfy the voters.
The interesting implication is that, if one faction is already defecting, it becomes possible for other factions to defect. In the original Prisoner's Dilemma, cooperating is always the best move, unless someone defects -- in which case, defecting becomes the best move. Nobody wants to boycott Joe Biden and lose the election. But if there's already a boycott, and Biden is already guaranteed to lose, then defecting is more worthwhile for other groups. "They're getting concessions, but I'm even more important than them, and I deserve concessions too." And maybe, in this scenario, the Democratic party actually starts to move in the direction of its would-be populist base.
At the present moment, however, I don't think this is very likely.
Ironically, MAGAs aren't getting much of anything out of it, Trump didn't have to do anything for them because he has their vote anyway. For example, left a bunch of his most ardent supporters who participated in J6 to democrat mercy while pardoning scammers and rappers. He pushed for gun control, First Step criminal release and Platinum plan reparations, because what are anyone unhappy with that on the right going to do, vote for Biden?
This has been gone over repeatedly - the moment Trump pardoned the J6 crew he would have been immediately impeached and the GOPe would help the left get rid of him. Trump may be liked by the base, but he's loathed by the establishment republicans because him getting his way means that their cushy sinecures go out the window as well.
So, Trump can only do the right thing for his supporters only if it doesn't cost him in any way? Maybe you have invested your hopes and dreams in the wrong guy then?
No, Trump was constrained and hamstrung by an administration that was diametrically opposed to his political goals. He didn't handle things perfectly, but there were actual reasons behind his actions.
I am not whoever you were thinking of when you came up with this line - I haven't invested any of my dreams in Trump, and my only hope for him is that he serves to damage the power elite. My wildest hope would be that he dismantles that power elite in a second term, but I'm not even sure how realistic that is.
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Compare Trump to any non-Trump or pre-Trump politician: illegal immigration as top priority, new trade deals and reshoring manufacturing, no new entanglements or foreign wars. These were the big three planks of Trump's 2016 run. Alternatives to Trump included: Jeb Bush saying illegal immigrants came to the US as an act of love; Marco Rubio having tried comprehensive immigration reform; Ted Cruz supporting an expansion for H1-B visas; etc. etc.
MAGA has been quite satisfied with Trump, which is why they keep voting for him.
For your criticisms, I'm not sure MAGA cares. You seem to be describing the criticisms of some other group. "Platinum Plan" was seen by most people as empty marketing, and nobody anywhere cared about it. (It is definitely not akin to reparations.) "Gun control" is also not very compelling when I presume you're really just referring to bump stocks.
He started arming Ukraine and bombed Syria.
He made a lot of noise and got US hit by retaliatory tariffs, haven't achieved much benefit AFAIK.
That was supposed to be funds earmarked for blacks only, call that whatever you like.
It wasn't just bump stocks, he pushed for red flag laws ("take the guns first, go through due process later").
America was already entangled in Ukraine.
America was already entangled in Syria.
I could go on. I made my point, and you're not really disputing it. MAGA is quite happy with Trump, and that's why they vote for him. You, for your reasons, are not. That's fine man
It seems like an incredibly pedantic distinction to say that Donald Trump expanding US involvement in Middle Eastern and African conflicts doesn't count because the US was technically already involved. It doesn't support the notion of Trump the peacemonger.
This gets to a lot of broader technical questions: How deeply should the US be involved in the Middle East? What counts as a "war"? How much responsibility does the president have over American foreign policy vis-a-vis the rest of the foreign policy establishment? What would a different president theoretically have done? etc. etc.
Ultimately: the blob released information accusing Syria and Assad of using chemical weapons on the people of Syria. Trump responded by bombing an airport tarmac. I don't think you can call that "expanding US involvement" in the Middle East. That's the incident OP was referring to. I don't consider it a very serious accusation that Trump somehow abandoned his position to not start another war. We can compare it against all sorts of hypothetical other presidencies. And we can compare it against Obama and Bush, who both literally started wars in the Middle East.
You can call me pedantic, but, ultimately, I think your idea that Trump "expanded US involvement" in the Middle East can only be true in a pedantic sense. On the basis everyone understands, cares about, and talked about in 2016: Trump did not start any new wars. He did not perpetrate Afghistan, Libya, or Iraq. And that leaves us with boring technical questions about whether, for example, Trump allowed himself to be misled by generals who tried to prevent him from pulling out of Afghanistan. Certainly, nobody in the MAGA coalition feels all that betrayed by Trump's promises in the Middle East that he bombed an inconsequential airport tarmac in Syria (a country with which we are technically not at war, with which US foreign policy has been deeply entangled since the Obama years at minimum).
It is true in the literal, material sense that in a number of places, Trump continued or substantially expanded US military involvement in conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, e.g. US involvement in Syria under Trump was by no means limited to an isolated bombing. The US was heavily involved in the Battle of Raqqa. The Battle of Khasham saw US forces killing Russian troops. In Somalia, US involvement went from nominal to almost weekly strikes. Similarly, strikes in Yemen were massively expanded (Trump also vetoed disengagement).
Perhaps they're not as anti-interventionist as they claim? Or maybe they just don't pay much attention to foreign policy?
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They shouldn't be "happy with him" though. He beat a far better candidate in the current primary based on voter ignorance, glib charm and lies, likely will lose in the general and sell you down the river again if he wins. He doesn't believe in anything except his narcissism.
Who?
Nikki Haley is not a serious candidate. DeSantis was nowhere near as strong as Trump either.
DeSantis was far superior - not so old, not indicted, hasn't lost to Biden once already, not involved in a bunch scandals, can serve two terms, not obese, better on handling Covid, not related to Kushner, on the right of Trump on various issues, etc.
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I preferred DeSantis too. But elections are contests and it was Trump's job to beat him, which he did, fairly; it would be silly for someone whose preference is DeSantis > Trump > Biden to punish Trump for doing so by not voting for him (or even voting for Biden) in the general.
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Trump is currently poised to beat Biden in the general. MAGA likes Trump and Trump likes MAGA. J6 or whatever aside, no politician in America today has withstood as much pressure as Trump, and if Trump wanted to sell out his base, he could have. We could argue all day about this, but your complaints to me don't add anything that hasn't been debated a million times before.
Twenty years ago before MAGA even existed, its precursors like the Tea Party had almost no institutional support. Ten years ago, the conservative faction was represented by people like Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, and Trump's nomination was hotly, hotly contested. Today, MAGA is the dominant faction in Republican politics, even marshaling the commitment to unseat a Speaker of the House, and establishment Republicans have largely made peace with Trump as the leader. Like it or hate it, MAGA is proving effective at taking over the Republican Party. In light of that, it's hard to argue that MAGA is especially irrational. They are clearly one of the most effective factions currently operating in American politics.
"MAGA" from the 2016 campaign trail or "MAGA" from the 'legal immigration is actually good for the economy' that Trump started parroting in office after one too many a meeting with the fine folks from the Heritage Foundation?
"MAGA" is an empty political slogan that one too many 'right wing' American pours all their hopes and dreams into. It's vague enough to fit all of them. Vote for change!
To give a factual example of why "MAGA" is a marketing thing and not a political thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2018_United_States_federal_government_shutdown
"MAGA", if it ever was a thing, caved in, got on all fours and kissed the ring of TPTB. No wall, no deportations, more immigration. That has been its state ever since.
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Tea party was about fiscal responsibility. At the end of Trump administration US was close to outright socialism, with the stimmy checks, rent moratorium and unemployment paying more than a minimum wage job. If Tea party mutated into that, that's some real "Cthulhu only swims left" stuff. Your guy wins a popularity contest and you completely lose any mission objective along the way.
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Chicken rather than Prisoner's Dilemma: the penalties for defect-defect are higher than for cooperate-defect.
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The race isn't democrat vs republican, it is voting vs not voting. 66% voted in 2020 meaning that 33% of the population is enough to get 50%. Not voting was as popular as Trump or Biden. Rallies and campaigning isn't so much about getting republicans to vote for Biden or democrats to vote for Trump, it is about getting people to show up. The goal is to create energy and momentum that will make people show up, volunteer to drive granny to the polling both or pester their friend to tag along and vote. Often people don't really care about what is hyped, they care about the hype. People will watch the Olympics because it is the Olympics because it is the big thing everyone is talking about. People want to be there and be a part of something historic and see something greater than them.
The risk for Biden isn't that his voters will vote Trump or even that large numbers refuse to vote because of Palestine. The risk is that the enthusiasm dies. People who would have hyped him when talking to their friends will just talk about how politicians suck. People will be less motivated to put up signs, knock on doors, post stuff on social media etc.
Biden's campaign already lacks energy and enthusiams as "Trump sucks" isn't a great slogan. If his voters can't be bothered to watch and like pro Biden tiktoks the tiktoks will gain less traction and energy is reduced. Less hype leads to fewer people creating hype which in turn leads to less hype.
This is the way I've seen things for a long time, but given that, it always confused me why fans of certain politicians would try to emphasize poll numbers that show their guy winning. I think this happens all the way up to the actual organizations that run polls, where the polling organization's own preferences get reflected in the poll numbers they show (in that their preferred candidate has better numbers than in a poll conducted by an organization that isn't a fan of that candidate). If you want the votes of people who are on your side but are too ambivalent/lazy to bother voting normally, shouldn't you emphasize how you need each and every vote to defeat the other guy, rather than that your guy is doing so well that he doesn't need any help?
There's, of course, the phenomenon that I think Osama Bin Laden alluded to, that when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, then they instinctively want to back the strong horse. As best as I can tell, this phenomenon is almost certainly true to a large extent, far greater than many in the modern West like to admit or think about. But in terms of actually compelling someone to go out to the polls and cast their ballot (versus just having general positive vibes and rooting for the team while watching the horse race), it would still surprise me that that effect overwhelms the one of simply being concerned that their favorite politician needs every last vote to win.
Dunno, I have the impression that by and large, politicians try to emphasize exactly the things that motivates voters; As you can also see in the media the average person consumes, people want to support someone who:
a) Is successful despite...
b) Having difficult external pressures to overcome (poor family, discrimination, etc) because ...
c) They have great internal qualities (charismatic, smart, conscientious, etc)
Obviously what counts for what differs between groups, but almost all try to emphasize this basic archetype. Likewise, in the opponents they emphasize the opposite. And I think for pure turn-out purposes, the most important thing is to convince people that the opponent is outright dangerous; They will vote even if their favored candidate is polling well just to be safe and to make a stand against evil! It feels good if the candidate you already feel self-righteous about also wins in a landside. On the other hand, if you're unsure whether the other candidate really is that much worse, emphasizing how close the race is doesn't really do much. There's also the problem of reading between the lines; Good messaging is consistently talking about your strong points, if you talk too much about polling badly, people will (often correctly) infer that you have nothing better to say.
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General rule is foreign policy doesn't sway US elections unless there's American corpses or hostages involved. Muslims may hate support of Israel, Jews may dislike pandering to Hamas supporters, but at the end of the day they're all going to vote Democratic in the general election no matter what.
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I think the Israel question was poison for the left's coalition. Neolibs are not going to rally the radicals by supporting the bombing of brown people and trying to pivot to closing the borders.
Whatever the level of shenanigans one thinks happened in 2020, it's going to be difficult to motivate the people that would engage in such shenanigans with the same level of enthusiasm this time around.
And yet at the same time, the moderates that would make up for this on the center are not looking too keenly on how they're using the justice system against Trump and dancing so close to the line that only SCOTUS is safeguarding the Republic.
This wouldn't matter as much if Trump wasn't running against a ham sandwich, but unfortunately for the Dems, he basically is.
I don't understand why they don't switch candidates at this point, it's the perfect time to do it, they have all the excuses they're ever going to get, and everyone would understand. Maybe nobody wants the slot, maybe Biden bolted himself to the chair, but this rematch against Trump seems like suicide.
Because for internal political reasons the replacement for Biden has to be a black woman, and the dems don’t have any that both want the job and are ready for a national level campaign. Kamala and Abrams come off pretty clueless and michelle and Oprah don’t want to.
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The identitarian wing most relevant here isn't the Arab-American community, but the faction within the democrats which tries to mantle the Arab-American community more broadly in the Progressive-Democratic spaces- specifically The Squad members Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American (per her wiki) who's power center is in Michigan, and who is closely associated with Representative Ilhan Omar, who is from Minnesotta as a Somali-American. Both women are openly muslim part of their taglines (the first two muslim women to serve in the US Congress), and both align/slot themselves as the Arab-American representatives in the Democratic progressive stack.
I wouldn't call this a power play per see- there is plenty of genuine dismay at the war- but it's less anti-war and more anti-side-Biden-supports. And the purpose is not to actually harm Biden- there is no meaningful harm from 'uncommitted' voters in a primary he wins- but rather as a warning shot to bolster political leverage. The implicit (and, by proxies, explicit) threat is that if Biden doesn't compromise to them and work to compel the Israelis to end the conflict, then they won't support him in the election against Trump. In effect, it's attempting to coerce a bribe for support. This flows from the principle that their support is needed for Biden to get the votes to win, and also that Biden meeting their terms won't lose him more votes in the process.
The issue for Biden is, of course, that where the votes are will matter. It's not a national-level issue, it's an issue of what matters in the electoral swing states. Michigan is one of those swing states- which increases the viability of the threat- but Minnesota is not- decreasing the national level argument.
As for whether Gaza will be a live issue by the time of the summer election season- probably not. I'd argue it's not even a live national issue now- it's a Democratic internal issue, and one that is in the process of being smothered by party-institutional power and connections. While things still come up about it- like this article wave related to a largely irrelevant pro forma primary- the institutional wing has largely asserted itself over the Squad-wing, both because of who runs the party (Biden's wing, where Biden is very pro-Israel) and in the name of not driving off the Jewish wing (which includes some key party influencers who were shook hard by progressive-wing acceptance/support for Hamas after Oct 7).
The NYT had a recent article on some of the internal Democratic party dynamics and infighting regarding the war. Take it for what it's worth, but the NYT is definitely framing the pro-Palestinian wing as the underdogs, and the NYT is often more credible in this sort of piece on internal democratic affairs.
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