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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25345 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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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?:

In Michigan, home to a large Arab-American constituency, Democratic voters had been urged to mark their primary ballots as "uncommitted" in protest at Mr Biden's Gaza policy.

With almost half of Democratic votes counted, the number of "uncommitted" voters was more than 58,000, according to Edison Research, far exceeding the target of 10,000 that protest organisers had hoped for.

Many in Michigan's Arab-American community who backed Mr Biden in 2020 are angry, as are some progressive Democrats, over Mr Biden's support for Israel's offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed.

...Campaign organisers vowed to take what they called their anti-war agenda to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

... With nearly half the estimated Democratic vote counted, Mr Biden had 80% support, with "uncommitted" getting 13%.

...When former president Barack Obama, a Democrat, ran for re-election in 2012, he faced about 21,000 "uncommitted" voters in Michigan's primary that year. Mr Biden faced substantially more.

Michigan is expected to play a decisive role in the head-to-head 5 November US presidential election, a likely rematch between Mr Biden and Mr Trump.

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?

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.

I don't understand why they don't switch candidates at this point

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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