But if you’re smart enough to realize that, then isn’t Harris? Aren’t the folks who do this for a living? How much will they sweat if they reach the same conclusion you did?
@Cervaise, that was a beautiful insight into a knotty problem. Thank you.
Said slightly differently, those folks are single-issue voters. But unlike the more common home-grown single-issue types (e.g. fundamentalist religion, guns, abortion), for these folk’s single issue both parties offer apparently the same thing: Bupkiss.
Which human nature does not tend to reward with a careful consideration of the balance of benefits on all the lesser issues that differentiate the Rs from the Ds and a strong desire to vote accordingly. Rather it induces a “pox on both your houses!” reaction. Which leads to non-voting or 3rd party protest voting.
Hell, a lot of MAGA’s success over 20 years can be put down to lots and lots of ordinary white nominally christian Americans deciding both parties offered them and their problems nothing but bupkiss while both parties pandered to the wealthy elite in ways that differed only slightly from theses folks’ POV.
They were ripe for a 3rd-party candidate to sweep them up. The evil genius of trump was being able to do so from within the context of an existing party, giving him/them all the advantages of being one of the big 2 parties instead of all the disadvantages of being a 3rd wannabe party.
I think that’s the best decision for most voters. It’s not the one every voter will reach. And at the point where they cast their ballot, they may be so disgusted that they vote third party.
A rational Harris supporter ought to be worried about losing those votes, IMHO. Despite my believing this is the best choice for American Arabs, i am terrified that Harris will lose the election over this.
I don’t remember where I saw it but the sentiment I saw expressed was that Arab Americans see no difference in how they are treated by Republicans or Democrats. The only difference is the Democrats feel guilty about it so the Ds expect their votes.
What an odd prediction! Why should seven different states balanced on a knife edge necessarily all go the same way? If a state is so near equal odds, it may come down to random variables like whose car doesn’t start on election day.
Just because you didn’t get the answer you expected or wanted does not mean people have not thought about what you asked.
Having grown up in Michigan (including areas with a heavy Muslim and/or Arab population (as the two are not synonymous), and still spending time there on a regular basis, I think it far more likely that White Trump supporters would be sufficient to give the state to Trump than the Muslims/Arabs. There are a LOT more White (7,600,000) people in Michigan than there are Muslims (241,000), Arabs( (222,000), and Jews (88,000) combined. Those three minorities have had outsized news coverage, but they’re only a small fraction of the Michigan population overall. And not even all of those communities are eligible to vote (age and citizenship). All three could vote for just one of the two candidates and if the White people decide to vote in a lopsided enough manner all the votes of the minorities won’t make a damn bit of difference.
Heck there are more Black people (1,400,000) in Michigan than Muslims+Arabs+Jews. How are they planning to vote? Isn’t possible they could be the difference between winning and losing?
Saying “oh, X candidate lost by Y votes - it must be because of Z minority” is actually a very slanted way to put it. It puts all the blame on a small group for convenient scapegoating while ignoring how easily swamped their votes can be by the majority. 100% of eligible minorities could vote for, say, Harris but she could still lose Michigan if White voters comes out in sufficient numbers to support Trump.
Of course, voting isn’t that lopsided (in fair elections). Which is why courting minorities is important, because they can make a difference in a close election. But that doesn’t mean they’re the actually deciding group in such an election.
Are there enough angry Muslim and/or Arab voters willing to shoot themselves in the foot to “punish” the Democrats? In theory, yes. In actuality? Who knows? We’ll find out Wednesday morning… maybe… unless this is another election that takes a while to figure out who won like in 2000.
The “uncommitted” vote in the Democratic primary was where the message was sent. That does not mean someone voting “uncommitted” in a primary will not vote Democratic in the actual election. Plenty of people don’t bother to vote in primaries but do vote in the actual elections.
Then they’re idiots. No, neither party is their friend, but one is certainly a greater enemy.
Maybe they stay home. Maybe they vote third party. The only question is whether or not those two actions draw more votes from Trump or from Harris.
I do know that if Trump wins the electoral college a lot of people who actually voted Harris might claim to have voted for Trump for potential advantages that might bring in the New Regime.
Or if the tropical storm that is approaching the Gulf were a little faster. Thankfully it’s not going to hit Florida or Texas on election day, or else things would get dicey if the storm disproportionately prevents people from one party from voting.
The trend that I’m seeing is that some higher-profile individuals oriented with the “progressive” left and claim to speak for Musilms are beginning to change their tune.
They now see Harris has a good shot at winning without them, perhaps even without Michigan. They realize that, if they did that much damage and she still wins, they’re finished as a political force. Nobody will ever need or trust them as coalition partners.
So what you now see is a bunch of throat-clearing and mental gymnastics about “hmm well you see, my vote for Harris is not a vote for Harris but against Trump, we will punish her genocidal crimes later”. They need their fingerprints on this win, in whatever small and grudging way, so that they’re not frozen out of Dem power forever.
Personally I will never forgive these people for playing this stupid game of chicken with democracy. No longer excusing the far left as “we share some priorities, we just disagree on strategy and intensity”. No tolerance, no quarter. From here on out, I put them in the same bucket as MAGA.
Most years polling has some systemic error. The polls, as a group, tend to be off by some percent one direction or the other. Three to four percent for the highly polled swing states is average. It is rarely less than one. And they all tend to move the same way. It is not a random error.
This could be the year that there is less than a 1% correlated systemic error but that would be a bad bet.
If it is a typical year for polling the swing state polls will pretty much all be off by two points or in some cases significantly more the same direction, and are those within a percent are more likely to be won or lost as a group than be randomly split.
The direction and magnitude of the systemic error will decide MI, not the magnitude of disaffection amongst Arab Democratic voters.
This is an important point. There would be many laying blame on people and institutions as “YOU could have SAVED US if you had (if a voter: held your nose and voted lesser-of-two-evils/if a candidate: taken specific position X on specific issue Y)” which would not address the fact we had a systemic problem that even made it the neofascists viable.
Does anybody think that Sanders’ statement has/will carry any weight. I think he made a reasonable argument but then again I am not an Arab living in Michigan.
My point is that they perceive no practical, real-world effect of this difference.
From their point of view:
GOP policy: We will let Israel do whatever it wants. We will send them weapons and materiel to support their objectives.
Dem policy: We will let Israel do whatever it wants. We will send them weapons and materiel to support their objectives. However, we will occasionally make noises expressing our sadness and reluctance.
You disagree with this view. I disagree with this view. But in a purely pragmatic sense, in terms of events on the ground, it’s difficult to counter their perception. These people are not idiots, despite your characterization. After decades of suffering under various dictatorial regimes, they are simply bluntly practical and dismissive of rhetoric divorced from action in a way that’s hard to grasp from the perspective of Westerners like us who put more emphasis on political messaging.
To be clear. This is not just me riffing off the cuff. It is pulled from the analyses by Nate Cohn and from 538 and others.
our election model estimates that the average polling error in competitive states this year will be 3.8 points on the margin.* This error is not uniform across states — for example, states with different demographics tend to have different levels of polling error — but, generally speaking, when polls overestimate a candidate, they tend to overestimate them across the board.
Since 1998, polls of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have had a weighted-average error of 4.6 points, while Michigan polls have had a weighted-average error of 4.9 points. Michigan and especially Wisconsin have been notably worse in the Trump era, as well, with weighted-average errors of 5.4 and 5.6 points, respectively
I understand the points you are making. Perhaps I should have used the word “foolish” or “short-sighted”. I understand that that is how they feel and see the world. I also think, in my opinion, they’re mistaken.
Because, while the Democrats show an indifference to the concerns of that group that could be deadly, the Republicans are openly antagonistic to them. Last time Trump was trying to ban immigration of Muslims. I do believe he’d cheerfully round all of them up and imprison them in camps, where he isn’t trying to deport them wholesale.
That’s the real-world, practical difference. One party ignores them and their concerns, even when those concerns are a matter of life or death. The other wants to actively remove them from the nation, one way or another, and is happy to help their enemies do the same elsewhere.
I can agree to disagree on strategy and intensity, but those who think we should have radically different priorities I am in the same boat as you. For instance, economic leftists who think that the Democrats are actively engaging in cultural wars to the detriment of economic justice, often couched in “well that’s what the global corporate masters want, for us to squabble over meaningless things while people still struggle to live.” Disregarding that it does not take two to tango. Ignoring the cultural beeves that the GOP started would allow America to move sharply to the right because they would be unchallenged.
Oftentimes, I think that they use the “different priorities” excuse to hide the fact that they really don’t care about the other issue, or are even conservative on it. (Speaking of which, that may also be the case for some anti-Harris voters vis-a-vis Israeli policy versus social issues, but who knows.)
So how to change that? You have to show you bring something to the table, that you cant be ignored. Costing the Democrats the election may have terrible short term consequences, but I can see an argument that this us a weird historical moment where a small group does have leverage, and wants to use it.
King said that power is never ceded peacefully by institutions. He was right. Arabs (and other minority groups) will never ever be given a real seat at the table unless they demand one.
The Democrats are basically “look, we cant help you. The pro-Israel interests are too powerful”. What possible response is there to that other than “fuck you, we have power, too”. ?
I bet they hope Harris wins without them, but if it’s a squeaker, maybe fewer babies will be dead in Palestine over the next 4 years.
Every story of expanded minority power comes down to making demands when something real is at stake. And hustory is full of Booker T style attempts at semanding power, where hundreds of years of shutting up and contributing lead to a stronger status quo.
I also understand that.
Sometimes the minorities using their leverage makes a difference. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes their attempt to effect change creates good change… and sometimes it’s a disaster.
It would take someone wiser than me to know how to solve this one.
I’m just not convinced there are enough Muslims and/or Arabs to make a difference here. I’ll also be the first to admit I could be completely wrong on that. I just can’t see any scenario where a Trump administration isn’t a worse disaster for those groups than a Harris would be, but then, I’m not them. Maybe they know something I don’t.
I think it will have zero effect. I doubt that the vast majority will even see it. What may affect things more is that the representative they elected to congress with an overwhelming majority has refused to endorse Harris.
Of course it would be a dusaster for the comminity. But it would also be a disaster for groups with money and power, so maybe between now and 2028, those groups are taking Arab interests into account in their policy agenda.
If people who hate Arabs and Muslims are put into power, the only concern they’ll have for Arab and Muslim interests is a hostile one. And 2028 likely won’t matter if the fascists secure power.
“After Hitler, us” didn’t work out well for the socialists of Germany.