How Much Did the Uncommitted Movement Affect Turnout for Harris?

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, we'll wrap up our series, at least for now, looking at various reasons that Trump won the election and Vice President Harris lost. We've talked about how each campaigned and was perceived regarding the economy for working-class Americans, reasons for the shift among Latino voters, Biden staying in the race too long, racism and sexism as factors. We did that one yesterday.

The bro media manosphere, disinformation, and the declining impact of journalism versus social media, plus Harris's changes of positions from her 2019 presidential campaign appearances and other things. We'll wrap up this series for now by talking about Harris's positions on the war between Israel and Hamas and the effects on Gaza and the defection of many Muslims and Arab Americans and others who opposed the Biden-Harris policies toward the war.

Our guest for this to look back at the campaign but also forward into the Trump administration is Slate staff writer Aymann Ismail, who has an article called, "It’s Not Like There Weren’t Chances to Do This Differently" Dearborn, Michigan, Turned Against Kamala Harris Decisively. Now, The City is About to Find Out If Trump Was Worth It. Aymann, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Aymann Ismail: Thank you, Brian. Happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with the Democratic primaries. Just to remind people, was Dearborn the place where the Uncommitted Movement got started voting Uncommitted rather than for Biden in the primaries over this issue?

Aymann Ismail: That's exactly right. Before it was called the Uncommitted Movement, it was just called Listen to Michigan. It was founded by three Dearborn residents. First one was Abbas Alawieh, who's Lebanese American. Then there's Lexis and Layla, who are two Palestinian Americans who are all organizers, dedicated Democrats, lifelong Democrats. I think what they were trying to do was they were trying to use their influence being in a swing state to try and urge the Biden administration to course-correct on what they thought was the unlawful use of United States-provided munitions in Israel, in places where people in their own communities were losing loved ones.

They talked about how someone in their community lost over 40 family members. They were trying to urge the Biden administration to change course, to take this seriously, to at least acknowledge the fact that this is something that the Democratic voters were concerned about. Then when the Kamala Harris administration took over, it changed a little bit. It was actually hopeful. Behind the scenes, I was hearing that Kamala Harris actually showed a lot of empathy and sympathy towards specifically Layla Elabed, who had a private meeting with her behind the stage at her campaign event in Detroit.

Then it seemed like things were not going to change, especially at the DNC when the Uncommitted Movement was able to send 30 delegates to ceremoniously cast ballots against Joe Biden, who was, obviously, the inevitable nominee. They were trying to urge the DNC to platform a Palestinian American to talk about what's happening in Gaza. Then right at the last second, they got told that that wasn't going to be happening. This was heartbreaking specifically because these people are Democrats. They identify as Democrats. They've been bringing people to the polls to support the Democrats for years. In this case, they felt like their efforts were just largely ignored.

Brian Lehrer: That was in the primaries and at the DNC, the primaries, when the choice was between Biden and Uncommitted. Now, the choice was between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. You have numbers for how it turned out in Dearborn, then we'll pull out to the national picture. How did it turn out in Dearborn, Michigan?

Aymann Ismail: Trump won Dearborn. He's the first-ever Republican to win Dearborn since George Bush in the year 2000. That's the part that I want to harp on because that in itself is unprecedented. Kamala Harris actually trailed by a lot. I had the numbers right here. Trump won 42% of the vote and Harris won 36%. That's quite a wide margin. Jill Stein, who had a Muslim running mate, captured 18%, which is very different than when you look at it at the national level. I don't even think she got 1%.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I think she got one-half of 1% is what I saw it nationally, yes.

Aymann Ismail: Right, so this is staggering. I think this gives us a really clear look at how Democrats, who think of Gaza as a major issue, feel about Harris's administration ignoring the urgency that the Uncommitted Movement was putting forth.

Brian Lehrer: Do you know how much that may have made the difference? Just in Michigan, what was Trump's margin in the state compared to the estimate of how many Muslim or Arab-American voters or, for that matter, others for whom this issue was a defining one in the state of Michigan?

Aymann Ismail: It's hard to tell because, right now, if we were to just assign all of the Jill Stein voters as Kamala voters, which I don't think is correct to do either, it still wouldn't make up the margin that Trump was able to secure Michigan with. What's really important to think about here is the invisible statistic, which is the people who stayed home and didn't participate in the electoral process at all.

Now, these voters, as we now know, Kamala Harris lost millions of voters from when Biden was running in the last election. It's impossible to quantify just how many people would have voted for Kamala and stayed home. I think that's the question we should be asking now is whether or not Kamala did enough to bring those voters out to give them a reason to vote for her. The Uncommitted people would say that they didn't.

Brian Lehrer: It must make people who really care about that issue and really prioritize it and, as you say, have family members over there who've been killed or otherwise affected. It must make people feel so powerless because this is not to debate who's right between the Israelis and the Palestinians or anything like that, but just how the Palestinian supporting Americans must feel about this because Trump did win all seven swing states. Others don't have the concentration that Michigan does.

As a matter of pure politics, there wouldn't have been much influence. I think when you look at Muslims and Jews in the United States, they're each only about 2%, 3% of the US population. When, in this case, the Muslims, the Arab Americans, others who list Gaza number one or high up on their priority list just don't have the numbers to make an impact, it just must make people feel so helpless.

Aymann Ismail: I think this is also a good moment to reflect on this one point that I think is largely overlooked. The Gaza issue is not an issue that only Jewish Americans or Palestinian Americans or Arab Americans or Muslim Americans, however you want to quantify it, this is not an issue that only pertains to them. In doing my research and actually talking to people on the ground, one thing that I think is actually very representative that will give you a clear picture of how this movement looks.

At the DNC, when I was meeting all of these Uncommitted delegates, there were 30 delegates from all across the country, I would say a minority of them were Arab. A lot of them were Black. A lot of them were white. Some of them were Jewish. One of them was Hawaiian, right? I don't know if it's useful to look at just the percentage of people from particular ethnic backgrounds as a way to determine how they would feel about the Gaza issue.

Another thing I want to bring attention to is that there were a number of people who identify as Muslim, identify as Arab, who were already convinced that they were going to be voting for Trump before the primaries had even happened. I think it's also an important moment to remember that in Dearborn in particular, this is a place where the anti-LGBT book narrative really took root.

There were very contentious city council meetings in which you would see people who identify as Arab people, identify as Muslim, shouting at the representatives for saying, "You're trying to turn our kids gay," like insane stuff. I would say that this issue maybe laid the fertile ground for what we're seeing now, which is a major turn towards Republican politics in places like Dearborn.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls on this. Did you not vote for Kamala Harris if you voted for Democrats in the past because of Gaza or anything else? For Aymann Ismail from Slate, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. As calls are starting to come in, here we are. Now, Trump has begun to make relevant nominations for cabinet positions. Here, for example, is Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth. We played this clip in our previous segment in another context. We'll play it here too.

Pete Hegseth: What Western civilization represents today is under an understanding that Zionism and Americanism are the front lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world.

Brian Lehrer: That's Pete Hegseth. Then there's Trump's nominee for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. Trigger warning, Palestinian listeners, on this one. This is Huckabee speaking during the first Trump term.

Mike Huckabee: My feelings personally, and I'm speaking only as a person, I think Israel would only be acting on the property it already owns. I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria. There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It's Judea and Samaria. There's no such thing as a settlement. Their communities, their neighborhoods, their cities. There's no such thing as an occupation that they get out of their minds that people are living in lean-tos and tents, sleeping in cars circled around a tree. They're living in very well-designed and beautiful cities and communities.

Brian Lehrer: Mike Huckabee, I believe the year was 2017, supporting the idea of annexing the West Bank because he says there's no such thing as an occupation. There's no such thing as settlements, just neighborhoods and communities. There's no such thing as the West Bank, he said. Just Judea and Samaria. Huckabee was not a Trump Middle East official during Trump's first term. As you know, Aymann, now he would be. To the second theme of your article, now, Dearborn, Michigan and all who are concerned with the war from that side are about to find out if Trump was worth it, as you put it. Are you seeing any buyer's remorse yet after hearing clips like those?

Aymann Ismail: Not quite, to be honest. The one theme that came up over and over again when trying to ask people this question. Obviously, many of them brush off the fact that they aren't aware of how bad Trump would be for Palestine or how bad Trump would be for Muslims here domestically. They seem to be aware of who Trump is and where he stands specifically on this question.

What I think that they hope people generally understand about their choice is that they were already seeing the destruction of Palestine under the Biden administration. They were already seeing the restrictions of free speech here in this country when speaking about Palestine in which there were efforts to criminalize being anti-Zionists. For them, trying to say, "You need to vote blue. You need to vote for Kamala Harris in order to protect those rights," it's a hard argument to make because they feel like those rights have already been gone.

They've already seen a year's worth, over a year's worth of massive 1,000-pound bombs being dropped in what essentially they would describe as an open-air prison. How do you then ask that person to continue supporting the policies that's created this specific moment for them in Palestine by saying keep supporting the same thing? It's an impossible argument to make.

Brian Lehrer: Right. The argument is that it could be even worse, as bad as it is from their point of view, right?

Aymann Ismail: Right. Layla Elabed, one of the co-founders of the Uncommitted Movement, I think she put it very nicely when speaking to a different interviewer. She said, "Asking people who are Palestinian American to think strategically about how they're going to cast their vote is akin to asking someone the same question while they're at a funeral." I really think this is an important way to think about it because these people are hurting. They're mourning, right?

This is not just an emotional attachment that they have to a political issue. This is a very human response to tragedy, right? The videos that they're seeing on a daily basis are unspeakable. This is the context, I think, that many liberals are missing when they're trying to understand how somebody could be voting against their own interests. They're watching their loved ones be torn to shreds by massive munitions that are provided for by their own tax dollars. It's quite an impossible position to be in. I don't envy anyone who's in it.

Brian Lehrer: A few more minutes in this, what I think will be the last in our series of segments on reasons Trump won and Harris lost. Today, we're focusing on those primarily concerned with Gaza who voted for Trump as a protest vote or voted for Jill Stein from the Green Party or didn't vote at all. Deborah in Jersey City, you're on WNYC with Aymann Ismail, staff writer for Slate. Hi, Deborah.

Deborah: Hi. Good morning to you and your guest. I am an African-American woman living in New Jersey. I actually voted Uncommitted in the primary to show my solidarity with the people of Gaza because I watch the news. It's heartbreaking and it's horrendous. The issue I'm having is people want to keep dumping on Kamala saying, "She could have did more, she could have did more."

She had 107 days. She got over 70 million votes. People know what they were going to get with Trump. If my Arab brothers and sisters thought they were going to get something better, then you were woefully naive. It just makes me angry because you knew who he was. You knew what he said. You knew what he was going to get. Giving Kamala a chance, she probably would have had a different policy, but nobody bothered to give her the chance because they were too busy. I'm going to stay home or I need to know more.

That was just an excuse. While I still have sympathy and I'm hoping for a two-state solution because I hate seeing all these people killed and I am very-- I'm not anti-Israel, but I'm anti-Netanyahu. I don't know that I can feel too much for all of my Arab brothers and sisters that voted for Trump because you knew there is not going to be a change. You knew. The only problem is, now, you're going to suffer along with the rest of us.

Brian Lehrer: Deborah, let me move on and get somebody else on. Keep calling us. Deborah, thank you very much. I think now somebody who decided the other way to not vote for Kamala Harris over this issue. Rita in Bergen County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rita.

Rita: Hi. Thanks for taking the call. I wanted to share that as a non-Arab and non-Palestinian, I decided-- I'm a registered Democrat, decided to vote against Trump and against Harris. It was not an easy choice, but I voted Green Party, even though I knew that the odds of winning were slim to none, just because, of course, I could not vote for Trump. I don't think in good conscience, I could have done that, but also couldn't have done that for Harris. All she had to do was make a differentiation between her and President Biden in terms of the viewpoint on Gaza. Given a little bit, it would have been a token remark at best, but she couldn't even move the needle a little bit. That just was a deal-breaker for me.

Brian Lehrer: Rita, thank you very much. With those two calls, Aymann, we just got a little sampling of the debate within the Democratic Party among people who feel strongly about this issue but came to different conclusions, right?

Aymann Ismail: Yes, I would say that that perfectly represents how the Democrats are a little bit at war with themselves right now. The issue, I think, is that we don't have a clear answer on what cost Kamala the election. We don't know. It could have been the war. It could have not been the war. It could have been that Trump is just extremely popular and we maybe have underestimated that. I don't know. Until we get change, until we get a clear sense that there's a new direction, we're going to continue to wonder what exactly went wrong without any actual answers because this question is unanswerable. We're going to continue to see this kind of debate.

Brian Lehrer: Is there any strategy that you know of emerging from advocates for influencing the Trump administration to not do, let's say, what Mike Huckabee was articulating, the incoming ambassador to Israel in that clip, being in favor of annexing the West Bank and refusing to even call it the West Bank or call settlement "settlements."

Aymann Ismail: Yes, there is the Lebanese American in Dearborn who invited Trump to a restaurant and invited him. It gave Trump many opportunities to speak directly to Arab-American voters.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, that's another detail from the campaign that Trump actually campaigned there, but Harris declined because she didn't want the optics of a protest.

Aymann Ismail: Correct. Correct, right. Trump came to the community, was unafraid of the protests, and there were protests. He generally was able to meet with plenty of people in the community, shake hands with them, smile with them. I think this person who invited him will be particularly important, especially when we think about what little influence will be available to Trump to try to steer him away from continuing the ongoing onslaught that's happening in Palestine. Even now, we're talking about the annexation of the entire West Bank. I think this person might be able to play a key role. Beyond that, I don't see how it's possible.

Brian Lehrer: Well, before you go, how would people in the movement have responded to what I think was a Biden-Harris argument that they were actually trying to support both Israel's right to defend itself after October 7th and press Netanyahu into at least a more humane kind of war, whatever that would look like, and also holding Hamas accountable for embedding their warriors in schools and hospitals, which they would say put Israel in a difficult position on how to defend itself against more October 7ths, and trying to get a ceasefire, which they largely failed on.

Everybody's frustrated with that. You know the news from the other day. Qatar has pulled out from trying to be the broker between Hamas and Israel because they say neither side is serious about a ceasefire. The Biden-Harris folks would say they were trying to respect everybody's rights and interests in a horrible situation where there was no easy solution. Very unlike what Trump is likely to do.

Aymann Ismail: Right, I think this is something that I think most people who are tuned into the conflict are aware of. They might understand that this push and pull exists, but I don't know if they generally believe it. I think one of the reasons for that is the series of red lines that the Biden administration have drawn over and over again. Most recently, the 30-day deadline for Israel to increase medical aid and food aid into northern Gaza where civilians are stranded and food trucks have been incredibly scarce.

In order to at least alleviate a little bit, the incredible humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza right now, the United States was trying to apply some pressure. Then when Israel generally did not meet the deadline, I think only in very incrementally increased aid, but nowhere near what is needed, it seemed to not matter, right? There was a press conference in which the Biden administration articulated that this deadline of the number of trucks that they wanted was more of a general guideline and not an actual number that Israel needed to meet.

What they would say to that is, yes, they might, in public, be saying that they want this conflict to end and that they care about the civilians being killed. In private, their actions are telling a different story. Also, very early on in the conflict, when Biden cast doubt on the number of casualties, he also repeated some of the debunked claims about what happened on that first day of the conflict. It seems like it'd be very difficult to convince anyone who is sure that the Biden campaign is not just engaged but also just a true believer, right? A true believer in Zionism. He calls himself a Zionist, so it's hard for them to stomach supporting someone in this context.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it. In fact, there we end, at least for now. We'll see if other things come up that we think we need to address with discrete segments. There we end our series of reasons for the Trump victory, the Kamala Harris loss. We've talked about the shift among Latino voters with Maria Hinojosa. We talked about Biden staying in the race too long and the perceptions of each of the candidates on the economy with Astead Herndon from The Times. We talked about racism and sexism as factors with two guests yesterday. We talked about the bro media manosphere.

Earlier in the week, we've spoken about disinformation and the declining impact of journalism versus social media and more. We wrapped it up today and for now on Harris's positions on the war between Israel and Hamas and the impact on voters who were very concerned with that from support of the people in Gaza position. We thank Slate staff writer Aymann Ismail, who has his article called, "It’s Not Like There Weren’t Chances to Do This Differently" Dearborn, Michigan, Turned Against Kamala Harris Decisively. Now, The City is About to Find Out If Trump Was Worth It. Aymann, thanks for discussing it with us. We really appreciate it.

Aymann Ismail: Thanks, Brian.

 

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