Michigan shows the discontent facing Biden, Trump

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump seeking re-election faced certain uneasiness even as they won their respective primaries – Democratic and Republican – in the state. It would seem unnecessary to look at the people who did not vote for the two leading candidates may be small in overall terms, but it is being recognised that they show a definite trend.

In the case of Biden, it is the Arab Americans, Muslims and progressive Democrats who have been vociferously opposing Biden’s Gaza policy, where he has been pressing for a ceasefire even as he continued the military aid to Israel even as civilians in Gaza, around 12,000 of them children out of the 30,000 Palestinian civilians had been been killed since October 7 when the war broke between the two sides. The ballot paper in the state’s primary provides the ‘non-committal’ option, and in the Michigan Democratic primary 58,000 Democrat voters opted for ‘non-committal’.

The demographic of the Arab Americans in the state is mostly of young people, and the Arab Americans have organised their dissent in clear and distinct ways. They created ‘Listen to Michigan’ to articulate their demand on the Gaza issue, asking Biden to press for a permanent ceasefire, in contrast to the official position of a temporary ceasefire, and to end military aid to Israel. The Congress had passed a military aid package to Israel.

The Arab American community have been responsible for the victory of Biden over Trump in the state. Trump had lost Michigan in the 2020 presidential election by 10,000 votes. And they planned to create non-committal votes to show to Biden how close it was for him to lose. The Arab Americans do not want to vote for Trump, and they realise that he is a worse alternative. Will the Arab Americans through their democratic pressure tactic force Biden to change his Israel policy, and if they fail to do so, will they restrain themselves voting for him, and this could facilitate the victory of Trump in November? 

Trump had an easy victory over his fellow-Republican rival Nikki Haley. She had a 26-point share of the vote and he was leading with more than a 20 per cent margin. Why does it then appear that Haley poses some kind of a real challenge to Trump who has far won all the primaries with comfortable leads, including that of Haley’s home state of South Carolina? The reading is that there is a section of Republican votes which is opposed to Trump, and most of them belong to the university-educated class. All of the Republicans are not with him, and Trump’s coarse populism is not acceptable to the old-style conservatives in the party. And this is also the first time that Haley had campaigned in Michigan, and they seem to have voted for her in significant numbers.

Does the ‘no Trump’ of Michigan matter at the national level? It looks like that it may not matter though one should wait till Super Tuesday, when 15 states and territories will be voting in the primaries on Mach 5. Haley is holding out for March 5, and she is likely to withdraw from the race if Super Tuesday does not show that she can still challenge Trump.

Haley is showing that there is another way of being a Republican than that of Trump, and that it is the more reasonable way. Trump has been mowing down the opposition as it were, and rivals like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was an extreme conservative like Trump, just got out of the way fearing that you cannot resist the Trump tornado. Haley has literally stood up him, and she is indeed the last woman standing. The 26 per cent Michigan is an acknowledgement of the fact.