Did Palestine Make Kamala Harris Lose His Election?

By Gregory Mauzé

While the issue of support for Israel has taken an unprecedented place in the 2024 US presidential campaign, speculation is rife about its impact on Trump’s victory. Did the billionaire triumph because of Joe Biden’s complicity in the crushing of the Palestinians in Gaza?

Kamala Harris and Joe Biden

Let’s cut short any suspense right away: Palestine and Israel probably did not make the US presidential election on November 5, 2024. “It’s the economy, stupid”: the expression popularized by Bill Clinton’s victory in 1992 resonates particularly with this election dominated by questions affecting the wallets of the citizens of Uncle Sam’s country.

Nevertheless, it would be equally risky to claim that the war in Gaza and the shockwave it caused around the world did not weigh on the campaign. On the Democratic side, it crystallized the antagonism between a base that now largely perceives the Palestinian cause as a symbol of the fight against injustice, and its leadership, which is firmly anchored in unwavering bipartisan support for Israel. Trump, for his part, initially remained relatively discreet on the subject, torn between his unconditionally pro-Israeli stance and the less convincing one of president “of the end of endless wars.” He subsequently reaffirmed his alignment with Tel Aviv’s views throughout the campaign.

Even if a correlation is not a causality, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict therefore occupied a secondary place in this campaign, but nevertheless unprecedented for an international issue. The question of its influence, even if marginal, in the outcome of this election arises all the more since it was, precisely, played out on the margins. Indeed, contrary to what the first results suggested, the 2024 presidential election was particularly close: the final count only gives Donald Trump a lead of less than 1.5 points over Kamala Harris, a narrow gap not seen since 1968 for a race where the winner of the electoral college also wins the popular vote.

The shadow of “Genocide Joe”

For many years now, social justice activists have fully seized the defense of Palestinian rights in the United States, with significant consequences for public opinion. Between 2013 and 2023, sympathy for them rose from 19 to 49% among Democratic voters, while sympathy for Israel fell from 55 to 38%. Developments that are reflected in particular in the positions of the candidate in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders, or those of the "squad", a group of four progressive representatives of color, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, elected in 2018.

Despite these major developments, the party of the donkey, with the exception of this left wing, will remain impervious to them and will continue to support the bipartisan consensus around the unwavering alliance with Tel Aviv. On May 18, 2020, Joe Biden's future Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, thus assured that his administration "will not link military assistance to Israel to any political decision", that is to say despite the fact that it does not comply with its international obligations. The cruel implications of this commitment will become clear in the response to the Hamas assault in October 2023. By its very unconditionality, this support will indeed make Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the sole master of the conduct of an operation now widely recognized as genocidal, carried out mainly with weapons and ammunition made in the USA.

For key sectors of the electoral coalition that brought Biden to power, the latter's inflexibility is becoming a growing source of tension as the devastation of Gaza progresses. In addition to the warnings from his own staff, the civil rights association NAACP or unions, two citizen dynamics will be symptomatic of this divorce with segments that are in principle loyal to the Democrats: on the one hand, the occupations of university campuses for a ceasefire, which represents the most important anti-war movement since Vietnam; on the other hand, that of the so-called "uncommitted" voters, calling for abstention during the Democratic primary in Michigan due to the lack of any progress by Biden on this issue. However, nothing has changed the course of the White House tenant, beyond exhortations to respect international humanitarian law that are as late as they are sterile and a few anecdotal measures, such as the suspension in early May of the delivery of 1000 KG bombs and sanctions against violent settlers.

When she replaced him at short notice after his withdrawal on July 19, 2024, Kamala Harris did not really take any opportunity to dissociate herself from the legacy of "Genocide Joe." He would pursue her from then on, like a ball and chain during her short campaign, despite timid signals such as her absence, along with dozens of Democratic elected officials, during Benjamin Netanyahu's speech before the American Congress on July 24. "You know what: if you want Donald Trump to win, say so. If not, I'm the one talking." This response from the candidate to the pro-Palestinian activists who came to disrupt a rally in Detroit on August 7, 2024 would become the symbol of the arrogance of a Democratic leadership deaf to the calls of its base.

Reasons of State and Strategic Calculations

It would be tempting to sum up the obstinacy of the Democratic leadership as the reflexes of a gerontocracy that the expectations of its voters were not enough to make deviate from a line that, in its eyes, falls under the heading of “reasons of state”. The need to ensure unwavering support for Israel is one of the convictions that founded Joe Biden’s commitment. “If there were no Israel, the United States would have to invent an Israel to protect its interests in the region,” the man who likes to define himself as a “Zionist” once told Congress to justify the colossal amount of military aid to Israel. After the November 5 election, Biden will continue to supply weapons, obstruct the UN Security Council, and rail against the damning international reports on Tel Aviv, reinforcing the feeling that this policy was not driven by electoral considerations.

However, it also responded to strategic calculations. Without even mentioning the significant weight of pro-Israeli lobbying in Washington, avoiding appearing subservient to pro-Palestinian activists did indeed present a certain rationality in the eyes of public opinion. Even if an absolute majority of Democrats oppose US support for the offensive against Gaza in its current form, this is not necessarily the case for the entire population, divided equally between supporters of its reduction, maintenance or increase. “Is Biden losing votes because of his position on Gaza? Yes, probably. However, he would probably lose more votes if he adopted a different position on Gaza,” the influential statistician Nate Silver estimated on November 23, 2023 on X (ex Twitter). Moreover, opinion polls indicated that the risk of a flight of voters hostile to Biden’s Middle East policy was limited, in particular because of Trump’s even stronger alignment with the agenda of the Israeli right.

Thus, a survey by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, published in April 2024, reveals that young people aged 18 to 29 are five times more likely to be in favor of a ceasefire than those who oppose it, but only 34% placed the Israeli-Palestinian issue among their priorities, compared to 64% for inflation or 54% for health care.

A solo race to the center

The centrist strategy in which this positioning is part, even though the Republican was leading a campaign aimed at his base, has nevertheless led him to neglect his left and demobilize it, without reaping any benefits from the “never Trumpists”. Because if there is one explanation for Harris’ failure that is beyond dispute, it is her inability to mobilize her camp: the number of votes won by the Democratic candidate four years ago has in fact melted by nearly 7 million, while that of the Republican has only increased by 2.5 million. In fact, Harris is regressing in conservative counties, as The Nation notes. It is reasonable to think that conversely, signals to the progressive fringes of the electorate, particularly in favor of support for the Palestinian cause, could have helped seduce those who were most favorable to it, starting with young people. While no Democratic candidate has won less than 60% among 18-29 year-olds since 2008, the latter, whose participation has fallen from 52 to 42% in four years, would have been only 54% to opt for Harris in 2024.

This certainty of taking the pro-Palestinian vote for granted was particularly damaging to her in Michigan, a pivotal state won by Trump, where abstention is declining in absolute terms, but on the contrary increasing in 8 of the 9 Democratic counties. Harris has indeed multiplied the vexations towards her large Muslim minority (4%), a community for which the end of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon was among the priorities. In August, she had refused to allow a Palestinian voice to be heard at the Democratic National Convention. This was followed, a month before the election, by a high-profile tour with Republican Liz Cheney, recalling the dark hours of the “war on terror” led by her father, Vice President Dick Cheney, another supporter of Harris, like most neoconservatives, put off by Trump’s isolationism. The final own goal was scored by former President Bill Clinton, who justified the deaths of civilians in Gaza on October 31 during a rally in Muskegon Heights, by fully adopting the narrative of the Israeli authorities.

By harboring such resentment towards himself, the Democratic team helped to de-demonize Trump, who then only had to bend over to reap the political benefits. The author of the "Muslim ban" thus allowed himself the luxury of going to Dearborn, the largest Arab-majority city in the country, on November 1, embodying the image of the "president of peace" in front of community representatives. He achieved the feat of winning by 42% in this locality that had chosen Joe Biden by 74% in 2020, ahead of Harris (36%) and the green candidate who placed the Palestinian question at the heart of her campaign, Jill Stein (18%). The hypothesis of a Muslim vote of sanction against the outgoing administration is corroborated by the victories in Dearborn of the Democrats in the House of Rashida Tlaib, a left-wing Palestinian elected representative, and in the Senate of Elissa Slotkin, also a critic of the Israeli offensive.

A symptom of a lack of vision

On Gaza, more than other issues, seeking to make Trump a bogeyman seemed doomed to failure for the outgoing administration. On November 9, 2024, the former co-director of Jewish Voice for Peace, Mitchell Plitnick, summed up the point of view of many activists for Palestinian rights: “Ms. Harris’s main campaign argument was to say how awful Donald Trump was going to be. She’s not wrong, even on Middle East policy.” But this is an empty argument when the so-called “lesser evil” is a full partner in the most brutal, sadistic, and massive genocide of the 21st century. It is a lesser evil that is too horrible to support.”

Of course, it is impossible to guarantee that a more critical stance toward unconditional support for Israel would not have led to a demobilization of other segments of the electorate. The fact remains that Harris’s posture of casting a wide net, even if it meant abandoning her own base, proved ineffective in the context of such a polarized election. More than a reason for her failure, the presidential camp’s illusion of having thought it could hide US complicity in the ordeal of the Palestinians in Gaza was a symptom of their lack of tactical sense and their inability to form a winning coalition.

While no one knows what the future holds for the Palestinians, their cause will not disappear from the agenda, especially after a second term of a Trump ready to give in to all the wishes of the Israeli far right. For the Democrats, persisting in maintaining a foreign policy that a majority of their voters disapprove of can only contribute to paving the way for future defeats.

Source: YAANI.fr