Kamala Harris Is Reportedly 'Underwater' in Michigan & Hmm, I Wonder Why!
Just five weeks from Election Day, polling shows Vice President Kamala Harris neck-and-neck with former President Donald Trump in Michigan, a key battleground state. In 2020, Harris and Joe Biden relied heavily on Arab-American and Muslim voters to narrowly defeat Trump in the state and, consequently, win the election. However, current polls, which show Harris with a slight edge over Trump in Michigan, may not tell the complete story.
On Wednesday, during a virtual fundraiser with donors, Rep. Elisa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who’s currently running for U.S. Senate, told donors that her campaign’s internal polling shows Harris “underwater” in the state. Axios reported on Slotkin’s comments over the weekend.
"I'm not feeling my best right now about where we are on Kamala Harris in a place like Michigan," Slotkin told donors. “We have her underwater in our polling.” FiveThirtyEight's average of polls puts Harris up 2.4% above Trump in Michigan, while the latest New York Times/Siena College poll places her up by just one point.
Michigan was obviously going to be a competitive state no matter what, but if Harris is, indeed, “underwater” it should be fairly obvious why. For the last year, the Biden-Harris administration has unwaveringly stood by Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as the International Criminal Court continues to seek a warrant for his arrest for his ongoing war crimes. Many Michigan voters have lost loved ones and family members in Gaza as a result of Israel’s ruthless war. Still, the Biden-Harris administration’s position hasn’t changed.
In July, Harris offered hope to the large swaths of voters who oppose the genocide in Gaza when she said she used her meeting with Netanyahu to stress the “dire” urgency of ending the war. But in the weeks since, Harris has maintained her support for continuing to send weapons to Israel: "I'm unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel's defense and its ability to defend itself, and that's not going to change," she said in August.
"President Biden and Vice President Harris aren’t just ignoring Arab, Muslim, and anti-war voters in Michigan—they’re pushing them away," Abbas Alawieh, co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement, told Reuters over the weekend. "Every hour, I get messages from my family in Lebanon, asking when the American-funded bombs will stop." During the Democratic primaries early this year, the Uncommitted movement mobilized over 750,000 voters to protest the Biden administration’s bottomless support for Israel by voting “uncommitted," which included over 100,000 voters in Michigan’s Democratic primary.
Michigan is also home to Dearborn, the first city in the U.S. with a majority Arab-American population. One Dearborn resident, Sam Hammound, told BBC last week that he’s an undecided voter because of “the situation in our homelands,” adding, “We need a ceasefire. There is no ceasefire. We have no more words.” Soujoud Hamade, another Dearborn resident and president of the Michigan Chapter of the Arab American Bar Association, told the outlet she’s previously canvassed for the Democratic Party but isn’t supporting Harris this year. Hamade said she “cannot stomach the thought of voting for someone who's directly contributing to the death and destruction of our home country and of our relatives overseas.” Another Arab-American voter in the state, Maisa Hider-Beidoun, said her community faces a “moral dilemma” this election cycle: “We are good Americas, we are good tax-paying, law-abiding citizens, but our money is being funneled overseas and killing people that are actually physically related to us."
Earlier this month, the Uncommitted National Movement announced that they can't endorse Harris. Leaders of the movement cited her sustained position on arming Israel, as well as her refusal to even take a meeting with them. The movement stressed that their anti-war demands are intended to help rather than harm the Democratic Party: “Our movement’s best hope for change lies in growing our anti-war organizing power… 77% of Democrats and 61% of Americans oppose weapons aid for Israel’s assault on Gaza, which is preventing a ceasefire and blocking the reunification of Palestinian and Israeli captives with their families.” (They referenced a YouGov poll published at the end of August.)
Israeli forces have killed over 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October, yet Harris seems unwilling to address this horrific, U.S.-enabled violence with tangible policy positions—and it could cost her the election.