How the ‘Uncommitted’ Effort to Protest Biden Has Spread in Super Tuesday States
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. The campaigns have been fragmented, organized with far less time and resources than Michigan’s operation. Layla Elabed, campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, which spearheaded the protest vote against President […]
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You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
The campaigns have been fragmented, organized with far less time and resources than Michigan’s operation.
Organizers in several Super Tuesday states are calling on voters to oppose President Biden at the ballot box over his stance on the war in Israel and Gaza, building on momentum that began last month in Michigan.
More than 101,000 Michiganders voted “uncommitted” in the state’s Democratic primary, after a group of young Arab Americans started a campaign encouraging voters to protest Mr. Biden’s alliance with Israel — earning two delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
Inspired by the campaign, pro-Palestinian groups around the country started similar efforts to push the president to call for a permanent cease-fire.
In Colorado, a group of Palestinian activists scrambled to create a social media campaign for the state’s “noncommitted delegate” option while Michigan returns were still coming in last week. In Minnesota, organizers knocked on doors and held get-out-the-vote events to promote the “uncommitted” category, with outreach to Muslim Somali Americans and young voters. And in Massachusetts, thousands of protesters at a rally in Cambridge chanted “no preference,” the similar designated protest option.
The campaigns have been fragmented, organized with far less time and resources than Michigan’s operation. Many were planned in a matter of days, well after early voting had already begun, and several organizers declined to articulate specific benchmarks for what would constitute success on Tuesday night beyond the goal of seeing Mr. Biden move his position. (Organizers in Minnesota said they were aiming for 5,000 “Uncommitted” votes, a low target that was about double what the category received in the 2020 Democratic primary.)
The other states also lack Michigan’s position in the broader backlash to Mr. Biden’s policy: The state has a sizable Arab American population, for whom the issue has been particularly painful, and ahead of the vote, prominent Democrats in the state warned about the potential for political peril. The “uncommitted” effort drew the backing of Representative Rashida Tlaib, a member of the group of liberals in the House known as the squad.
