Strongly disagree on the importance in Michigan. The Muslim voting bloc here is significant and large portions of the population have been very vocal about their displeasure with Biden.
Disagree all you want, but there's no evidence to support it.
200,000 Arab-Americans in Michigan, including children and non voters.
Not all of them are Muslim.
Many of those who are, are socially conservative, against Biden for his support of LGBTQ rights for example.
That leaves by the most generous estimates about 40,000 dem Arab-American voters.
Many of whom still supported Biden in the primary despite an organized protest vote.
Now obviously, not all Muslim voters are Arab-American, but consider that the protest vote in the primary barely got 2% including Arab-American and other protest vote supporters over Obama's 2012 baseline of an incumbent president's performance in the primary, despite Obama being more popular then than Biden is now with no coordinated effort against Obama.
Which leaves again, a generous estimate of Biden at risk of losing at most 20,000 votes.
Some bad faith conservative groups helped to manipulate the media narrative that Biden was at major risk and got multiple articles about how he lost their votes, votes he never would have gotten in the first place, but it simply never materialized.
Trying to get movement from the administration because it's bad for him electorally was never going to work because you have a relatively small number of unreliable voters vs much larger Jewish communities elsewhere, notably swing states like PA. No candidate worth their salt is going to alienate reliable voters to court unreliable ones. That's why Biden is consistently trying to thread an impossible needle. That's why every new thing he comes around on is a frustratingly slow baby step. That's why when Schumer is out here calling for Netanyahu to be ousted, the White House has to pretend to be focused on other things.
Pushing public sentiment to change pushes Biden to change, not unrealistic political threats.
And I say all this as someone who has been a vocal critic of Biden's handling of Israel's actions since his first statement. I do not want the US to send unconditional aid, and absolutely do not want the US to send them weapons. It's just that threatening him with Michigan for example, won't work because they've seen the same numbers we have.
abcnews.go.com
