The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden's 'Uncommitted' Problem in Michigan

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

The president's most significant opposition in Michigan's Tuesday primary is not another candidate — it's a grassroots movement to vote 'uncommitted' on the ballot. The effort is in protest of how Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas conflict. Will the grassroots movement put a dent in Biden's votes? This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, political reporter Elena Moore, and national political correspondent Don Gonyea.Our producers are Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey y'all, this is Jess calling from Malmö, Sweden, where I'm taking a walk and celebrating that I have now lived out of Atlanta for as many years as I lived in Atlanta. The time is 3 11 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, February 26th of 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will still be turning my accent on and off. Okay, here's the show. When she first started talking, I was like, that doesn't sound like a Swedish accent. Wow, that's some impressive linguistics. I don't think they say Malmo like that there. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Elena Moore. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Don Gagne. I cover the presidential campaign. And today on the show, the push for a protest vote in Michigan's Democratic primary. Joe Biden's biggest opposition in Tuesday's primary is not another candidate. It is, in fact, a grassroots movement to vote uncommitted on the ballot because of how the president has handled the war in Gaza. And, you know, usually I will say on this show, we do not pay that much attention to an uncompetitive primary with an incumbent president. But this Michigan race is being watched closely as a sort

of test case for what troubles Biden could face in a general election. So Elena, let's begin with who is in fact behind this uncommitted movement. Right. So I've been in Detroit for the last few days talking with the folks behind this, and it basically started largely from young Arab and Muslim organizers, mostly based in Dearborn, this city pretty near Detroit. And it's been known as a place where there are a lot of Arab and Muslim people who live there. But the movement has gained national following, you know, it's gotten endorsements from some pretty popular progressive organizations like Our Revolution, which was started originally by Senator Bernie Sanders

presidential run in 2016. But their goal is pretty simple here. It's for President Biden to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and to stop sending U.S. aid to Israel. And, you know, these are messages we have heard from protesters since the attacks on October 7th, but now they are being channeled into something ahead of a primary. I see. Simple, though I will say when it comes to foreign policy, a rather complicated maneuver, too, because it doesn't seem like something President Biden would willingly embrace in the near term. You know, that being said, have they articulated sort of numerically how many votes they would see as being a mark of success?

Well, they're aiming for around 10,000 votes, because they will say that is around the margin that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost to former President Donald Trump by in 2016. Of course, here, the caveat, Asma, that you know as well is in 2020, President Biden did win the state of Michigan and won by a margin of 150, upwards of 150,000 votes. So yes, it could tie back to this 2016 number that really symbolizes a moment that arguably Democrats say is a big bruise in their history in organizing. But looking at Biden, that's not what happened four years ago for him. And look, tomorrow we will compare these uncommitted votes to past years. There's always several thousand uncommitted votes, And we'll just see how big of a dent. But I think the notable thing here is that a lot of these votes are coming from a very specific campaign with true, true passion and anger.

And we'll be able to see which precincts they come from as well, which we'll be telling. Don, you're based in Michigan, and you have also done some reporting on this key voting block of Arab American voters in Michigan. What are we talking about in terms of votes? What's the size and scope of the population? If you look at Michigan in totality, it's not that many votes, right? By some estimates, by groups that keep track of such things, there are about 200,000 registered Muslim American voters in Michigan. Again, there are Arab Americans who are not part of the Muslim community, but we're looking at a couple to 300,000 votes perhaps.

And again, you stack that up against the numbers that we just got from Elena a moment ago. Biden's margin of victory in Michigan last time was 150,000 votes, 155,000 votes, I think, if you want to be more precise. So he can't really afford to lose 300,000 votes or 200,000 votes or 100,000 votes, really, from a group of voters that has been very supportive to Democrats in recent years. And some Democratic elected officials who support President Biden are seeing the potential problems here in this state. One representative is Congressman Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California. He was actually in Michigan this week. I went to some of his events in Ann Arbor and Detroit and Dearborn. And he met with some prominent local and state Arab and

Muslim leaders who notably did not meet with the president's campaign when they were in town. And I had a call with him after these meetings to see how it went. And he kind of laid out the stakes here. It would be a mistake to look at this as just affecting 200,000 voters. It's something that goes to the heart of young voters, progressive voters, voters of color, and the energy that they're going to bring to the 2024 election. And, you know, notably at one of the events that they're going to bring to the 2024 election. And, you know, notably at one of the events that Khanna went to, it was at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And he met with different college groups that are politically active, college Dems, groups that align with the Palestinian movement and groups that are pro-Israel.

And he talked about his own stance, which is he is a Democrat that has endorsed Joe Biden, but also he is calling for a ceasefire. So he kind of is walking this really interesting middle line that as of right now, there aren't a ton of Democrats walking. All right. Well, on that note, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. Hey there, it's Susan Davis. A quick plug for our latest bonus episode. It's our trivia game for Politics Podcast Plus listeners, where we test your knowledge of the latest political news. These are tough this month. This is a real question.

I don't know, Ron. Am I able to get a little bit of help here? You could have a chance to play if you're an NPR Politics Plus supporter. You get bonus episodes like this one and sponsor-free listening. To sign up, just go to plus.npr.org. And we're back. And Don, my sense from talking to the Biden campaign, from talking to allies of Joe Biden, is that there's some sort of disagreement about how big of a challenge this could be for Joe Biden in Michigan. You know, a bunch of Biden policy officials were out meeting with Arab and Muslim leaders earlier this month. I talked to people who were in those meetings.

They were extremely emotional, tense meetings. I think that there is a deep anger in the Arab and Muslim community that I have not seen in political campaigns in years. You know, on the other hand, there are folks within the Biden orbit who feel like, okay, fine, we might lose a few votes here, but we could shore up turnout among other key parts of the Democratic base. I'm curious what your take is and what you're hearing. If they're not concerned about this, and I would suspect that they are concerned about it, at least to some degree, but either way, they are clearly working very hard to make sure that other elements of their traditional constituency turn out for them. They're places where they simply cannot afford

to lose votes, assuming Michigan is going to be close. And front and center in that discussion is labor, labor unions, and even specifically the United Auto Workers Union. President Biden got the UAW's endorsement, and that was a really important endorsement. So here is where labor tends to land in presidential elections. And what is true of Michigan is pretty much true in the rest of the country. And this is according to internal polling by the UAW, about six in 10 UAW members support the Democratic nominee for president. It may fluctuate a little bit, but it is important to a Democratic nominee to hold that and to tap into the kind of ground game and other phone banking and get out the vote

support that a labor union can give them, specifically the UAW. What makes it so important this year is that the UAW is coming out of a set of hugely productive and successful contract talks after a strike was launched against General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis. And Joe Biden was a very vocal supporter of theirs. And again, he wasn't just supporting them. In supporting them, he was sending a signal to these auto companies that the administration, that the White House wants you to do right by your workers. Biden even came to a picket line. And again, nobody's really expecting it to go above the 60% that a Democrat might typically be able to count on. But it's important that Biden get that 60%, not lose any of it in the way that Hillary Clinton lost some

labor household support, allowing Donald Trump a very narrow victory in Michigan. Yeah, I do recall that. And, you know, Don, I remember talking to some folks, you know, the union vote is not entirely racially a monolith either in the state of Michigan. You've got a number of Black voters who are part of these unions. And, you know, I do think that one thing when we look at like demographics and how voters vote in a particular election, I think sometimes when we look at how a person won a state, there's a tendency to say, oh, it was because of, you know, Black voters. It was because of the union voters. And what happened in Michigan for Joe Biden in 2020 is that a lot of things went right. I remember talking to Arab voters and

black voters who did not vote in 2016, but were willing to give Joe Biden a chance. And I think what he's got to do this year is prove to them that they ought to give him a chance again. That's exactly the case. Look, the UAW was diverse. The labor movement broadly is increasingly diverse. I mean, obviously, the teachers union is one of the powerhouse unions in Michigan. So that is a union with many, many, many women and minority members, other unions, health care workers and the like. This is not a monolith. This is not your father's old industrial union, I guess maybe we could say. Alina, nationally, the other thing that really hurt Hillary Clinton, if we go back to the

2016 election, was that broadly in some very key battleground states, she lost votes to a third party candidate. And I know the Michigan primary ballot does not have third party candidates listed. But I'm curious if in your conversations with voters, has this idea of wanting a different option, a different choice come up? I mean, if I had a nickel for the amount of times I heard people say, well, we're voting for the lesser of two evils, I would quit my job because I'd be so rich. Like, this is the most common thread among everybody that I really spoke with this week. And granted, you know, I cover younger folks, new voters. I spent a lot of time on college campuses and just walking around cities and talking with younger people or skewing younger because of this

reporting. But that's really the uniting thing here is the top two candidates are folks we've seen before. We've seen this. We've seen this movie before. And people want variety. People want a change. And, you know, there is some polling to back up a potential concern here, notably for the Democrats. You know, there was a survey from Harvard University's Institute of Politics that came out last year that focuses on younger people, 18 to 30. And when it's Biden versus Trump, that's a little bit less of a, you know, dire situation for Biden. Biden has a lead with these voters. But when a third party candidate gets in the mix, those margins go way down. Those margins are much smaller. And, you know, I didn't hear a

lot of people this week name specific third party candidates they like. But again, wanting someone new is huge. You know, it seems like the Biden campaign is convinced that once Donald Trump is officially the Republican nominee, once he's officially the guy on the other side, they assume that a lot of dissatisfied Democrats will come home. So I guess I have two final questions for you all here about what tomorrow's Michigan results might show. You know, one is, if you all think this uncommitted vote exceeds or doesn't exceed expectations. Does the Biden campaign take lessons from that or maybe take a mandate of how they ought to operate in the coming months ahead? And then secondly, you know, what do these uncommitted

voters do in the November general election? At least talking with organizers behind this and advocates in this space, they're really hurt. And nobody that I spoke with was surprised by the question of, would you support someone like Trump instead? That's not the place or the situation that a lot of these folks are in. They know they don't agree with more conservative policies. These are largely progressive voters. And so the real fear is that folks might stay home. I talked to one of the leading organizers for this movement. And she is involved in democratic politics. And she told me she is done. She will vote down ballot. But you know, that's not that crazy of a

statement to hear. I heard that in front of polling places. I think the issue here is less people going to Trump. And the issue is more people just going, I'm going to vote for my governor or I'm going to vote for my senator. I'm going to vote for my congressman and skipping that top ticket. I think the way I'll answer it is I, too, am hearing from a lot of voters who bring up the notion of looking at a third party candidate, somebody other than one of the two major party nominees for whatever reason. They can't abide Trump. They wish Biden had done more, whatever it is. They'll give you a lot of reasons. But I will tell you this, I've covered a lot of campaigns, right? And you always hear people talking about third party candidates, but you don't usually hear it during the primaries. You hear, once you get to the general

election, you hear them talking about voting for Jill Stein or for Ralph Nader, or if you go way back, and I didn't cover this one, but John Anderson or Ross Perot. But from my experience, that usually happens once you get to the general and people are already having that discussion. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today's show. I do want to remind folks that in Michigan, unlike South Carolina's context over the weekend, there is in fact a Democratic and a Republican primary. We will be talking more about that. But today's show focused just on the Democrats. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Elena Moore. I cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Don Gagne, I too cover the presidential campaign

And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast