(New York) “Right now, President Biden is the most popular man in Israel. He has generated more goodwill from the Israeli people than any other president in memory. »
US diplomat Richard Haass, who served under three Republican presidents and one Democrat, said the words last week as he praised Joe Biden’s response to the October 7 slaughter by Hamas in Israel. It expressed the current consensus among foreign policy makers and the vast majority of elected officials in Washington.
But this response threatens to tear the Democratic Party apart and further weaken a president already vulnerable on other fronts. The manifestations of this division are numerous, and its electoral consequences could be serious. Indeed, by winning the favors of the Israeli people, the occupant of the White House is perhaps losing those of certain American voters necessary for his re-election in 2024, including young people.
Fall in Democratic support
A Gallup poll released last Thursday identified the problem. In the space of a single month, Joe Biden saw his approval rating drop from 86% to 75% among Democrats. Gallup, which conducted its study from October 2 to 23, specifies that “the daily results strongly suggest that Democrats’ approval of Mr. Biden fell sharply following the Hamas attacks of October 7 and the promise of Mr. Biden to fully support Israel.”
These results confirm the shift that the public opinion institute revealed earlier this year regarding how Democrats view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last March, Gallup published a study indicating that, for the first time, voters in the party of John Kennedy and Barack Obama were more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to the Israelis, 49% to 38%. The polling house noted that this shift was largely driven by Generations Y (millennials) and Z, with older generations continuing to display greater sympathy for Israelis.
Last Tuesday, more than 375 former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign staffers referenced the poll in a letter calling on the Vermont senator, a progressive hero to many young people, to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas .
It is largely thanks to your work that the sympathy of Democratic voters has brought about a major historic shift this year in favor of Palestinian rights.
Excerpt from the open letter addressed to Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders
“Today, we ask you to use your power and the respect you enjoy across the United States and the world to speak out clearly and boldly against war, against occupation, and for the dignity of life human. »
In the days that followed, the senator simply asked for a “humanitarian pause”, just like his colleague from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren, another leading figure in the progressive movement in the United States. The Democratic representative from Missouri, Cori Bush, expressed the impatience of certain elected officials and Democratic voters of the younger generations with the proposal defended by the elders of their party. “What is a humanitarian pause? We need a ceasefire. We must stop dropping bombs on hospitals, schools and communities,” he told the New York Times the representative, who introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives calling for “de-escalation and an immediate ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” Eighteen Democratic representatives supported this resolution last Thursday. They all come from communities of color, whose support was also decisive in the election of Joe Biden in 2020.
Youth vote
But it is perhaps the disaffection of young people which could be the most costly. In 2020, nearly 60% of voters aged 18 to 29 voted for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, giving him a 24 percentage point advantage over Donald Trump, according to the Pew Research Center. No other age group favored the eventual winner more. In 2024, these young people may well stay home or vote for an independent candidate to protest Joe Biden’s wholehearted support for a country run by a government made up in part of virulent racists and religious extremists.
In the meantime, university campuses are the scene of almost daily demonstrations where the Palestinian cause is often seen as an extension of the racial and social justice movements that shook the United States after the death of George Floyd in 2020.
This protest has suffered some slip-ups. During a demonstration at Cornell University, for example, a professor said he was “excited” by “this challenge to the monopoly of violence” after the Hamas massacres. The new president of Harvard University had to commit to fighting the resurgence of anti-Semitism on her campus, where dozens of student organizations supported a letter holding “the Israeli regime fully responsible for all violence that is taking place.”
Despite the slip-ups, Joe Biden seems to be aware of the political risks to which his response to October 7 exposes him. After pledging his full support to Israel, he began to insist on the need to protect civilians in the Gaza Strip and to release humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave. But the death toll continues to rise alarmingly in Gaza and there is no guarantee that the war Israel is waging there will not become “Biden’s Vietnam”, to use the expression of Max Berger, president and co-founder of the group. progressive Jew IfNotNow.