I grew up 30 minutes outside of Dearborn, Michigan, a city with the largest Arab-American population in the country, and one that is largely responsible for the protest vote by Democratic primary voters against President Joe Biden this week. Their complaint against him primarily revolves around his continued support for Israel in the Gaza conflict, but they managed to convince large swathes of young voters in Ann Arbor to vent their frustration against the Democratic ticket as well. In total, more than 100,000 Michigan Democrats voted “uncommitted” instead of for Biden, and in the parts of the state where the Muslim population is highest — Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, and Hamtramck — Biden flat out lost.
Biden still easily clinched the Democratic nomination in the state, but the fact that so many of his own party’s voters mobilized against him should be setting off alarm bells in his campaign. Indeed, it begs the question of what the results might have looked like had Biden been forced to face some real competition.
There is also the fact that former President Donald Trump swept his primary in the state, drawing more votes than all Democratic votes cast for Biden and the “uncommitted” option combined. Republican voters are, by and large, excited about voting for Trump again. Democratic voters, on the other hand, are clearly reluctant to vote for Biden and will vote blue not because of him but in spite of him.
All of this points to a serious enthusiasm problem for Joe Biden.
Of course, that problem has been apparent for months now, as concerns about the 81-year-old’s mental acuity continue to dominate the polls, and his approval ratings remain in the gutter. But as Byron York noted in his newsletter for the Washington Examiner this morning, Michigan’s primary was the first time Democratic voters were able to actually do something about it. The Democratic National Convention snubbed both Iowa and New Hampshire, with the latter state not even bothering to include Biden on its ballot. And in South Carolina, the Democratic primary was held on a different day than Republicans’, resulting in a very low turnout.
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But in Michigan, the Democratic establishment has been working for months to drum up support for Biden, in part to squash the Left’s protest vote against him, but also because they recognize that if Michigan falls to Trump in November, the rest of the Midwest could very well follow suit. The double-digit success of the “uncommitted” vote against Biden proves they have much more work to do, especially now that Teamsters union leadership has indicated support for Trump.
Biden will need every single vote he can get to hang on to Michigan. One hundred thousand voters deciding to stay home this November or cast their vote for a third-party candidate instead could very well cost him the state. Remember: Biden won the state in 2020 by just 150,000 votes. It’s becoming more and more likely that this time he’ll lose it by a much bigger margin.