February 28, 2024

‘UNCOMMITTED’ IN MI: Did the Pro-Palestinian Left Humiliate Biden — Or Themselves?

The only humiliation created by the “Uncommitted” turn applies to the pro-Palestinian activists. In the context of the normal levels of discontent in non-competitive primaries, they barely moved the needle, if they did at all. The slight difference in percentage between the 2012 and 2024 results for “Uncommitted” may well have come from Democrats who think Joe Biden is too senile to serve as president. I’d bet that was a much bigger issue than Biden’s policies on the Hamas-Israel war or Tlaib’s influence. Tlaib’s campaign flopped, but don’t expect her or the pro-Palestinian press to cover it that way.

But that doesn’t mean that Biden scored a big win in Michigan either. Rather than look at the relative percentages in the primaries, compare the vote totals instead. Biden got 81.1% of 762,187 votes (as of 8:47 am ET); Trump got 68.1% of over 1.1 million votes. Trump alone got nearly as many votes as the total number of voters that cast ballots in the Democrat primary (756K to 762K). Haley got nearly half as many voters as Biden got.

It’s possible that some Michigan voters opted for the GOP ballot in the primary because it was more competitive. However, even if you take away all of Haley’s votes, Republicans still got a better turnout than Democrats did last night. That should be a huge red flag for Democrats about voter enthusiasm for a candidate that can’t reliably go out on the campaign trail, and can barely operate from the White House podium these days.

Finally, some thoughts from a trusted ABC News election analyst:

Or as a famous “Progressive” was quoted as saying from inside her exoskeleton, “You don’t have to fall in love, you just have to fall in line.”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll