“We recognize that, in the next four years, our decision may cause us to have an even more difficult time. But we believe that this will give us a chance to recalibrate, and the Democrats will have to consider whether they want our votes or not.”
That’s gotta be one of the strangest reasonings I’ve heard in a while.
The guy running against Biden has far worse policies with regard to Muslims. If that guy wins it “proves” America wants the worse policies, potentially causing Democrats to switch to those policies to try to win.
Luckily, this is a publicity stunt that I don’t foresee changing any actual votes.
If Biden’s stance on Israel is driving away voters, that’s just normal. This is one of those important polarizing issues, and he can’t avoid accountability, for good or bad. The death count and coverage has guaranteed that.
As for “America wants” language, that doesn’t mean anything. Different people have different goals.
Sure, it’s shorthand, but the idea is that the Democratic Party might nominate a presidential candidate who has harsher views about Muslims and Palestine, if they see those views being the reason they lost, or among the reasons they lost.
They would see that they had the “better” policies and still didn’t get the votes from the people who care most passionately about them, so their approach did not work. Maybe they go closer to the protesters view to try to get their votes, or maybe they give up on the protesters as a voting bloc since they couldn’t even get their vote when they had the “better” policies. That would entail going further away from the protesters views.
Either could happen, I don’t know the polling, but my point is that it isn’t just “we will take 4 years of Trump to make our point and make Democrats listen,” they may be taking 4 years of Trump and then proving that no one should align their policy views with theirs going forward because it hurts more than it helps.
Rationally, you have a valid point.
But I can totally understand people who can’t bring themselves to vote for someone actively supporting a genocide. Something that Trump didn’t do during his tenure in office.
Lesser of two evils only works when the distinction is clear to everyone.
Biden needs to separate himself from Israeli genocidal politics, and it seems his cabinet is trying to shift.
So in conclusion, you might consider this a publicity stunt. And maybe it is. But recent elections have shown that you can’t ignore your base, you need to fire them up to really turn them out.
So this is definitely a good move.
Trump provided military assistance, approved arms sales, and personally vetoed a bill to end US military assistance to the Saudis in Yemen which is considered a genocide as well.
And his Israel “peace plan” was literally just giving the Israelis everything they wanted so if you’re giving him credit for Israel/Palestine actions you’re literally just giving him credit for not being the president when this happened. He absolutely would have been worse for Palestinians, he just didn’t have the power at the time.