As a presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris had just 107 days to change the minds of hundreds of thousands of “disengaged” Democratic primary voters across the country, many of whom voted in protest of President Joe Biden and his administration’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.
But leaders of the Uncomposed National Movement and the “abandon Harris” campaign say they felt Harris did not do enough to distance herself from Biden or explain how she would handle the war differently.
And now they are closely watching newly elected President Donald Trump’s first steps in the Middle East and specifically in Gaza to see what comes next.
“There have been many ways in which Harris has chosen the path of Liz Cheney and the donor class on a range of issues, abandoning working families in places like Dearborn, who are the people Democrats claim to be fighting for.” , according to Uncomposed National Movement. co-founder Layla Elabed, a Palestinian-American activist and sister of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. “And I think at the same time Trump came in and fed a community that was grieving and desperate with lies and false promises.”
In the end, Trump ultimately carried Dearborn, Michigan, a majority Arab-American city, by more than six percentage points over Biden’s nearly 40-point victory there in 2020. But most voters in Dearborn also voted against Trump, who had about 43 points achieved. % support in a deeply divided field.
Elabed decided against the top voting this year and instead focused on the down voting races.
“We offered Democrats a path to victory and a way to unite the party, and they ignored and berated us for 10 months,” Elabed said.
When Elabed and other leaders of the Uncomposed National Movement briefly met Harris in person last summer, she told the candidate she wanted to vote for her and asked Harris to talk to activists about how to change her policies toward the Middle East. She said Harris seemed receptive at the time, but an official meeting would never take place again.
“She never came to Dearborn. She never came to speak to families who had been affected firsthand by our American policy decisions, which ultimately killed their family members,” Elabed said.
About a month before the election, Harris met with Muslim and Arab-American community leaders in Flint, Michigan, ahead of a rally there. Also in October, her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, held a virtual meeting with an Islamic organizing group called Emgage Action.
A former Harris campaign official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal campaign deliberations, said that after October 7, the vice president spoke to Palestinian Americans who were in Gaza when the war broke out and who had to be evacuated, as well as Palestinian Americans who had been evacuated had to be. doctors who had returned from Gaza. Harris herself described speaking to those who lost loved ones in Gaza during remarks in December 2023.
Elabed said she feels crushed by the reality of four years of the Trump administration’s policies toward Israel.
“I am absolutely devastated. I’m devastated for our country. It makes me so angry and frustrated that it didn’t have to be this way because we were all handed the warning signs on a silver platter,” Elabed said.
Bryarr Misner, who grew up Christian and converted to Judaism and later to Islam, worked as a campaign manager for the Abandon Harris campaign in Pittsburgh. Unlike Elabed, he ultimately voted for Trump. And he expressed similar frustration over the lack of access to members of Harris’ team, which he said felt demeaning.
“We have tried negotiations. We tried reaching out but to no avail. You know, they never reached out,” he said, later adding, “We went through different avenues to try to be heard, and instead we were ridiculed.”
Misner said it was a difficult decision to vote for Trump. He said the aim of the Abandon Harris campaign was to punish Democrats for supporting Israel during the war in Gaza, which campaigners view as a genocide, and he hopes the Trump campaign will be more willing to deal with group leaders to negotiate. (The Israeli government and the US government have rejected accusations of genocide.)
“President Trump, he was constantly coming and being in the community. While I don’t believe he will implement policies that will benefit the community, he has at least shown that he was willing to stand up for the community,” Misner said.
Harris’ former campaign official said groups like the Abandon Harris Movement demanded Harris call for an immediate arms embargo, but her campaign was unwilling to do so.
Palestinian-American policy analyst and writer Abdelhalim Abdelrahman said similar feelings of inaccessibility and indifference existed in Michigan.
“I think the most offensive aspect of it is that the disengaged movement and other grassroots movements here in Michigan have done everything they can to give Kamala Harris and the Democrats an olive branch, to get Kamala Harris to sit down with them and to listen to their pain. and calling for an arms embargo,” Abdelrahman said. “And it was just a simple request to enforce American law, and they were rejected, and they were treated like criminals, and they were alienated from the so-called big tent party of the Democratic Party.”
Abdelrahman said Harris never managed to proactively advance policy positions on ending the war or advocate for Palestinians to satisfy a crucial part of her constituency, and that her overall strategy often seemed reactionary compared to Trump.
“I think the biggest problem is that your message to Arab Americans cannot simply be: ‘Trump is a fascist, Trump is Hitler. Big, scary orange man, vote for me.” Part of being part of the American political system is being able to separate yourself from your opponent and carve out a better vision. And she didn’t,” Abdelrahman said.
He expressed moderate optimism about Massad Boulos, Trump’s choice for Middle East adviser (and the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany).
“It really looks like Massad Boulos, the Lebanese Christian who facilitated his Arab-American outreach in Michigan, is going to have a little more operational freedom than people realize in this administration, and I think that could help keep people like Mike Huckabee to compensate. Abdelrahman said, referring to Trump’s choice as ambassador to Israel. “It’s scary, but I’m not ready to jump yet.”
“I expect to see a lot of pro-Israel rhetoric, but a little more diplomacy,” he said of Trump’s overall strategy in the Middle East.
Farah Khan, co-chair of the Abandon Harris campaign in Michigan, said she has been a Democrat all her life, but not anymore. She viewed voting against Harris as a moral issue as the war continues to unfold.
“Anyone in their right mind wouldn’t go back to the Democrats because they haven’t shown any change, and they’re going to have to work very, very hard to win their votes back,” Khan said.
Khan said Harris did not do enough to change the Biden administration’s course in messaging or policy. Ultimately, she voted for Jill Stein of the Green Party.
“[Harris] says, ‘Oh yes, I feel bad.’ And the next day they send billions of dollars in weapons again. I mean, you can’t even fool children like this these days, let alone the adults who are your voters,” Khan said.
“She could have at least called for a ceasefire,” Khan said. (Harris repeatedly called for a ceasefire during her campaign, including during her speech at the Democratic Convention.) “She could have sent aid, she could have pressured Israel to let the aid in – she did not. She did nothing of the sort. And yet she kept saying that we work around the clock. If you work around the clock and this is the outcome, then we certainly don’t want you in the office.”
Harris’ former campaign official pointed to Harris’ trip to Dubai in December 2023, where Harris said international humanitarian law must be respected and advocated for a two-state solution. Within the administration, the official said, Harris pushed for humanitarian and civilian casualty issues.
The official argued that there was alignment between what Harris and the Muslim and Arab American communities were fighting for, but that there was not enough time for people to fully understand her position.
Khan believes many Muslim and Arab-American voters chose Trump in protest — not because they liked him, but because they wanted to defeat Harris and punish Democrats.
“Even in politics, humanity should be the first and foremost thing to be respected and appreciated, right? And [the] The Democratic Party has clearly shown us for an entire year that they don’t care about human lives,” Khan said. “They don’t care about their constituents, how they feel about the massacre.”
Khan said Trump’s rhetoric about ending the war was a winning message for many Muslim and Arab-American voters.
“At least he came, at least, and spoke to the Muslims. He heard them and said, ‘Okay, I’ll finish it. “I will end the war in the Middle East even though he did not say there was a genocide, but he did say he would bring peace,” she said. “And that’s what people wanted to hear, and that’s why he got the votes.”
But she is concerned about the possibility of Huckabee serving as ambassador to Israel.
“It’s very disturbing. It’s worrying. And some of his cabinet picks, like Tulsi Gabbard and then Mike Huckabee, have made Muslims worried, but we still have to wait and see how things will turn out, because it’s too early to say anything about Trump, and we all know that Trump will only but listens [to] Trump,” Khan said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
