This Tuesday, more than 48,000 people defied cold, rainy weather to register protest votes in the Wisconsin Democratic primary against the Biden administration’s unrelenting support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
In 2020, Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by an excruciatingly narrow margin of victory of about 21,000 votes. As of Wednesday afternoon, Wisconsin’s “uninstructed” vote tally – the equivalent of the “uncommitted” campaign that Arab Americans launched in Michigan – was 48,093 votes, more than twice Biden’s 2020 win margin.
The protest vote in Wisconsin has made clear that this campaign is bigger than Biden. The many people calling for a ceasefire aren’t merely swing voters or bitter castoffs who have long left the party. Many involved in the uncommitted campaigns have, until now, been committed Democrats. But they fear a critical mass of voters may permanently leave the Democratic party if Biden and other leaders don’t implement a ceasefire in Gaza, and quickly. For some voters, even that may be too little, too late.
Francesca Hong worked in hospitality before she became a Wisconsin state representative in 2020. “I’ve always voted for Democrats, since I was eligible to vote when I was 18,” she told me a day after the Wisconsin primary.
Hong was one of the first elected officials to endorse the “uninstructed” campaign and has been critical of Biden financing the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians. Although the president has promised humanitarian aid to Gaza – including in a statement on Tuesday in the wake of an Israeli strike that killed seven aid workers – he continues to fund Israel’s weapons. At least twice, Biden has bypassed Congress to do so, while nearly 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in just six months in Israel’s relentless attacks.
Hong, a woman of color from a working-class, immigrant family with no political background, rose through the ranks in the restaurant industry to become an executive chef. A materialized version of the American dream, she is precisely the sort of person that the Democratic party purports to represent. Yet she said she sometimes feels betrayed and “dismissed” by the party: “This administration is prioritizing some lives over others, and leaders of color are having to go back to their communities with the ‘lesser of two evils’, again.”
People “seeing a genocide unfold on social media on their phones has made them even more disillusioned about the political process”, Hong said. “I think that in turn makes them less likely to vote for Democrats.” They feel “betrayed by a party and an administration that they thought was supposed to stand for something different, was supposed to stand for democracy and justice,” she added.
Hong, the only Asian American in the Wisconsin state legislature, hopes that Tuesday’s results will get state Democratic leaders to listen to their party’s progressive faction, as party leaders throughout the country continue to appeal to conservatives.
Wisconsin state representatives like Ryan Clancy expressed frustration that the party continues to “court imaginary voters”, referencing the conservative voters Democratic leaders believe they can win over.
The party’s strategy seems to be that if it is “just moderate enough or timid enough, that somehow, magically, these largely nonexistent Republican [swing] voters will cross over the aisle and vote with them”, Clancy told me a day before the primary.
While insurgent campaigns against the Democratic “establishment” are getting less attention this election season, a tectonic shift appears to be happening whether the party wants to acknowledge it or not. The anti-war vote, and an inadequate response to that movement at multiple levels of government beyond the White House, could permanently drive away some of the party’s base: progressive and younger voters. Many progressive voters have no interest in showing up purely to vote against Trump; unless they have a Democrat they really believe in, they’ll simply stay home.
Clancy has been loyal to the Democratic party since 2011 when he got involved in politics as a Democratic delegate. He has noticed a shift in voters from younger generations, who largely voted for Biden in 2020 before becoming more repelled by the Democratic party’s politics. “I’m hearing [from] a ton of people, especially younger folks – I’m a father of five, three of my kids are now at voting age – [who] cannot imagine bringing themselves to vote for somebody who is complicit in genocide,” he said.
Clancy thinks that Biden is “way out of step with both his own party and Americans generally”. Sixty-eight percent of likely voters under 45, regardless of party, said they support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, while 77% of Democrats support it, according to a February survey by Data for Progress. Even a majority of Republicans favor a ceasefire, according to an Institute for Social Policy and Understanding poll of religious groups in February.
Democrats, according to Gallup, are “in a weaker position than they have been in any recent election year”, as independents continue to outnumber those who consider themselves either Democrats or Republicans. While the party may scoff at progressives, they can’t afford to lose any more of those votes, especially in critical swing states where victories can be decided by a fraction of a percent.
“Nobody wants fascism in November,” Hong shared. And that’s precisely why Democrats in swing states urge Biden to shift course in Gaza if they want any chance to win the White House, this election season and beyond.
Malaika Jabali is a 2024 New America fellow, journalist and author of It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why It’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On
