The poll found 50% of Democrats approve of how Biden has navigated the conflict while 46% disapprove — and the two groups diverge substantially in their views of U.S. support for Israel. Biden’s support on the issue among Democrats is down slightly from August, as an AP-NORC poll conducted then found that 57% of Democrats approved of his handling of the conflict and 40% disapproved.
Yeah I get it. But “get the incumbent president primaried by someone who goes on to still win the election” is not a fantastic option for a potential voter is it? If you just don’t want to support someone who is standing by while what you consider to be a genocide is happening, this is your only viable option?
It is shit. The best solution is for Biden to take action before the number of dead mounts even more. Call out Israeli crimes as strongly as you call out those from Hamas. This is what any self respecting progressive president would have to do on this situation.
But if that doesn’t happen? No consequence. People are supposed to dutifully line up and say “more please” because the political system is so fundamentally broken.
I’m not American, but if I was obviously I would still vote for Biden. I just don’t like to see the demonization of this quite understandable (imo) position. If you can’t stomach doing that, the problem isn’t you so much as the whole system. You should vote Biden and then the VERY NEXT DAY be out on the street demanding electoral reform.
Apologies for the length but I think this sums up my point: what would Biden have to do to make it not worth voting for him? What could he get away with?
Short of something Trump-level, Biden is going to win the Primary. There’s no maybe on that. The incumbency advantage might be beatable in the General, but it’s monumental. Quite certainly him representing the **majority ** Democratic take on the Israel war is not going to lose him the Primary.
Israel was attacked by Palestine. They were attacked by Hamas, but Hamas rules Palestine. Based on internationally agreed-upon rules of engagement, they get to bloody Hamas back. We both know the problem isn’t Israel hitting back, it’s them not really caring about civilian damage and their desire to simply take over the West Bank. Anything we do strongly against Israel is going to be against most of our allied countries and cost us the Israel alliance. Interestingly, the running trend in the US has been isolationism, something both parties have started to agree on, and everyone’s favorite Bernie Sanders as well when he ran in 2016 and 2020. But now we’re mad Biden took a fairly Isolationist “but please don’t wipe them out” point of view?
What do progressives want? Do we want isolationism or do we just want to pick and choose our wars based on personal opinion? I don’t like Israel, but we’re supposed to be committing to getting less involved in international politics. For some, that just seems like it means “let’s support our enemies and not our allies”. Why can’t we just support NEITHER side, like everyone has been demanding Democrats do?
I’m assuming you don’t actively support Hamas, right?
Ahhhh… I should’ve read before I started replying. You’re missing something. One of the few things Trump and Bernie agreed on in 2016 was the desire for the US to stop trying to police the damn world. Our progressive wing, until very recently, wanted us to stay out of the Middle East until we no longer have a choice. We thought that meant not supporting Israel, but if we’re being honest it means also not condemning them until they go well past “following the rules of engagement”.
The position of letting Trump win in protest for Biden doing what a majority of his voters want? He very much admonished Israel not to occupy Palestine and not to take action with excess civilian casualties. He’s insisting Israel hold to a stricter set of rules of engagement than most countries would if another country led an unprovoked attack against civilians. We cannot forget that Hamas is the ruling party of Palestine. At the very least, Israel is entitled to try to step in and replace Palestine’s leadership with someone who won’t attack Israel. Except we don’t trust Israel, and Biden doesn’t trust Israel, to do that in good faith.
I don’t think I could criticize the length of your reply considering my own :)