After a strong show of support for Joe Biden and against Donald Trump in the 2020 election, the Arab and Muslim American communities in the swing state of Michigan, and around the country, swung decisively in the other direction. Despite some early claims to the contrary, this didn’t determine the outcome, either in the popular vote or in the electoral college. However, the shift in Arab and Muslim American sentiment toward Trump and away from Kamala Harris, if not all other Democrats, tells a fascinating part of the 2024 election saga.
The swing in Michigan was quite dramatic. In the largest Arab American-majority city in the country, Dearborn, Trump beat Harris 42.5% to 36%. Tellingly, the usually irrelevant Green Party candidate Jill Stein pulled down an impressive 18% of the vote in Dearborn, undoubtedly voters who could not stomach voting for either Trump or Harris. Trump similarly prevailed in Dearborn Heights, and in Michigan generally. Biden had won all of these areas handily in 2020.
In the largest Arab American-majority city in the country, Dearborn, Trump beat Harris 42.5% to 36%.
The turnabout has its origins, obviously, in the Gaza war. Arab and Muslim American sentiment was, from the outset, appalled at the savagery of Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas-led killing spree in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. And these communities were nearly unanimous in outrage at the virtual carte blanche for Israel provided by the Biden administration, especially in the first few months of the war. Anger was so intense that few even registered the subtle shifts away from unconditional support for Israel or the fact that the United States was among four parties — along with the U.N. and its subordinate agencies, nongovernmental organizations and key donors Qatar and the UAE — that helped prevent a mass starvation or uncontrolled epidemic in Gaza, making matters worse. Instead, all that was seen was the U.S. as the principal arms supplier and diplomatic protector of Israel, accusations that are undeniable.
It mattered little that Harris was the leading official who publicly pressed the case for a cease-fire and the strongest in expressing concerns about the suffering of Palestinian civilians. All that most people in these communities saw was an administration complicit in what they plausibly considered a genocidal war, and they weren’t terribly interested in the footnotes or the details.
Moreover, the Harris campaign made a number of crucial blunders regarding Arab and Muslim American voters. They had the opportunity to give a platform at the Democratic National Convention this year to a Palestinian or pro-Palestinian speaker. They refused to provide any, even in some marginal afternoon time slot. It was one of many obvious unforced errors. Harris campaign staffers dispatched to meet with friendly officials in Michigan were unable to provide Arab and Muslim American voters a plan, a timetable or even a convincing policy direction for ending the war in Gaza, which continued to seem to spiral out of control, especially as Israel escalated and then launched a ground invasion against Hezbollah in Lebanon, home country of the biggest Arab American communities in Michigan.
The Trump campaign cannily saw an opening and pounced. While there was an initial misstep by dispatching Richard Grenell, Trump’s hawkish and extremely pro-Israel foreign policy adviser, to meet with community representatives, the campaign quickly recovered and found its footing. Led by Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, a wealthy Lebanese businessman, Trump launched a highly effective charm offensive arguing that he is the “peace candidate.” He managed to convince significant numbers of Arab and Muslim American voters that he, in contrast to Harris, would end the wars in Gaza and Lebanon (though he never began to hint how, or on what terms), and that he would somehow be the American politician who could finally get Israel under control.
Given his track record accumulated during his first administration — when he moved the U.S. Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, issued a statement vaguely recognizing Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, validated Israel’s annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, and issued a “peace plan” that invited Israel to annex 30% more of the remaining occupied West Bank, including the Jordan Valley — this was a remarkable achievement. But for a candidate who is willing to tell everyone what they want to hear and play off of the clear-cut vulnerabilities of his opponent, it worked very well.
The Harris campaign made a number of crucial blunders regarding Arab and Muslim American voters.
Meanwhile, Trump was reportedly telling Jewish donors that he wanted to deport pro-Palestinian student protesters and knock that movement “back 25-30 years.” Arguably one of Harris’ biggest failings is that she was unwilling to tell different constituencies completely contradictory things under different circumstances, as Trump was. This worked as well for him among Arab and Muslim Americans as with any other group.
At the same time, Boulos reportedly paid for very effective anti-Harris propaganda aimed at Arab and Muslim American voters.
When I was in Dearborn a few days before the election, I was struck by billboards featuring her face in profile across a large blue Star of David and billowing Israeli flag saying something like “Kamala Harris can always be relied upon to defend Israel and protect our Jewish communities.” It was hardly subtle — the message was designed to reach Arab and Muslim American voters and pump up the idea that she was beholden to the Jewish community and wedded to Israel. While this was reported to be the work of a PAC tied to billionaire Trump-backer Elon Musk, it did nothing to undermine the effectiveness of the advertising.
I was also shown anonymous flyers that can only be described as antisemitic, pouring out venom against Harris and her Jewish American husband. Indeed, the main complaint about Harris I heard beyond the most predictable ones was that her husband was “a radical Zionist activist,” which is an apt description of several of Trump’s closest advisers, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and former ambassador to Israel David Friedman, but not, in reality, second gentleman Douglas Emhoff.
One of the biggest differences in the end was the perception that Trump was willing to listen to Arab and Muslim Americans in Michigan whereas Harris was not.
Toward the final days of the campaign, the Harris team inexplicably dispatched the highly pro-Israel New York City politician Rep. Richie Torres and, most disastrously, former President Bill Clinton, who gave a virulently, and indeed at times viciously, anti-Palestinian speech in favor of Harris — a move that made absolutely no sense.
In contrast, Trump personally met with locally elected Arab American politicians and Muslim clerics, in all likelihood promising them the polar opposite of what he was telling other constituencies like his Jewish donors, bringing them onto his rally stages with him — something Harris never did — and making every appearance of being interested in forming an alliance. He crucially won over Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi and Hamtramck’s Yemeni-American Mayor Amer Ghalib. Meanwhile, Dearborn’s Democratic Arab American Mayor Abdullah Hammoud refused to meet with Trump but also declined to endorse Harris.
The main complaint about Harris I heard beyond the most predictable ones was that her husband was ‘a radical Zionist activist.’
Harris’ outreach to community leaders was, in short, a pathetic failure. Trump, on the other hand, was able to convince people that he was listening, was against war and for peace, that he was sympathetic to Arab and Muslim Americans despite his track record, and, more subtly through surrogates and anonymous advertisements, that Harris was pro-Israel to the extent of being pro-genocide and almost pathologically anti-Arab and especially anti-Palestinian.
It was game, set and match.
In the final analysis, neither the Arab and Muslim American votes in Michigan and elsewhere, nor even the outcome in Michigan itself, was decisive. Independent voters clearly broke strongly for Trump, viewing Harris as the incumbent in what amounted to a change election in an atmosphere of global anti-incumbency fervor. But the sad story of how the Harris campaign absolutely blew it when approaching Arab and Muslim American voters in Michigan and beyond, and Trump’s highly effective counterattack — with the resulting inversion of the 2020 outcome in Michigan and among Arab and Muslim American constituencies that had gone heavily for Biden — is a microcosm of the entire 2024 calamity.
