President Trump returns! Although he didn’t win my vote (shoutout to Jill Stein), clearly he is the president the country wanted. Or to frame it another way, Kamala Harris was *NOT* the president the country wanted.
Throughout this race, Harris has positioned herself as not Trump. But what she really should have been focused on was showing that she was not Biden, that she was something new.
Joe Biden has been very unpopular. After almost 4 years of him in office, over 60% of the country thinks we are going in the “wrong direction”. Harris and the Democratic Party knew this when they were given the gift of Biden stepping aside. Yet, as opposed to listening to the people, the Democrats chose to ignore us. They unabashedly pushed the unpopular Vice President to the unpopular President to the top of the ticket, showing how little they cared about our opinion and how much they cared about keeping things the same. By doing so, Harris hoped being not Trump would be all she needed to get elected. She knew people did not like her, or the party, but she was asking them to “choose the lesser of two evils”, as the Pope said. Unfortunately for her, the country decided that was Trump.
Trump has a dictator fetish, has vowed to use his power to persecute his enemies, and has ruined America’s streak of non-violent transitions of power. So how is any of this good for democracy? Well, sometimes experience is the best teacher.
The Democrats didn’t learn the country was fed up with the establishment in 2016. Since 2020, the Democrats ignored all the warning signs that the working class felt abandoned. In 2024, Democrats refused to distance themselves from an unpopular, traditional establishment Presidency. This loss, hopefully, will teach them all of these lessons.
Democrats only have to look at one city to get the numbers to back this hard lesson learned: Dearborn, MI. You may recall that Michigan, and particularly, Dearborn, has a large share of Arab-Americans. Michigan is also an important swing state.
In the Democratic primary, 13% of voters, which is over 100,000 people, voted ‘uncommitted’, mostly fueled by the White House’s approach to the war in Gaza. This was significant for many reasons, but most importantly, because Biden only won Michigan by ~154,000 votes in 2020. All these votes were vital for Kamala to have a chance at keeping Michigan blue. So what did the Democrats and Kamala Harris do to try to win over these uncommitted voters… Nothing. Kamala essentially ignored their demands by standing by Israel’s right to defend themself. This consistent attitude lost her Michigan months ago. The uncommitted Arab-American voters weren’t going to back her and many progressive voters stood with them.
A theme at ArabCon 2024 was the feeling of votes being taken for granted. The Arab-Americans of Michigan may be a stark example of this, but let me make one thing clear… Arabs are not the only ones feeling this way. Whether Democrat or Republican, most people feel their interests are not well represented by the government. It is only natural then, that many, even in the Democratic party, feel their votes are taken for granted.
Taking votes for granted is the antithesis of Democracy. If our vote does nothing to promote our interests, do we really have a vote at all?
Well, thanks to this crushing electoral and popular defeat, Democrats may never have to answer these questions. Hopefully this has taught the Democratic party that we want our votes to decide not just who holds offices, but what they do while they are there. Hopefully, this has taught them that when we speak, they need to listen. Hopefully, this has taught them that we demand real change.
If this election is what it took to teach our leaders to respect our voices, it was worth the price.
