Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) believes President Joe Biden will meet with Arab and Muslim community leaders in Michigan over his approach to the Israel–Hamas war after last week’s protest vote against him in the battleground state’s primary.
But simultaneously, Dingell amplified differences between Biden and likely 2024 Republican nominee former President Donald Trump, a reminder to Michigan Democrats of what the war and life could be like under Trump.
“I know that the president will meet with this community,” Dingell told NBC Sunday. “I think they’re very raw right now. And I think let’s get some pieces in place. But you know, I’m going to tell you something else. I don’t hear Donald Trump talk about this at all. And I’m not exactly sure how he would be handling it. I have some pretty strong feelings about what would be happening there. Joe Biden is talking about it. Joe Biden is working hard to get that ceasefire.”
Dingell had been asked about whether the White House and Biden campaign’s reported strategy of reducing opportunities for pro-Palestinian demonstrators to protest the president was the “right” one. first lady Jill Biden was disrupted in Arizona on Saturday during a political event by a young woman imploring her and her husband to support a ceasefire in Gaza.
“I have had very direct conversations with the president, and I believe those conversations are private,” Dingell said. “But I think you’ve seen a change, that the White House has been reaching out more to the Arab American Muslim community, hearing their hurt. I am told that they are doing many things very directly.”
In 2016, Dingell warned then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton about Trump’s popularity in Michigan before he won the state by 11,000 votes. Biden won it four years later by a wider, but narrow margin of 154,000 votes. Biden won last week’s primary with 623,000 votes, but 101,000 Democrats decided instead to mark themselves as “uncommitted” to protest the president’s handling of the war
“Michigan is a purple state and I’ve been saying that for a long time,” Dingell said Sunday. “We are a state that frequently votes uncommitted. President [Barack] Obama got a highly – got a significant uncommitted vote to 2012, but it is one issue that needs to be paid attention to.”
“I got a lot of people that are hurting in my district and in the district that I used to represent the name of their campaign, or the one that I believe was effective, was called ‘Listen to Michigan’,” she added. “They didn’t think anybody was hearing the hurt that their families were facing. I have families that have lost 40 members of one family. They are — the casework I’m doing for people that are starving, have no food that they want everybody to hear them. They’re going to be an important group in November, but there’s a lot of other groups that we have to make sure turnout. It’s going to be a turnout election.”
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Dearborn, Michigan Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who represents a city which, as of the last census, is considered majority Middle Eastern or North African American, has criticized Dingell’s argument. In Dearborn, 110,000 residents identify as Middle Eastern or North African American.
“If 100,000 people voted for ‘uncommitted’ in the 2012 MI Dem presidential primary, ‘Uncommitted’ would have won the primary election with 51% of the vote – beating Barack Obama,” Hammoud wrote on social media last week. “If you wish to take that calculated risk of discounting the results, you risk unraveling the entirety of our American democracy.”
