A national Muslim activist group called “Abandon Biden” is organizing operations in nine swing states to prevent President Joe Biden from winning reelection in November as punishment for his handling of the Israel and Hamas war, according to a report.
Minneapolis-based newspaper the Star Tribune reported Sunday of the group’s efforts to keep Biden from a second term, even if it results in a Trump presidency:
Abdel Salam, 48, is among a group of Muslim activists, including several Minnesotans, who are organizing in nine swing states in opposition to Biden’s re-election. The group’s leaders say they want to politically punish the president for what they describe as enabling mass civilian casualties in Gaza.
Salam, a University of Minnesota human rights professor, ditched the campus in April to help head up the movement.
The group prioritizes punishing Biden over preventing a second Trump presidency, the report indicates. Moreover, Salam told the Tribune a Biden loss over his Israel-Hamas policies would move the needle substantially in making the pro-Palestinian stance the mainstream view of the Democrat Party:
He said he and other Abandon Biden leaders are evaluating third-party candidates and plan to make an endorsement this summer. And if Trump wins because of their work, “the big gift that would come out of punishing the president is that an entire party … becomes a pro-Palestinian party against the occupation and will begin to look for equity much more aggressively than we have in the past,” Abdel Salam said.
The threat to Biden’s reelection bid over frustrations on the left among Muslims, Arab-Americans, young voters, and progressives has been well-documented throughout the election year. More than half a million Democrat primary voters protested Biden’s handling of the war and demanded a ceasefire by casting variations of “uncommitted” votes against him.
The Listen to Michigan campaign, which kicked off the movement, notes the threat to Biden is these voters would stay home in November, barring a major change in his policy. Despite Biden demanding a ceasefire in April from Benjamin Netanyahu and threatening to withhold weapons from Israel, the movement persisted in the Maryland Democrat primary on May 14, and with the November election less than six months away, he is running out of time.
While Maryland is not realistically in play for Republicans, the movement in Michigan and other swing states, where margins between Trump and Biden were tight in 2020, pose extreme danger for Democrats and Biden, especially as polling indicates Trump is already leading in many of these states.
The group’s website, Abandonbiden24.com, notes they are targeting Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Jaylani Hussein, who serves on the national Abandon Biden board with Salam and three others, pointed to Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin as states where the Muslim vote can really influence the state’s electoral outcome.
“Our math right now shows really no pathway for Biden to win,” Hussein contended to the Tribune.
The report follows a recent New York Times/ Siena College poll showing that Trump has made groundbreaking inroads with Muslim and Arab-American voters in swing states. The poll found Trump was winning 57 percent of these voters to Biden’s 25 percent.
“Those who say they voted in the 2020 election reported backing Mr. Biden by a similar but opposite margin, 56-35,” Times Chief Political Analyst Nate Cohn reported on May 13. The poll sampled 4,097 registered voters between April 28 and May 9.
