"We warned you," Muslim voters tell Kamala Harris after she goes down in flames

As 2024 election returns are finalized, it looks like the genocide of Gaza cost Harris at least two critical swing states

As return comes in from the 2024 election, it looks like two of the states in Kamala Harris’s “Blue Wall” fell to Donald Trump because she loudly supported Israel’s genocide of Gaza for months.

In Michigan, Harris lost by 81,000 votes while in Wisconsin Trump slipped by with barely 30,000 votes. In 2020, one report calculated there were 206,000 registered Muslim voters in Michigan. The Muslim-American community is a rapidly growing population, and the number of registered Muslim voters in Michigan in 2024 is probably closer to 250,000.

In Dearborn, Michigan, the largest Arab majority U.S. city with a population of 110,000 residents, Joe Biden hauled in 74 percent of the vote in 2020, while Trump limped in with 24 percent. This time around Trump triumphed with 42 percent of the vote to only 36 percent for Harris and another 18 percent for Jill Stein. Al Jazeera estimates that Dearborn alone accounted for a 20,000-vote swing, or one quarter of Trump’s margin in the state.

Given the size of the Arab- and Muslim-American population in Michigan, it appears they tipped the race to Trump singlehandedly. But other Democratic quarters also abandoned Harris angered at her blank check for Israel. This includes Gen Z voters who were in the forefront of the pro-Palestine movement, left-wing activists, Black voters who see a direct parallel between Israel’s extermination of Gaza and the Jim Crow South and South African apartheid, and any voter outraged by the fact Washington has enabled the worst genocide of this century.

These are small and scattered groups that would require a lot of canvassing and polling to track, but one clue of the impact of Gaza is that voters aged 18-29 barely went for Harris by 54-43 over Trump. This is in sharp contrast to 2020 in which Biden netted at least 126,000 votes or more from the same age group in each of four swing states. Youth gave Biden a big push that edged him past Trump in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Young people are affected more by protests than older voters since they are likelier to be in the streets and less affected by conservative effects from careers and home ownership. In 2020, young voters came out in force to vote against Trump in response to his violent actions against the massive George Floyd protests. This time youth abandoned Biden and Harris after they spent a year aiding Israel’s genocide in every way possible — militarily, financially, politically, diplomatically, morally, and ideologically.

Compared to Michigan, there are far fewer Muslim voters in Wisconsin, perhaps 25,000 to 30,000, but Trump is currently on top by a mere 29,367 votes. That also happens to be almost the exact same number of people who picked Jill Stein or Robert Kennedy in Wisconsin, 29,944 votes. Again, given all the other groups angered at the Democrats, it is likely that over Israel’s wars alone Harris lost Wisconsin.

Pennsylvania was the last state in Harris’s firewall, which went to Trump by 138,000 votes. Here the impact of Muslim and Arab voters on the election is unclear. In 2020 there were 167,000 Muslim voters in the state. Given the Muslim voting population had increased by 26 percent in the four years before 2020, there may have been closer to 200,000 eligible Muslim voters in Pennsylvania in 2024.

It is not yet known how they voted, but the Pennsylvania Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a voter guide that featured Jill Stein in the center of its cover. It described her opposition to arms for Israel, support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, and denouncing Israel as genocidal. The guide also included the Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver and his position of “non-interventionism” and ending all foreign aid to Israel and Ukraine. Stein and Oliver notched almost the same exact vote total, about 33,000 each.

There is another significant factor that dragged down Harris over her support for Israel. Trump had a field day slamming Harris for being a warmonger on Israel and Ukraine. His surrogates like Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, Jr., warned supporters that Harris was causing chaos, barreling towards World War 3, and even risking nuclear war. Tucker Carlson and Trump mocked her alliance with Dick and Liz Cheney, pointing to the disastrous Iraq War that continues to destabilize the region.

Harris’s Neocon foreign policy enabled Trump to don the mantle of peace and stability. There isn’t polling that indicates how much of an impact this had. But given how much Trump’s campaign pounded Harris over it looks like they figured out it was repelling plenty of voters from Harris and attracting them to Trump.

Ironically the Democrats are more ideological than Trump, MAGA, or the GOP. Israel is serving U.S. interests in re-ordering the Middle East violently and trying to topple Iran’s government. Harris was so committed to American Empire she was willing to lose the election. She was more committed to it than stopping a fascist from ending democracy and making women second-class citizens.

But in the end she crumbled. Two days before the election Harris went to Michigan and finally said, “I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza.” It was a victory for the Palestine solidarity movement and a desperate Hail Mary play for Harris. She could have said it two or three months ago. She could have let a Palestinian deliver a toned-down speech at the DNC like they pleaded to. Nope, she kept dog-whistling for genocide by saying “I support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Politicians are masters out of talking out of both sides of their mouths. It would have been easy to signal to Palestinian- and Muslim-Americans she supported their cry for an end to the war while also winking at her wealthy Zionist backers and foreign policy establishment that she had their back.

Of course no one should ever trust a politician to do what they say they’re going to do, except for maybe Bernie Sanders. But postmodern politics is about managing spectacle, making everyone think you’re on their side. Obama did it. Harris couldn’t.

But Trump did. That is why he won. Again.