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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All right, Michigan's primary is today, and Michigan's got a lot of Muslims and Arab Americans, and a lot of them are reconsidering their support of President Joe Biden in light of the Israel-Hamas war.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: We will not cast a vote for the person who green-lighted the genocide of our people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We reached out to an Arab American activist to take the temperature, and he had something surprising to say. So they are looking at alternatives, and they are hearing alternatives. That's not surprising. Alternatives, maybe Jill Stein, maybe little RFK, maybe not voting at all.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: And there are those in the community that are seriously listening and engaging with the Trump team in an effort to win over Arab and Muslim support.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So don't be surprised if those efforts actually do work while the Biden administration continues to take our votes for granted. Biden's not going to lose the primary, but coming up on Today Explained, we're going to ask what Michigan might tell us about the general.
--:-- [Sound effects: Upbeat music starts playing]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp. Let me tell you a true story. Last weekend, I got an email from a listener who wanted to discuss their problems with me. And I said, look, I don't think that this is about me personally. At least I hope it's not. Why don't you try BetterHelp.com slash Explained? Absolute truth.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The one is not me, guys. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com. That's BetterHelp.com.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 2020, 2024. Four. Today Explained, Sean Ramos from joined by Abed Ayyub, who's the national director of the ADC, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: He and his organization are trying to get Arab and Muslim Americans to register protest votes against Biden's Israel policies in Michigan's primary today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The community in Michigan is very diverse. It is the largest Muslim community, but also the highest concentrated Arab American community.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: So you have a number of Arab Muslims, as well as South Asian Muslim, Black Muslim communities out there. But the Arab community is one that's the most concentrated in Dearborn and the areas right outside of Dearborn.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We asked him to tell us about how these communities are thinking about their votes in today's primary, but also the general election later this year.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Right now, Arab and Muslim American voters are frustrated. They're not happy with the Biden administration, and they're certainly not happy with the ongoing genocide and the lack of commitment by the Biden administration to end it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they are looking at alternatives and they are hearing alternatives. And included in the alternatives is outreach from the Trump campaign.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: And there are those in the community that are seriously listening and engaging with the Trump team in an effort to win over Arab and Muslim support.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So don't be surprised if those efforts actually do work while the Biden administration continues to take our votes for granted.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We'll get to the Trump stuff in a minute, but first we asked about something called the uncommitted campaign.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: A lot of the work around the primary is focused on the uncommitted campaign. So in Michigan and in a few other states, and it's unique where you have the option of voting uncommitted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if you are voting on the Democratic primary and you don't like the options that are there, including Joe Biden, you would vote uncommitted. That's saying, I don't approve of any of the candidates you have. I'm not committing to any of them.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: So that's the organizing happening now on the Democratic side in Michigan. This is the way you can raise our voices. Right now, we feel completely neglected and just unseen by our government.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you want us to be louder, then come here and vote uncommitted. It is gaining momentum. We're seeing it all over the news, national news, because Michigan is going to set the tone for Arab voters across the country and Muslim voters across the country.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: And it's going to send a message to the Biden administration, to the Biden campaign, that their handling of Gaza, their handling of the genocide is not something that's gaining approval within the Democratic base.
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--:-- Evan McKenzie: Do you plan on voting for him this time around? No. He is allowing this war to happen and is funding this war.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you've spent any time in southeast Michigan and you're born in Detroit, you know where our allies stand. You know where our neighbors stand.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: The people we went to high school with, our allies are our neighbors, the people we do business with, the people we grew up with, the people we go to our churches and mosques with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're our neighborhoods, right? They're our community. And that includes Black, Hispanic, White, Albanian, Bengali. You go down the list.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: You know, last night I received a text message from friends of mine that are from Vietnam. And, you know, seven or eight of them were telling me that they voted uncommitted, you know, in solidarity with Gaza and what's happening.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this is not only isolated to Arab or Muslim voters in Michigan. This is a problem within the Democratic base across Southeast Michigan.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: And at the same time, you have the Trump administration pushing their Arab American outreach. Really? Donald Trump is pushing Arab American outreach?
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Donald Trump is doing Arab American outreach, Muslim American outreach. Don't sleep on it because, you know, it's people want to laugh, right? That's our first reaction.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it working If you understand our community you understand how to deal with our community you understand that you know be direct be open be straightforward no bullshit.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Republicans are good at that. They're better at that than Democrats.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that's a key distinction between the way Biden's doing outreach and Trump is doing outreach.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: I'm sure this community famously remembers his Muslim ban and his deeply pro-Israel stance.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: You could take the Muslim ban, you could take his pro-Israel stance. Here's the community's perspective, not mine. That's a disclaimer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We will make sure that we will punish Joe Biden by making him one-term president. If Trump becomes president, you know, I'm sure America will survive Trump just like it survived him.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: First time, it will survive Trump just like it survived him. We've lived through it. We fought back for those four years. We pushed back and we found ways to fight back against his policies.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: But the one thing we didn't have was a genocide. With the Muslim ban and the Arab ban, it's not like it's gone away.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: Sure, Biden signed the executive order, but you still have people waiting months, years to get their visas.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: The people that were impacted by the Muslim ban, their cases weren't reopened, their visas weren't reissued. So it's like we're still stuck in the same position.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, it was all smoke and mirrors. There wasn't really anything done by the Biden administration to fix the problems of the Muslim ban.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: So you do have, you know, a contingency within the Arab community and the Muslim community that's willing to say, you know what, we'll speak to him.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: And if he does the right moves and the Trump campaign does the right things, we don't mind voting for him.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: I appreciate what you're saying about the Muslim ban, but Joe Biden purports to, you know, want a two-state solution.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: He's sent representatives to Michigan to speak with the Muslim community there. He says he wants fewer deaths. He says he wants Israel to minimize civilian casualties.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: Donald Trump, on the other hand, though, he didn't preside over a war of this scale, moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in a very symbolic show of support for Israel's claim to that part of this region.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Do Muslim Americans really believe they could get a better deal from Donald Trump?
--:-- Evan McKenzie: This notion or belief that, oh, I'm going to promise a two-state based on what? A two-state based on which borders?
--:-- Abed Ayyub: A two-state based on current settlement expansion? A two-state based on a Gaza that's locked in and has no freedom of movement, or a two-state based on the West Bank that's been eaten up by settlements and settlers putting violence.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: This is what the community says. This myth of a two-state solution is not working.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: These are Bill Clinton talking points. These are from the 90s and 80s. These are not flying in the community, and that's the disconnect with Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: I'm just wondering, the thing I'm stuck on is how Donald Trump presents a better alternative for Muslim American voters when this is Donald Trump of shithole countries, Donald Trump of the Muslim ban, Donald Trump of I was 100% right about Muslims cheering about the 9-11 attacks.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: How does anyone believe he cares about Palestinians dying in Gaza?
--:-- Evan McKenzie: Is Donald Trump a better option than Joe Biden? I personally don't think so. But there are others in the community that are looking at the failure of Biden and saying, you know what? With everything else Donald Trump had, Maybe a lot of it was just words.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: But at the same time, we did not see a genocide happen. We did not see a genocide occur.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: And that to them, you know, those dead family members, those dead bodies, those images we're seeing, that's enough. That's enough for them to say, give me a few bad tweets and a few mean words and let my family members live.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, I guess I'm wondering how many people out there do you really think we're talking about here who who might not just vote, you know, uncommitted or vote for a third party candidate like Jill Stein or Robert Kennedy, but would actually not vote for Biden and instead vote for Donald Trump?
--:-- Evan McKenzie: I think with the uncommitted campaign, you know, there is going to be a high turnout. There's going to be a high number of folks, you know, selecting uncommitted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But even from that campaign, you're going to have a breakout where you're probably going to have some individuals from the uncommitted campaign, a pocket of them, you know, go on and still continue to support Biden in the general election.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: But a majority of them are going to say, what is our what's our alternative? Are we just going to sit out the presidential election from that pocket?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're going to have a smaller group that's going to say, you know what, we're going to engage with the Trump campaign to see what we could do.
--:-- Evan McKenzie: So there's a number of scenarios which could play out.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Abed Ayyub, he's the director of ADC National. That's the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When we're back, we're going to ask a guy who's been following Michigan politics for decades how much this campaign we just heard about might make or break Joe Biden.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Chime. Nobody likes fees and complicated banking, says Chime. And Chime gets that, says Chime.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Chime is a financial technology company that says they understand that every dollar counts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So when you set up direct deposit through Chime, they say you get access to fee-free features, such as free overdraft coverage, getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit, so much more.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Chime says with qualifying direct deposits, you can be eligible for free overdraft, up to $200 on debit card purchases and cash withdrawals.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Plus, they say you don't need to worry about monthly fees or maintenance fees.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: You can work on your financial goals through Chime today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can open an account in two minutes at Chime.com slash explained.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: That's chime.com slash explained.
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--:-- Abed Ayyub: Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Timing depends on submission of payment file. Fees apply at out-of-network ATMs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Bank ranking and number of ATMs according to U.S. News and World Report 2023.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Chime checking account required.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why shop at Burlington? Maybe it's the deals that are new each time you drop by. Maybe it's the brand names you'll be shocked Burlington has in store.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Or maybe it's the quality of the items, the amazing selection, and the newest trends.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you like to save but also like to stay in style, Burlington is your answer.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: And the question you be asking yourself is why go anywhere else Burlington Deals Brands Wow
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Upwork. If you run a business you know that scaling your business requires the right expertise at the right time.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: I sometimes wonder how many of you are running businesses out there. I would love to know. Please email me, noelle at king dot com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: With Upwork, you can find specialized freelancers in IT, web development, AI, design, admin support, marketing, and more.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Experts who they say are ready to help you take your business to the next level.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: With more than two decades of experience, Upwork has a simple and ambitious goal to pioneer a better way of working.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Companies at every stage turn to Upwork to get things done and find more flexibility in the way they staff key projects and initiatives by accessing a global marketplace full of top talent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Plus, Upwork makes posting your job easy with no cost to join.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: You can register, browse freelancer profiles, get help drafting a job post, or even book a consultation.
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--:-- [Sound effects: Upbeat music continues]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Find ourselves in the magic and the moments of Pure Michigan. Today, Explain is back.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: It is a weekly blog and a little extra on Michigan politics, not national politics, although we allude to things that are going on nationally.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's basically kind of a Bible of Michigan politics and government.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Bill's been at it a long, long time. Before that, I published a hard copy subscription by snail mail publication for 27 years called Inside Michigan Politics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's kind of what I'm best known for, but I sold that back in 2013.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: And since then, I've concentrated on this and a podcast I had, radio talk show I had.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We asked him to further explain the uncommitted vote in Michigan on this, their primary day.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Let's put it this way. It could be embarrassing for the president if there is a huge uncommitted vote in Michigan, even though he is almost certain to win by a handsome margin over uncommitted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe the uncommitted vote will be unexpectedly large.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Let's dial it back to this word you used, uncommitted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, it sounds very innocuous. But it is not innocuous.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: In fact, there is an effort by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib from Detroit, who is the only Palestinian American in the U.S. House of Representatives, to have voters vote uncommitted rather than for Joe Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And she's doing that because she's protesting the president's policy on what's happening in Gaza.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Has uncommitted been around on the Michigan ballot for some time now, or did Rashida Tlaib put it on there for Joe Biden?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No, it was on in 2008.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: It's been around for a long time. I mean, I myself have voted uncommitted in presidential primaries.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So in in 2008 the Hillary Clinton was the only campaign running in Michigan Barack Obama did not even run in Michigan himself he said I'm not even going to compete in Michigan but in the last few weeks before the primary in 2008 which was very early the Obama campaign mounted a huge effort with all the national Obama campaign machinery behind it to get people in Michigan to vote uncommitted rather than vote for Hillary Clinton.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: And amazingly, he got almost 40% of the vote. Uncommitted in 2008 got almost 40% of the vote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And everybody in the Democratic Party knew if you were voting uncommitted, you were really surreptitiously voting for Barack Obama.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: When the dust cleared later in the spring and the Democratic National Committee sorted out this mess in Michigan, she barely got more than he did, even though he never ran as a candidate in Michigan, and it helped him get the nomination for president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Of course, the next time Hillary Clinton is up for election in Michigan, Trump won the state in 2016, I think, 47.5 to Hillary Clinton's 47.27.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: And then in 2020, Joe Biden takes the state 50.62 to Trump's 47.84.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the outcome in Michigan this year will be pretty pivotal to either party, to either candidate.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Do we know how much success Rashida Tlaib is having here with voters in the state?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We don't know right now how much success she's having.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: You know, if the Biden administration, let's say, as they've started to do, show more support for the idea of a ceasefire in Gaza and getting Netanyahu and Israel to back off, you know, that could take some air out of the balloon to get people to vote uncommitted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They could say, well, hey, we're getting what we want anyway. We kind of threatened the president with uncommitted. now maybe the Arab American community has sent out the word hey you know the president is backing away from his pro stance and so you know maybe we don need to embarrass him by getting out and voting uncommitted
--:-- Bill Ballinger: We don know if that happened because here we are today election day and the results are going to be coming in tonight and tomorrow.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we're just going to have to wait and find out what happened.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Remember, there is early voting in Michigan. There's absentee voting. That's gotten much bigger as a percentage of the total vote in the last few years than it ever was before.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Election Day turnout is a much smaller percentage, although it's still the largest percentage of all the people voting than it used to be.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Well, you know, obviously we're talking about Michigan here because there's a significant Arab American vote in Michigan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Arab American Institute, which is an advocacy group, says that since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict, Arab American support for Joe Biden has dropped from like 59 percent in 2020 to something like 17 percent now.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Have you seen that shift in Michigan? Do you have a sense of how the vote has maybe shifted?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's no question that's probably true. And it is almost unprecedented that one particular ethnic group or racial group would see support drop so dramatically leading up to a presidential primary.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: I never recall this ever happening in Michigan. So it is significant, but let's take the Arab American population in context.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the question is, how important if you got every Arab American in Dearborn, every single one to vote uncommitted, how much of an impact on the total vote is that really going to be in a state like Michigan with 10 million people?
--:-- Bill Ballinger: And you really have very few Arab Americans throughout Michigan. Keep that in mind.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you think other Michiganders are maybe likely to join Arab Americans who are refusing to vote for Biden?
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Oh, I think it's possible there are people outside the Arab American community who object to what's going on in Gaza right now and don't like what Netanyahu and Israel is doing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, but they're not that many. And they're not that many who are so motivated in their anger against Biden that they would vote uncommitted in a Democratic primary.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: So, again, I just think the impact of Tlaib's effort is going to be less than she hopes for.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: President Biden paid a visit to Michigan earlier this month and has dispatched, you know, some of his top aides to visit as well.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Yet, recent polls show him behind Donald Trump, including one that has him trailing, you know, 45 to 41 with something like 14 percent undecided.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It still feels like there's a race here, but how much do you attribute him being down to this Muslim-American organizing effort against him?
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Not that much, in my opinion, but his diminution of support in the Arab American community kind of parallels the decline in his support from Democrats generally, particularly young Democrats in Michigan and nationally for that matter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But I don't think that makes the difference between victory and defeat for Biden right now.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: But look, if Michigan's vote is as close as you just mentioned in 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by, you know, 10,000 votes statewide in a state of 10 million people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it was close also as a percentage in 2020 when Biden won over Trump.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: If it gets down to something as close as the election in 2016 especially, maybe the loss of support in the Arab American community could spell the difference between victory and defeat for Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No wonder he's worried.
--:-- Bill Ballinger: Bill Ballinger, Michigander, TheBallingerReport.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Last night on, let me just check my notes here, Late Night with Seth Meyers, the president of the United States, announced that there might be a ceasefire in Gaza as soon as Monday.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Sounds like Hamas would have to agree to return all the remaining hostages for a six-week pause in fighting for Ramadan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Biden administration's been pushing hard for a deal, And we'll, of course, be curious to see how that might change people's views of this war when they go to vote this November.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: We'll let you know if we see something big.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our program today was produced by Halima Shah, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-tracked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Patrick Boyd.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: There are many more individuals who make the show. They are, in no particular order, Amanda Llewellyn, Miles Bryan, Victoria Chamberlain, Jesse Alejandro Cottrell, Abishai Artsy, Hadi Mawagdi, and Rob Byers, Matthew Collette, and Amina Alsadi edit the show most days.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Noel King hosts the show about half the time, and we use music by Breakmaster Cylinder sometimes.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Before we go, a quick request. We're moving on from Michigan and want to talk to listeners in and around Nashville.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As you all know, the cost of housing has been surging and many people feel that buying a house is out of reach.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Research suggests that more people are choosing to move back in with mom and dad or just mom or just dad.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are you one of the people cohabitating with your parents or have your kids moved back in with you?
--:-- Abed Ayyub: If so, how is it going? We want to hear about it. Call us at 202-643-0314 and be sure to leave a callback number because we want to talk.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is distributed by WNYC.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: The show is a part of Vox, which is totally free.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks in part to contributions from our listeners. Join us at Vox.com. Give if you can.
--:-- Abed Ayyub: Thank you.
--:-- [Theme music starts playing]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks for listening to Today Explained.
