Ann Arbor – Joe Biden and his administration believe that they can support the extremist Israeli government in its genocidal assault on the innocent noncombatant Palestinians of Gaza without a political cost at home. They also believe that they can manage the conflict, so that it does not spiral into a wider Middle East war.
These assumptions may be deeply flawed. The Houthi or Helpers of God government of northern Yemen can likely go on harassing container ships attempting to ply the waters of the Red Sea. Biden is bombing them, but the Saudis bombed them for seven years and finally gave up on accomplishing anything that way. Yemen is among the poorest countries in the world, and can’t be crippled by destroying infrastructure, since they don’t have much of it. Little unmanned aerial vehicles can be hidden and it is difficult to take out the launchers. An Israeli general once complained that he wished Hezbollah in Lebanon had larger rockets, since those would be easier to find and destroy.
Both the Houthi drone strikes on container ships and the Biden response in bombarding Yemen have spooked the shipping industry. Around 10% of world trade goes through the Suez Canal on some 17,000 ships per year. On the order of 12% of world energy supplies also are shipped through the Red Sea. So after two days of US and UK aerial strikes on Yemen, which elicited further Houthi threats, oil prices at one point hit $80 on London’s Brent exchange on Jan. 12.
If the conflict with the Houthis heats up further, Americans could feel it at the pump. Biden should ask Jimmy Carter whether Americans forgive a president who gets involved in fruitless Middle East conflicts and causes their gasoline prices to soar.
One thing Biden could do is halt the Israeli destruction of all of Gaza, which anyway can’t destroy Hamas. The Houthis would likely settle down if the Gaza war wound down. Shooting missiles at them will just stir them up.
Moreover, Biden’s position on Gaza is deeply unpopular in his own party, and particularly among young people– a swing vote in recent years. A UC Berkeley Opinion poll reported by David Lauter and Jaweed Kalim at the Los Angeles Times finds that 55% of voters under 30 say that Israel should announce a ceasefire even if it means that Hamas remains significant in Gaza. Only 18% disagree.
In contrast, a slight majority of voters over 65 believe that Israel should fight on until Hamas is taken down entirely, though about a third of elderly voters disagree.
According to the Pew Research Center, Barack Obama got 66% of the youth vote in 2008, and 60% of it in 2012. He outperformed Mitt Romney by 24% among those under 30.
The Center writes, “In Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania, Obama also failed to win a majority of voters 30 and older. Yet he swept all four battleground states, in part because he won majorities of 60% or more among young voters. Just as critically, young people made up as large a share of the overall electorate as they did in 2008, according to the national exit poll (19% in 2012, 18% in 2008).”
So Obama benefited from the under-30 vote in two absolutely essential ways. First, they came out to vote in large numbers, and mostly voted for him. Second, they provided the margin of victory in four swing states where Obama did not win 51% of the over-30 vote.
Candidates should not underestimate the possibility of youth apathy. Famously, the under-30 set declined to go to the polls in big numbers in 2004. They had largely turned on Bush because of the Iraq War, but they weren’t brought out to vote by enthusiasm for John Kerry. Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, a Democrat, lamented, “The little bastards screwed us again.”
The youth aren’t enthusiastic about Biden. At all. And the campaign to wipe Gaza off the map is one reason. In backing the odious Binyamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich in their creepy annihilation of tens of thousands of Palestinian women, children and noncombatant men, Biden doesn’t only risk becoming unpopular with the under-30 crowd but risks reducing their enthusiasm to vote. The young voters see the horrors of the Israeli campaign on Tiktok and YouTube in a way that the older set does not, since US corporate news is corrupt and distinctly pro-Israel.
The Biden team believes that the voters have nowhere to go because his opponent will be Trump. Hillary Clinton benefited from fear of Trump among youths, who voted in 2016 in numbers similar to 2012. But her percentage of the under-30 vote fell to 55%. It was only a 5% fall from Obama in 2012, but in a race where she lost some swing states by tiny margins, this youth deficit may have contributed to her defeat. The Trump boogey man was not enough– she needed to elicit the enthusiasm of the youth.
Is the administration really so convinced that they can’t be Kerry-ized or Carterized? Doing and saying deeply unpopular things that anger key parts of your base just because you think the rival candidate is unelectable is a hell of a gamble. Ask Mrs. Clinton.
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, “Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires” and “Engaging the Muslim World.” He blogs at juancole.com, follow him at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page. See the original online version at https://www.juancole.com/2024/01/israels-atrocity-reelection.html
From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2024
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