David: No matter what your politics, it's been striking to see how the Democratic Party has coalesced around Kamala Harris. And this, of course, was right after Joe Biden stepped out of the race. But there's been one big split, and that's over the war in Gaza. Advocates for the Palestinians want the US to limit weapon shipments in support of Israel's military, or to end them entirely even. But Harris's support for Israel appears to be not much different than Joe Biden's, and at the Democratic Convention in August, no Palestinian American speakers were allowed to appear. That split in the party is now coming back to haunt the Harris campaign in Michigan. The anti-war candidate, Jill Stein of the Green Party is polling pretty well with Muslim voters. In at least one recent survey, he's well ahead of Harris and Trump with Muslims in Michigan.

Staff writer Andrew Marantz has been reporting on the Uncommitted Movement. Now, you may recall, Uncommitted began early in the year before the primaries to protest US policy on Israel. The movement encouraged Democrats not to cast their vote for Biden, but to check the box that said "uncommitted." Now though, the primaries are long in the past, and the general election is just weeks away. Michigan is considered a must-win for Kamala Harris. Andrew Marantz spoke the other day with one of the founders of the Uncommitted Movement, Abbas Alawieh.

Abbas Alawieh: The intention was never for this movement to continue to exist right now. Our hope was that the bombs would stop long before September of 2024, when we're talking now.

Andrew Marantz: So when you were engaging with Harris's campaign, what were you looking for from them?

Abbas Alawieh: We made it clear we will endorse and mobilize if she supports a stop to the weapons. If she can't support a stop to the weapons, then let her tell us what it is that her policy would be so that we can consider endorsement. We put on the table that it would be important for her to come out with a statement specifically saying, as it relates to weapons transfers, that she, as the law and order person that she is, as the prosecutor that she is, supports US and international law as it relates to weapons transfers. That would have been a really big deal to us, to our movement, to Democratic voters who have this as a top policy issue. You know, if it's too hard for you to differentiate your own policy from Biden's, then tell us how you would be different from Donald Trump's, because we are part of a community that would be disproportionately harmed by a Trump presidency. Right now, a lot of folks that I'm in community with, when I'm having conversations with them about the presidential election, a lot of folks are saying, "Well, I think of Trump as the anti-war candidate."

And I say, "Why would you say that? You know, it would get worse under Donald Trump."

What they tell me is, "Abbas, what could be worse than genocide?"

We've made this suggestion over and over again that she should make clear that Donald Trump's idea as it relates to organizing for Palestinian human rights is to suppress, is to crack down on those people, is to deport student protesters who are standing up for Palestinian human rights. Vice President Harris could say, "I wouldn't do that."

David: That's Abbas Alawieh, a Michigan Democrat and leader of the Uncommitted Movement. He recently spoke with Andrew Marantz, who's a staff writer at The New Yorker. Now, Andrew, you've been reporting on this movement for many months. Abbas sounds frustrated, to say the least, by the Harris campaign. But first of all, who is Abbas, and how did he come to all this?

Andrew Marantz: He is-- you mentioned he's a Michigan Democrat. He actually is a Democrat, he worked in Democratic politics. He was born in Lebanon, grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, and then spent a few years in DC as a legislative staffer. He worked with Andy Levin, who is a progressive Democrat from Michigan. He also worked with Rashida Tlaib, who represents the next district over, and is very progressive, and Cori Bush, who is very, very progressive. These are people who are engaged with this issue, and have been for a long time. And Abbas has too, but he's also been very supportive of trying to get the party to engage on student debt and on housing.

This was not his only issue, but it was really after October 7th, he became very single-mindedly dug in on this issue, and sort of feeling powerless to do anything about it. Then he and a bunch of other organizers realized, "There's this primary coming up. Maybe we can use that as kind of leverage." The reason that this was so important to him, in addition to feeling empathy for people in the region, is that he'd had a similar experience himself. When he was a teenager, he was visiting family in Lebanon, and bombs started to fall, and he really was scared for his life.

Abbas Alawieh: I was visiting my grandmother in the south. My aunt came and picked me up so that we can go to my mom's village, which is much closer to the border. It was one or two days into that visit that the war broke out, and I had the experience of things getting progressively more desperate. Then I had the experience of consoling my own family members, telling them it was going to be okay, at a moment where I was certain that I was going to be among the dead. That's what I knew knew would happen, and that's what did happen for a lot of people. There were over 1,400 civilians who were killed during that war by the Israeli military. I came back that summer and went back to school that fall with a whole bunch of other students who had just survived the same trauma that I had, a trauma that a lot of our parents know all too well, trauma that a lot of our loved ones and relatives continue to live under, whether they are in Lebanon or Iraq or Palestine.

David: Andrew, an experience like that at such a young age could have hardened him against the United States somehow, but it seems like he leaned in the opposite direction and joined the government.

Andrew Marantz: He's actually a pretty pragmatic political actor. He knows that the Biden administration has actually done a lot on climate and on student debt, on any number of other things. But he also knows the Dearborn community well enough to know that that isn't necessarily going to be enough for a lot of people. He told me, you know, if I went into some of these rooms and said, "Hey, we should vote for the Biden administration because of all they've done on climate," he would have been laughed out of the room.

David: The day you recorded your conversation with Abbas, the Uncommitted Movement put out what they called a "non-endorsement." What does that mean?

Andrew Marantz: Good question, what it means. Abbas said, he was clear about this all along, "I will vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is." But other people leading his movement did not necessarily feel that way. Honestly, I called a lot of people and talked to a lot of people and asked them, "So, as bad as Trump is, you live in a swing state, will you vote for Kamala Harris?" And a lot of them said no. The idea of throwing a vote away didn't seem to deter people. What Abbas says, and what other political strategists say is, voting is a strategic thing, it's not an expression of moral virtue, but many people I spoke to did not feel that way. They felt, "This administration has blood on its hands, and I, too, will have blood on my hands if I endorse it." This was a very, very common view.

Abbas Alawieh: Our three-part guidance is, one, we cannot endorse Vice President Harris. We wanted to be able to endorse and mobilize for her campaign, and she is deciding that she does not need that help. There are those of us who personally will be voting for Vice President Harris. There are those of us who cannot get ourselves to vote for her, they're experiencing what's the equivalent of a funeral for thousands of babies. To go up to them and say, "Well, this election is on you, and you have to make the decision," I think that's inappropriate.

Two, we oppose Donald Trump's presidency, obviously. We believe that his agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing. President Trump, or former President Trump, is going around and having his daughter Tiffany's father in law, who's, I guess, some Lebanese businessman, going around crisscrossing the country, having meetings in Arab communities, specifically saying that Donald Trump is the anti-war candidate. I tell you, I have heard that consistently, being out in community, people say, "Well, maybe Trump will stop the war, he'll be different than Harris."

Three, we are not recommending a third party vote in the presidential election, especially as third party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency, given our country's broken electoral college system. There are third party candidates out here right now saying things publicly like, "We believe that any vote for Harris or for Trump is an endorsement of genocide." And folks are looking to Uncommitted saying, "Is that true? Should we vote for the third party candidate?"

David: Andrew, would you describe this as clear guidance? We're not endorsing Harris. We're very disappointed in her, but also, don't vote for Trump or a third party candidate. Now, how does a voter know what to do with that?

Andrew Marantz: Yes, I have heard clearer endorsements in the past than this one. I mean, there's another thing going on here, which is, what does an official endorsement mean? They were asking the Harris campaign to give them something so they could say, this is a concession we got, or this is a victory we got, that they could then take back to people and say, "Okay, now we will turn around and mobilize for her." This was kind of the strategy all along since the primary, and I think they felt they just never got that thing that. In other words, we're going to vote "uncommitted" in the primary to push the administration. Once we've pushed them, they will concede something, and then once they've done that, we can come out in full force. That never happened. When I was sort of pressing Abbas on this, one thing he mentioned actually was that he had just been speaking to an uncle of his who's in Lebanon.

Abbas Alawieh: I got a call from my uncle who is in south Lebanon, where a couple of weekends ago, they experienced the worst bombardment since 2006. I was talking to him, and he knows about my organizing. He says, "Your dad tells me you keep going on TV and that you're pushing to stop the war. Do you think they're going to listen to you and your friends?"

I say, "We're trying everything we can."

And he says, "Abbas, just so you know, I trust you to do the right thing. But just so you know, our feeling here is that if it's Trump, he's going to give Netanyahu the green light to kill all of us." He understands the nuance. He says, "I know they're already killing our siblings in Gaza, but more will be killed. And we feel like the acceleration would happen in Gaza and in the region." And so he's like, "Do people there know that, that Trump would be a lot worse?"

And I told him, we're trying to let people know as much as possible, but it's a complex situation. It's a complex situation, and I think for people experiencing the impossibilities that come with trying to be politically savvy as the current Democratic president has funded the mass killing of children, of elders, of workers, of regular everyday people in Gaza, the political questions are heavy. But I understand why some people might look at the situation and say, "Well, whatever's on the other side, even if it's Trump, I think we've got to try something different, because the current approach is not working."

David: Andrew, what's the political reality on the ground? Does the group have enough numbers to really affect the outcome of the Michigan vote?

Andrew Marantz: If Harris is up three points in Michigan, as some polls suggest, then no, they don't. If she is within a point, then they do.

David: And that could be the election.

Andrew Marantz: That could be the election. In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost Michigan by 10,000 votes. This movement got 100,000 votes in the primary, so it could easily be the margin.

David: I mean, what if Uncommitted loses Michigan for Harris? Alawieh is very clear with you that Trump is the absolute wrong choice, whether it's for Gaza or anything else.

Andrew Marantz: What they will say is what activists have often said, which is, "Don't blame us if you can't win over our votes. It's not our fault, it's your fault for not conceding to our demands." When people say correctly, conventions are about party unity, and you're kind of raining on the parade here, they say, "Well, yes, that's--"

David: But raining on a party convention is one thing, protest is one thing. Possibly electing an authoritarian in the name of Donald Trump is much more consequential.

Andrew Marantz: Yes, I pressed a number of voters on this, and some people-- not the organizers of the "uncommitted" vote, but other people would sort of soft-pedal Trump or sort of both-sides the issue and say, "I'm not sure Trump was really all that bad."

I'll be like, "Really? You're going to vote for the guy who wants a Muslim registry and who did the Muslim bans and all this stuff?"

And they would say, "Well, I just want to vote for change."

I think in a lot of arenas, people have forgotten what the Trump administration was really like, and how the second one could be even more pronounced. But then for some people, like Abbas, they're very clear about the difference, and they basically are taking a longer view. I mean, honestly, David, I think they thought they would get more of a concession from the Harris campaign, I think--

David: Meaning a different kind of language, a gesture in their direction that slightly differentiates her from Biden?

Andrew Marantz: Correct. I don't think they thought that she would come out on the DNC stage and say, "I am now announcing a unilateral arms embargo to Israel that I, the vice president, will instantiate," but I do think they-- some people suggested, she should say, "I will try to uphold the Leahy Law." You know, that all weapons shipments need to be investigated for whether they're in accordance with human rights. Some people wanted her to talk about sending more defensive than offensive weapons. There were a range of-- Some people just wanted a Palestinian speaker or a meeting behind closed doors. I think when all of those requests were rebuffed, or the can was kicked down the road, I think they just felt kind of insulted.

David: I didn't understand why the Democratic Party, in raw political terms, didn't make some kind of concession-- Have a Palestinian, an American Palestinian speaker at the convention, maybe not at nine o'clock and right before Kamala Harris, but somewhere in the slot. They had an incredibly eloquent couple, the parents of a hostage who just days later was found murdered in the tunnels of Gaza, and who, of course, also paid tribute to the losses in Gaza of Palestinians.

Andrew Marantz: Actually, you heard people saying, "Okay, those parents of that Israeli American hostage spoke very forcefully about the need for a ceasefire. What if somebody from our movement had come up after them and said, we agree, and we think the hostages should come home? It could have been this nice moment of unity around this very fractured issue." As for why they didn't do that--

David: They seem to be running scared. No?

Andrew Marantz: Yes, they seem scared. They seem scared of the issue, they don't want to rock the boat. It's been 40 years of US policy that they don't want to change overnight, and they, it seems, are maybe a little out of their depth, or they don't want to have a whole news cycle about it. It's not like anyone in the Harris campaign said this to me, but my worry, as dark as this is, is that it's possible that they think that putting a Palestinian American on stage would be bad politics for them, that just the mere presence of a Palestinian person on the DNC stage would alienate some voters. I don't know if that's Jewish moderate voters or Christian Zionist voters or-- I don't know who, this is speculation, but it's possible that they just see it as bad politics to make any overtures to the Palestinian or pro-Palestinian community at all.

David: You can read Andrew Marantz on the Gaza protest movement and Michigan politics at newyorker.com.

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