(February 23, 2024 / JNS) Maybe President Joe Biden and his White House handlers are looking at their re-election problems through the wrong end of the telescope. 

Their top priority these days is doing something about their problems with the intersectional left-wing activist base of the Democratic Party that is unhappy about the administration’s support for the right of Israel to defend itself, as well as for the eradication of Hamas from Gaza after the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel. 

A main focus of that effort, at least as far as the Biden campaign is concerned, is trying to win back the affections of Arab-American voters in Michigan, a key swing state in the 2024 presidential election.

Earlier this month, the White House sent a delegation of policymakers to apologize to Abdullah Hammoud, the pro-Hamas mayor of Dearborn, Mich., for the president’s pro-Israel statements, even though he had already begun to shift towards a more even-handed stance. 

The latest demonstration of their worries about Michigan was the decision to send Vice President Kamala Harris to the state to address the concerns of the increasingly loud voices within the party that are calling the president “genocide Joe” for his continued refusal to cut off the supply of arms and ammunition to Israel, as well for vetoing U.N. Security Council resolutions that attempted to impose an immediate ceasefire that would effectively enable Hamas to survive. 

While the unpopular Harris (her approval ratings are even lower than the president’s) is considered politically toxic outside of deep-blue enclaves, she was considered a good choice to send to Michigan because, as The New York Times put it, she “is seen as more critical of Israel than the president.”

While the president’s re-election campaign staff is laser-focused on Arab Americans and Muslims, is it possible that the Democrats are ignoring potential problems with what is, by any measure, the far larger number of voters who are Jewish and support Israel?

It would still be astonishing if Biden didn’t win the Jewish vote in November. But when you consider a surge of left-wing antisemitism and a president who seems more worried about offending antisemites than winning over Jews he clearly thinks are already in his pocket, it would be unwise to dismiss the possibility of a historic shift in Jewish votes.

NEWSRAEL: We have called on several times Jewish Americans to change their votes from Democrat to Republican - and much more now that the administration is fully behind the Jew-hating Muslim voters.