Gretchen Whitmer responds to calls by some Democrats to vote ‘uncommitted’ in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday

Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, pushed back on calls to not vote for Joe Biden over his handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict, saying on Sunday that could help Trump get re-elected.

“It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote that’s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,” she said on Sunday during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union. “A second Trump term would be devastating. Not just on fundamental rights, not just on our democracy here at home, but also when it comes to foreign policy. This was a man who promoted a Muslim ban.”

Whitmer, who is a co-chair of Biden’s 2024 campaign, also said she wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to the protest vote.

Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, urged Democrats last week to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s 27 February primary.

  • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    As much as it doesn’t feel like it when inside certain echo chambers there’s a lot of support for Israel in the United States. The situation is also very complex with plenty of obviously very bad potential outcomes if he listened to the extremists, I have no doubt 90% of those would then blame him for whatever the result of rash action would be.

    You don’t like it but it’s the politically sensible thing to do, democrats always lose chunks of purist votes that’s one of thy main reasons the right manages to stay relevant and there’s no point chasing them because of it wasn’t this it would be something - there’s always something.

    • Count042@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      Genocide is not complex.

      If a government is intentionally withholding food, medicine and potable water from a population it considers undesirable, it is intentionally committing genocide.

      There.

      Simple.

      A 3 month old Palestinian baby boy died of starvation yesterday.

      He wasn’t even born in Oct.

      • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        Of course you can use dramatic phrasing and emotive language to make your point feel weighty but it doesn’t change the reality that it’s a hugely complex situation.

        Hamas are still fighting, it’s a war. I don’t know why you expect Isrealies to just let them keep killing them without trying to fight beck. Now you can start getting into who started it and Isreals right to exist but that’s all the complex stuff you want to ignore.

        If a government is withholding food and water from their population that’s terrible, there’s evidence of Hamas doing this and of them refusing to let the idf evacuate children from hospitals and transport them to world class medical facilities in Isreal (where many Muslim doctors and nurses work and get treatment)

        There’s also lots of easily available information about the routes into the Gaza strip that aid is being delivered and the amounts being delivered, you can read about all the special measures set up and the complexities of that if you’re interested.

        Now we could get into why Hamas are doing the things they’re doing and why Isreal is but again it’s all very complex - we’d have to get into fanatical Islam, Iran’s internal politics, Isreal’s politics and history…