Sometimes it's not low-information voters who infuriate but intensely tuned-in activists. Presently they're on display in Michigan as Exhibit A of blockheaded strategery.
The state has the largest Arab-American population in the nation, and its leaders are putting Kamala Harris through their own little hell. They're enraged by the Biden administration's sustained support of the terrorist state of Israel, and that, I can find no cause to criticize.
First came the scorched-earth invasion of the Gaza Strip — current body count, 42,500 —and now its "ground incursion" into Lebanon, as Politico delicately calls Israel's preliminary re-colonization. We'll watch the body count of innocent Lebanese rise as well.
For Harris, the acute political problem is that, as Politico also notes, "Michigan’s large Lebanese Christian population is now just as angry as Palestinian Americans." So last night she met with "Arab and Muslim leaders, in what WaPo described as an 'ongoing effort to stem defections from a pivotal group of voters.'"
What is it these leaders demand? The impossible. Yesterday, the head of the recent "Uncommitted" group, Abbas Alawieh, evidently spoke for all when he posted on Twitter: "What we need right now is for [Harris] to specifically say that as president she will respect international humanitarian and U.S. law and stop sending the Israeli military weapons for war crimes."
Their initial demand — that she "respect international humanitarian[ism]" — is already met. Although the second and third demands would coherently fulfill the first, politically, and especially in the grip of a presidential campaign, for Harris to announce that she as president would terminate all arms to Israel would also terminate her path to the White House.
Essentially what Arab and Muslim activists are demanding is that Kamala Harris do the right thing now, which would feel ever so good, in exchange for handing the election to Donald Trump, who would do everything wrong and feel precisely like the catastrophe it is. On Day One he'd become the activists worst enemy, over whom they'd have zero influence.
I'll never understand how so many among the grown, intelligent, politically engaged can be so extraordinarily stupid.