Residents of Dearborn, Michigan are comprised of nearly half Arab-Americans, and they were single-minded this year when it came to the presidential election. They wanted solidarity with Palestine, to the exclusion of all else.
And so, in order to send Kamala Harris and the Democrats a message about the establishment’s unfaltering support for Israel over the Palestinians, many voted either for Donald Trump or for Jill Stein, whose running mate Butch Ware was a Muslim convert.
If you’re of the mentality that Green Party votes should have been Democratic votes (I’m not; they’re a separate party), then had Kamala won Jill Stein’s votes, she’d have won Dearborn, but still not quite the state.
Some Dearborn residents have been defiant about their choice.
When I think of Democrats, I don’t think of people like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” Layla Elabed, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s sister, told Slate. “You can’t claim to represent the values of your base and then ignore them. You’re not going to win—and that’s exactly what happened.”
I wonder how Ms. Elabed feels about the fact that Jill Stein’s running mate came out strongly against trans athletes competing in sports as the gender they identify with (and have taken hormones to physically be equal to). That’s not a Democratic position, nor even one of the Green Party’s.
The president of Dearborn’s city council, Michael Sareini, told Politico that many residents in Dearborn felt “redeemed,” saying “They wanted to send a message and they did. This stance on endless wars and killing of innocent women and children has got to end.”
Of course, by ensuring Trump’s victory in Dearborn, they made their redeemer the guy who just appointed Mike Huckabee the US Ambassador to Israel. Remember Mike? He once said, during his 2008 presidential campaign, that Palestinians aren’t even people. That “Palestinian” is a “political identity” designed to take land from Israel.
Some Arab-Americans are less than thrilled with the result of the vote.
Abbas Alawieh, a Lebanese-American from Dearborn, said “We were asking Democratic leadership to empower us. They flat-out said, ‘No thanks. We’re good without you.’ I’d hoped that, whatever calculus they were making, there were some 101,000 Liz Cheney voters out there somewhere they were catering to. It turns out those voters don’t exist.”
What Mr. Alawieh refers to there is that Liz Cheney bucked the political values of her father Dick — the then-VP who masterminded the Iraq War after 9/11 — and endorsed Harris. In other words, they wanted Harris to win, but didn’t want to have to vote for her in order for that to happen, so they didn’t sacrifice their own principles.
Others were quite honest about the intent of Arab-American residents’ votes for Trump. Osama Siblani, the publisher of The Arab American News, told Politicoin the same interview that “They didn’t vote for Trump because they believe Trump is the best candidate. No, they voted for Trump because they want to punish the Democrats and Harris.”
