Tim Murphy writes about the political influence of American Muslims in presidential elections:
The tipping point where Republicans' embrace of Islamophobia begins to exact a price in terms of votes seems a long way off. Republicans lost most of the black vote generations ago, they're in the process of driving Latinos into the Democratic column, and they're still competitive. There are far more blacks and Latinos in American than Muslims, and yet the GOP hasn't shown much anxiety about alienating either group, because in the short term they're focused on their own aging, overwhelmingly white base. They're not going to be worried about the few hundred thousand votes they're missing, at best, because they're going on FOX News every night warning of a sharia takeover. That's not to say that Muslims' lack of political influence as a voting bloc excuses the GOP's actions; it just makes them more reprehensible, precisely because they're demonizing a minority that has few options for responding. That said, as Murphy notes Islamophobia is hardly a magic bullet--mostly it's just another example of Republicans shoehorning a genuine public policy problem--terrorism--into a binary, nationalistic frame, divorcing the conversation from the actual issues involved.And in that sense, there seems to be some agreement: Beating up on Islam is good for television ratings, but there's little evidence it's a successful electoral strategy. Sharron Angle, who once warned [4] that the city of Dearborn, Michigan, was already under the yoke of sharia law, fell flat in her Nevada Senate race. Lou Ann Zelenik, a Tennessee congressional candidate who made opposition to a proposed Islamic community center in Murfreesboro her central campaign issue, lost big to a conservative candidate who supported the mosque. And Rick Lazio, the former New York congressman whose campaign sought to exploit the Park 51 project, never made it out of his gubernatorial primary.
But even as Muslim leaders attempt to restore the community's political clout, it's unlikely we'll see anything like 2000 anytime soon. MPAC's Haris Tarin was not involved in those efforts, but he believes the idea of a "Muslim vote," championed by his organization a decade ago, is unrealistic given the immense diversity of the American Muslim community. "It could be done potentially at the local level—places like Northern Virginia, or parts of Michigan," he says. "But at the national level, having a bloc vote is impossible."
There's also a debate as to whether there was any such thing as a "Muslim vote" to begin with. James Zogby, a Democratic consultant and founder of the Arab American Institute, says that reports of a Muslim landslide in 2000 were based on wishful thinking. "The numbers weren't there," he says. "That day in my office after the election, I had like three different ethnic groups all claiming credit for winning. Anyone who had more than 500 voters in Florida was taking credit."
