Paul Sancya/AP Photo
Biden speaking at Renaissance High School in Detroit, March 9, 2020
On Monday evening, before the launch of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Joe Biden’s campaign hosted a roundtable with Muslim American leaders. Two of the speakers—Michigan state Rep. Abdullah Hammoud and Pennsylvania state coalitions director Keyva Clark—represent states that determined the 2016 election. Because of this, much of the discussion focused on get-out-the-vote efforts and Trump’s attempts to suppress the vote.
While Muslim Americans have become a consistent Democratic voting bloc (78 percent voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016), Sen. Bernie Sanders was the group’s preferred candidate in the primaries. A national poll from before the Iowa caucuses showed Sanders with 39 percent of support among Muslim voters, compared to 27 percent for Biden. Two of the three panelists on Monday night’s event acknowledged their support for Sanders when he was in the race. On issues that are typically important to Muslim voters, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, civil liberties, and racial justice, Biden’s track record is not encouraging.
It is clear that outreach to Muslim and Arab communities has been a priority for the Biden campaign, perhaps due to these perceived shortcomings. In July, Biden’s top foreign-policy adviser, Tony Blinken, held a campaign call with Arab Americans, during which he angered Palestinian-rights activists with comments on returning to the Obama-era status quo and Biden’s stance on annexation.
While many of the questions during Monday’s event in the Zoom chat addressed Biden’s pro-Israel record, the moderator didn’t bring up the topic once. It was only addressed when Palestinian American radio host Dean Obeidallah spoke about it in response to an unrelated question. “My family lives under occupation. Settlers are literally trying to take my family’s land right now,” he said. “Joe Biden at least has shifted fundamentally on giving aid back to the U.N. relief agency that Trump had cruelly cut the funding for, which is a lifeline for Palestinians”—a proposal that would only return relations to their pre-Trump norm.
Since American Muslims overwhelmingly support Palestinian rights and oppose Israeli policies, and Biden and his team’s outlook on the issue is more conventional by Democratic Party standards, there were very few definitive statements made on the question in either July’s Arab American community call or Monday’s convention event.
It was clear that to the speakers, even those who disclosed their earlier support for Sanders, it was an imperative to vote for Biden in November. “I will be the first to say that I do not agree with 100 percent of the Biden-Harris platform,” said Hammoud. “But we’ve been organizing conversations with their top policy experts to have a real in-depth dialogue about the issues we’d love to push them on. They might not be where we want them on an issue where we want them today, but we will hold them accountable for the decisions that they make from day one that they assume office.”
The stakes for the Muslim American community are high: Trump’s presidency has included the travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries, the implementation of essentially a blank-check policy toward Israel, and continued assaults on civil liberties for minority communities. “At its most basic, this election is about preserving our democracy,” said Sanders at the virtual lectern last night. “Joe Biden will end the hate and division Trump has created.”
