Summary
U.S. Muslim leaders who supported Trump to protest Biden’s stance on Gaza and Lebanon now feel betrayed by Trump’s pro-Israel Cabinet picks.
His appointments of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, and Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador have drawn sharp criticism, with some accusing the administration of pursuing “Zionist overdrive” and “neoconservative” priorities.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the “Abandon Harris” campaign and co-founded “Muslims for Trump,” and Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of AMEEN, feel betrayed by broken promises of peace.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” said Nazarko, adding, “it does look like our community has been played.”
I honestly thought that they’d eventually come around because of just how bad Trump was going to be for democracy, and moreover for the people they cared about. Sadly, they were so devoted to their game of chicken that some of their loved ones will pay for it.
The problem in this is that you can substitute either the Harris campaign or the Muslim voters for “they”, and far too few people are applying it to the people with power. It seems inconceivable to these people that politicians actually need to address the concerns of the people they want to vote for them. They’re like some sort of unknowable force without agency or responsibility. It’s always the little guy’s fault for not coming around to the whims of the politician.
What makes it all worse is that on one side you have a population with good reason to be acting emotionally and the other you have someone just making a calculation that they just didn’t think they were worth it. Everyone shares blame for this result, but I get acting emotionally when you’re being ignored by power while they send weapons to kill your families. I don’t have any grace for sociopathic Democrats who would rather chase Republicans than take a moral stance for a constituency that voted for them in the past.
The problem in this is that you can substitute either the Harris campaign or the Muslim voters for “they”
Lol! You’re absolutely right. From my point of view, though, the democratic party is so fully captured and out of touch with actual issues that they’re beyond being reasoned with, so it should almost go without saying who I’m referring to. And yes, I acknowledge how completely fucked that is.
They’ve created this absolutely monstrous situation where we always have to choose between letting people we care about get hurt, or a tiny glimmer of hope of something better, and even though I pushed to avoid the former, I’m fully sympathetic to both sides.
I think the masses of voters who are much less easy to influence. They’re not on Lemmy debating the topic or waiting for a community leader to decide the strategy. They probably didn’t even do any sort of deep game theory about playing chicken and scaring the Democrats. They just got more pissed off as the news came through, as the Democrats made excuses and acted like nothing needed to change, and as people in their community reported deaths. We can debate and shout and rationalize here all we want, we can suppress the topic for the greater good, and all that will have zero impact on electorate-level perceptions. They’re not here, there are too many for us to individually convince to change their mind, and they’re probably not even open to listening to a coldly rational argument about lesser evils and other topics.
Even the people organizing these campaigns didn’t have the influence to change their votes. Uncommitted endorsed Harris! But the whole thing was never in their control. They can only report the temperature they’re feeling in the community and suggest moves they think would help get people back into the tent. Those Democratic operatives and elected officials should have the potential to influence Harris. They have names people know, and phone numbers to people of importance. If she was so corrupt and blocked off that even they couldn’t reach her then we kind of do need the reckoning that could come from such an abject failure to keep the coalition together. There’s no “push her to be better after the election” in that case.
