Bill Clinton’s Closing Pitch in Michigan: Hamas Is Awful and the Israelis Were There First

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Hmmm. It’s tough to quibble with what Bill Clinton says here, with just one exception, about the Middle East. What makes this surprising, though, is the when and where of Clinton’s TED Talk on Israeli-Palestinian relations. For the past year, Democrats have tried mightily to pander to the Arab-American vote in Michigan by either suggesting or outright accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

Now, for their closing message, they send Bill Clinton — who holds a pretty hard grudge against the Palestinians — to tell Michiganders the real lowdown on Hamas and Islamist claims to the land “from the river to the sea.” How effective is it to tell voters a few days out from the election that they have their collective heads up their collective rear ends?

My only objection is Clinton’s both-sidesism on applying his maxim that “you can’t kill your way out of this.” The Palestinians under both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have tried doing that for 19 years in Gaza; Fatah did it for decades out of the West Bank too, with their “intifada.” One of those intifadas came directly after Yasser Arafat shafted Clinton at Wye River, in fact, a point that Clinton knows only too well. The Israelis kept accepting hudnas from Hamas and PIJ and engaged in asymmetric swaps to try to keep the peace, only to get massacred on October 7 in one of those “cease fire” periods. 

Hamas and Iran wanted war. And the only way to end a war is to kill your enemy or force them into capitulation, not just another dishonest cease-fire. 

Beyond that, though, listen to the reception this gets from the Michigan Democrats assembled for the rally. Clinton gets nothing — no boos, but also no applause or approving murmurs. After over a year of Democrats insisting that the Israelis are the villains here, this little reality check at a “Souls to the Polls” event in Muskegon yesterday went over like …. well, like a flatus in church. 

Rashid Tlaib probably couldn’t be reached for comment.

This gives us an opportunity to see what’s happening in Michigan, though, where the RCP aggregate poll numbers give Kamala Harris a slight edge. She’s up +0.4 in the state where Hillary Clinton led by 6.3 points on this date in 2016, and ended up losing by 0.3. Joe Biden underperformed polls here by nearly six points as well four years ago. Harris’ lead here mainly rests on a +5 Susquehanna poll and a +4 Quinnipiac result from last week, plus today’s Washington Post poll showing Harris up by a single point, 47/46. That’s more in line with other polling in the state, but it’s also not quite as good for Harris as it looks. (John wrote about this earlier, too.)

Note the difference between the RVs and LVs in this result, emphasis mine:

The Post poll finds registered voters split 47 percent for Trump and 45 percent for Harris. Likely voters tilt the other way, with 47 percent supporting Harris and 46 percent backing Trump. Both margins are within the poll’s margin of error of 3.7 percentage points, indicating either candidate could hold a lead. Harris’s slightly better standing with likely voters owes to the fact that more of her supporters have participated in recent elections.

The Post breaks this down later in the same article. The analysis here cuts both directions, though:

Harris’s support base includes voters who, based on past voting history, appear more certain to cast ballots. While overwhelming majorities of Trump and Harris voters say they are absolutely certain to vote or have already cast a ballot, the poll finds Harris supporters are more likely to have voted in the 2020 general election than Trump backers (70 percent vs. 61 percent). Harris voters are 15 points more likely than Trump voters to have turned out in the 2022 general election in Michigan, when Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer easily won reelection and voters approved a ballot initiative protecting abortion rights.

This shows how the Post constructed its likely voter screen, and it’s not unreasonable. However, it assumes that everything else is equal from the previous two cycles. Is that the case? Take a look at the issue ratings, where Trump leads Harris on the economy 49/42, on which 57% of voters say is ”extremely important” to their vote. Trump has a double-digit lead on immigration 51/38, which 47% say is extremely important for their vote. Taxes comes in this, and Trump leads there too, 47/43. Abortion comes in fifth on the issue set, where Harris doesn’t even get to 50% anyway (49/36 over Trump).

This looks like an electorate that may turn out a lot of lower-propensity voters who are frustrated with the status quo. I’d guess that this turnout will differ significantly from the midterm turnout that elected Whitmer, and it’s probably going to look more like the 2016 turnout and the rejection of Clinton as the status quo. If so, then Harris doesn’t have enough support to carry this state based on the fundamentals in this poll. 

On top of that, we have Joe Biden’s “garbage” insult to half of the American electorate. The rejection of the Biden-Harris status quo as seen in the WaPo issue numbers was probably enough to stoke turnout, but as Frank Luntz warned yesterday, the anger over that remark is likely to boost the lower-propensity vote even more. And Bill Clinton’s lecture to Michigan progressives is not going to make them more enthusiastic to vote either.