Gretchen Whitmer responds to calls by some Democrats to vote ‘uncommitted’ in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday
Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, pushed back on calls to not vote for Joe Biden over his handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict, saying on Sunday that could help Trump get re-elected.
“It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote that’s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,” she said on Sunday during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union. “A second Trump term would be devastating. Not just on fundamental rights, not just on our democracy here at home, but also when it comes to foreign policy. This was a man who promoted a Muslim ban.”
Whitmer, who is a co-chair of Biden’s 2024 campaign, also said she wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to the protest vote.
Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, urged Democrats last week to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s 27 February primary.
A majority of Americans have been unhappy with their government almost every single year since Nixon was President. So no, most Americans don’t actually like this shit. It’s just that given the problems we’re currently facing and the fact that most Americans don’t like this shit, a huge majority of them either blithely disagree with people who think like you, or actively and violently oppose people who think like you. A majority of America simply has different priorities, even if they ostensibly like progressive ideas, and that’s the reality we’re stuck with until public opinion shifts in a different direction or on-the-ground conditions change.
And I’m not gonna live long enough to see that.
A lot of black people died before the Civil Rights Movement. A lot of LGBTQ+ people died before gay marriage was legalized. A lot of women died before their full integration into the workforce. A lot of political outsiders died before the first nationally-binding primary system was implemented in 1972. All of those people died either hopeful that change would come or resigned to the fact that it never would, yet here we are.
Public opinion can and does change. It takes time, and progress is intermixed with periods of backsliding, but change is certainly possible. I think the American experiment will eventually collapse by popular vote, but I hope I can see a few cultural, economic, environmental, and philosophical victories notched between now and then, just as I’ve witnessed a few big ones since I was born.