Uncommitted voters are not apathetic. The Democratic party is | Camonghne Felix
The US is just months away from the 2024 election, and the prospect of a second Trump presidency grows each day as he evades repercussions for the expansive list of indictments he’s accrued. With this reality looming, many Democratic party loyalists are panicked about the “leave it blank” movement, in which hundreds of thousands of voters have marked “uncommitted” on their primary ballots to protest against US support of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Some worry that a protest vote at the ballot box is an automatic vote for Trump. They’re sure that even during times of mass dissent, harm reduction is the only moral voting strategy. They’re afraid that this election will mean the end of democracy, or that the re-election of Trump will guarantee unprecedented disharmony.
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Others believe that the protest vote is an empty threat, that sensible voters will ultimately choose the “lesser of two evils” and vote for the Democratic nominee in November anyway.
But the protest vote is none of these things. It is also not a myth; a vote against down-ballot candidates who would otherwise capture uncommitted voters; Millennial frivolity; an abstract phenomenon; new. The protest vote is a moral and strategic position that challenges the establishment, delegitimizes the two-party system, and invalidates the assumption that the party line is the voter’s only consideration.
For many people, the protest vote is a much-considered tactical decision that signals dissatisfaction with the party and announces readiness for better politics and better candidates. Last month, in primaries in Michigan, Hawaii, Minnesota and Washington, more than 200,000 voters cast “uncommitted” anti-war protest votes, demanding that Biden call for a ceasefire to the horrifying, US-financed genocide in Gaza and an end to Israeli occupation. The uncommitted vote won two delegates in Michigan and those delegates will be free to vote for whomever they’d like at the Democratic national convention – a haunting reality for establishment leadership that expected a “fall-in-line” outcome.
That expectation was shortsighted considering the fact that the protest vote has always been available to voters, and they have leveraged it before, especially in recent history. In 2008, for instance, Barack Obama was denied a line on the ballot in the Michigan primaries, making Hillary Clinton the only option for Democratic voters. But many of them were moved by Obama’s campaign message of “hope”, and dissatisfied with Clinton’s record as a New York senator. As a result, 40% of Democratic voters in Michigan cast an uncommitted vote, leaving Clinton with only 60% of the vote.
That margin signaled trouble for the Clinton establishment, and the fact that a majority of those uncommitted votes were cast by Black and young people suggested a potential upset that would soon materialize: Obama went on to win the primaries and delegate counts that would make him the party’s candidate.
A majority of those 2008 uncommitted votes were cast by voters who demanded a better option than what had been presented to them. The decades-old assumptions the Democratic establishment made about who could win the nomination had to be rethought.
Since 7 October, many of us have been coming to terms with our helplessness and complicity in a genocide funded in part by our taxes. As we scroll social media through endless images of death, starvation, grief and the devastation of critical institutions like hospitals and schools, Americans are recognizing we must do more for Palestine.
National and local organizers of the uncommitted campaign, led by Arab and Muslim Americans, have successfully tapped into the cynicism and powerlessness that many voters feel, and have activated a percentage of Democratic primary voters who would have probably voted for Biden during less dire circumstances. Now, constituents who disapprove of Biden’s financing of this war get to have a seat at the table. Ballots are on the line and uncommitted voters understand that this is the time when candidates are listening.
We have suffered Trump already. We have seen what he can do. The Democratic party has seen it too, and knows all too well the power of the protest vote. What happens in November is up to Biden – it will not be the fault of the protest voter if Trump is elected. The questions remain: does the Democratic party fear Trump as much as we do? And does it value its voters enough to shift away from an approach to the onslaught in Gaza that a majority of Democratic voters are against?
Until Tuesday 5 November, Biden will have to face uncommitted voters, just as he’s had to face pro-Palestine activists who confront him on the campaign trail. He will continue to face their rage, their disillusionment and their protest – both in person and at the voting booth. The small window of opportunity to reclaim a pivotal corner of his base is slowly closing.
Camonghne Felix is an assistant professor of creative writing at The New School
This article was amended on 29 April 2024. At the time of Michigan’s 2008 Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton was a senator for New York, not the secretary of state as an earlier version said.