The most relevant fact about the Biden administration’s current position on the war against Gaza is this: There is no Israeli war crime too extreme for Joe Biden to consider pausing, to say nothing of cutting off, the flow of U.S. weapons and financial support for Israel’s war of annihilation. On Tuesday, the Senate passed an extraordinary $14 billion in additional military aid for Israel to continue its occupation and bombing of the Palestinians of Gaza. Biden remains defiant in rejecting global demands for an immediate cessation of Israel’s military assault on a starving, overwhelmingly defenseless population. Not only has Biden flatly rejected suggestions that he use the threat of halting military sales to Israel, his administration is currently preparing a new shipment of powerful munitions to Tel Aviv.
A recent U.S. intelligence estimate indicated that Israel’s current weapons stockpiles only enables it to wage war against Gaza for an additional 19 weeks, unless Washington sends more ammunition. The fact that Biden has outright refused to use his leverage as Israel’s arms dealer is a stark indication that the occasional public platitudes, offered by U.S. officials and numerous media leaks about Biden’s mounting frustration with Netanyahu, are little more than a re-election campaign ploy.
The reason Gaza has become a domestic electoral problem for Biden is because of activism, especially from Palestinian Americans. The White House seems to believe it can still salvage the Arab American vote and desperately hopes the specter of another Donald Trump term will tilt the balance in Biden’s favor regardless of his atrocious role in an ongoing genocide. Whatever happens in the November election, it should never be forgotten that it was Biden, not those Americans who oppose Israel’s war and the U.S. facilitation of it, that bolstered Trump’s chances. That is entirely on Biden and the Democratic Party establishment.
He’s not even a terrible president, and would be even better if he wasn’t constantly thwarted by conservatives. But he is dead wrong on this, and somehow does not see the consequences of the optics he is creating.
His team truly believes that Democrats will vote blue-no-matter-who and that they don’t need to appeal to their base at all, because Trump is running. Instead it seems that Biden is focusing on appealing to the right to siphon Republicans away from Trump.
For the Democratic base, this is a lose/lose situation. If Biden wins he will have proven that appealing to the base is entirely unnecessary and will use this as a reason to shift even farther to the right. If Biden loses then Trump wins. We’re so fucked.
Democrats already proved this when Hillary was running.
Hillary lost. They proved blue-no-matter-who doesn’t work and refused to learn from this mistake.