THE depth of Democratic Party anger over President Joe Biden's handling of the Gaza war has caught his campaign off guard and could depress support in November's election, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen senior party and campaign officials and five dozen voters and activists.
The White House had expected Democratic unrest over Gaza to fade as Biden picked up his campaigning against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Nine months before the election, the problem is worsening as Biden's opposition to calling for a permanent ceasefire continues to stir anger in a coalition of voters that propelled his 2020 victory, from Black Americans to Muslim activists in must-win Michigan to young voters, according to the interviews.
Democrats have been broadly divided over Biden's vocal support of Israel since the Oct 7 Hamas attacks, polls show.
In Michigan's Democratic nominating contest on Tuesday, Arab-American activists who backed him in 2020 have vowed to withhold their support, urging primary voters to check "uncommitted" at the ballot box.
Hoping to address their frustrations, Biden administration officials met on Feb 8 with Arab-American community leaders in Michigan.
In Wisconsin, another swing state, Democratic activists plan demonstrations over Biden's stance on Gaza, said Heba Mohammad, a digital organising director on Biden's campaign in 2020 who is now organising protests against him.
Beyond the election battlegrounds, the war has opened a fissure in the base of Democratic Party. Biden's winning 2020 presidential campaign was buoyed by new voters, Black activists and other progressive Democrats.
Those groups flooded social media, manned phone banks and knocked on doors during the pandemic to flip Rust Belt states that Trump had won in 2016, sometimes by narrow margins.
Some Black Americans have expressed solidarity with Palestinians and see their cause as a reflection of their own experience of oppression. Some Gen Z and millennial Democratic voters, who voted for Biden in record numbers in 2020, see the Gaza war as evidence their voice isn't being heard in Washington.
While none of the five dozen Democrats interviewed by Reuters said they will back Trump, half said they were considering sitting out the election or casting their lot with a third party.
Mitch Landrieu, the campaign co-chair, acknowledged the issue is "difficult" but said the campaign has time to dispel concerns.
"You can expect a very, very aggressive outreach to all voters, young voters particularly, on all of these issues," he told Reuters during a campaign visit to Flint, Michigan.
Underestimating these concerns could be a mistake, some Democratic strategists say.
"It's really dangerous," said James Zogby, a founder of the Arab American Institute and a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee.
Former Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore and Hillary Clinton were defeated after ignoring warning signs within their own party.
"We saw it in 2000, we saw it in 2016," Zogby said.
The stakes are high. Biden won the state by less than 155,000 votes in 2020.
Emgage Action and Listen to Michigan, groups led by Muslim activists, aim to convince at least 10 per cent of Michigan's Democratic primary voters to choose "uncommitted", a symbolically significant margin of about 10,000 votes — about equal to Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss to Trump in Michigan.
For some it is personal. "I don't even know if Biden views my people or my blood as true human blood," said Abdualrahman Hamad, a Palestinian-American ophthalmologist in Detroit. He said, 30 members of his extended family had been killed in Gaza this month.
He said he supported Biden in 2020 but has made hundreds of phone calls to convince voters to withhold their votes on Tuesday.
"What I want is for the people around President Biden to knock some sense into this campaign, and tell him that if he does not take a different approach, he will lose key voters here in Michigan that will hand Trump the presidency," said Abbas Alawieh, a former senior congressional aide who is now a Democratic strategist in Michigan.
Outside Michigan, Black churches and activists are demanding Biden push for a ceasefire. Some, like Celine Mutuyemariya, a Black political organiser in Kentucky, say they feel betrayed.
"When it comes to fighting for his constituents, the constituencies that put him in office in 2020, he has completely abandoned us," she said.
The writers are from Reuters