Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at United Auto Workers Local 900 Aug. 8 in Wayne, Michigan. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Senior Columnist Rob Eshman August 9, 2024

“If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that.”

With that terse sentence, Vice President Kamala Harris pulled off a political trifecta: She shut down anti-Israel hecklers at her Aug. 7 election rally in Detroit, electrified supporters in the audience, and messaged to skeptics that when it comes to Israel, she can be simultaneously pragmatic, tough and progressive.

I don’t care whether she improvised the line on stage or focus-grouped each word for months — it was perfection.

Here’s why.

Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing close to 1,200 people and kidnapping and wounding hundreds of others, protesters enraged over President Joe Biden administration’s support for Israel have dogged the public appearances of Biden and Harris, who is now running for president herself.

At a Jan. 9 rally in Charleston, South Carolina, hecklers cut into Biden’s speech as soon as he started. Chaos ensued until security ushered them out.

At an abortion rights rally in Virginia later that month, demonstrators interrupted his speech at least 11 times, shouting, “genocide Joe!” and “ceasefire now,” effectively shutting down the president, who kept pausing while his supporters counterchanted “Four more years.”

In March, demonstrators in North Carolina stopped a Biden campaign speech about health care, yelling, “What about the health care in Gaza?” 

The hassling went on, and on, and Biden never mustered a strong response. In June, when hecklers in Austin shouted him down during a speech on gun control, saying he was “complicit in genocide,” Biden said, “Folks, it’s OK. Look, they care. Innocent children have been lost. They make a point.”

Biden’s verbal coddling made him appear weak and confused, ashamed to stand by his record — which is, in fact, not as black-and-white as the protesters would make it seem. Yes, his administration has supported Israel in its effort to cripple Hamas and return the hostages taken on Oct. 7. But at the same time, he’s used the leverage of U.S. aid to Israel to strive to lessen Palestinian civilian casualties and increase aid to Gaza. His administration was instrumental in negotiating the first ceasefire in November.

Biden could have pointed any of that out — or countered that since Oct. 7, Hamas has launched more than 19,000 missiles into Israel, a fact that conveniently escapes most progressive conversations about the war. He could have asked the protesters how exactly their efforts to shout him down help those suffering in Gaza, given that a potential second term for former President Donald Trump, who has expressed rampant and unrepentant Islamophobia for years, would all but surely embolden Israel in continuing the war.

But Biden had no real response — because he either didn’t understand, or refused to believe, that the protests, while sometimes aiming to draw attention to what is happening in Gaza, were functionally about what will happen in November. The constant disruptions and the unruly jeers are no great help to Palestinian civilians. But they are a boon to Republicans.

And despite what the left might have us believe, they are sometimes explicitly intended as such. Some of the protesters who dogged Biden are affiliated with the Abandon Biden movement, a group founded last November to rally Arab American communities against Biden “to ensure Biden loses in swing states.”

In 2020, 64% of Muslims nationwide supported Biden, while 35% supported Trump. 

To take just one state with 200,000 registered voters who are Muslim, Michigan — where just under 70% of voters in Arab American counties went for Biden in 2020 — is under real threat from the group and its army of hecklers.

And in one sentence, Harris called their bluff.

“If you want Donald Trump to win,” she said, “then say that.”

By cutting to the chase and laying bare the logical conclusion of their threat, Harris was presenting these protesters a dose of realpolitik. Elections are zero sum games. If you really want to “punish Biden,” as the Abandon Biden movement explicitly states it aims to, that means you have to embrace Trump.

I share the protesters’ empathy for the suffering civilians in Gaza are enduring, and the pain their family members and supporters here in America must feel. But I don’t understand the delusion.

On Abandon Biden’s website, Hassan Abdel Salam, the group’s executive director, addresses the argument that a vote against Biden, or Harris, is a vote for Trump.

“Even if Mr. Trump won,” he said in a video message, “the Republicans would come more in our direction.”

Really? For four years in office, Trump marched in lockstep with the current Israeli government. His Middle East peace plan, devised by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, ignored the Palestinians. Miriam Adelson, a hard-right-wing supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu, is poised to be Trump’s largest donor. Trump said if pro-Palestinian protesters didn’t behave, he would “throw them out of the country.” 

That’s the reality check Harris offered protesters: If they don’t want her, they want Trump, which means four more years of Muslim bans, empowering Netanyahu, and a crackdown on civil liberties.

It was a brilliant line. The true test of whether it works will come later this month at the Democratic National Convention, which some pro-Palestinian groups have vowed to disrupt. Scenes of arrests, chaos and even violence will only help turn voters off to the Democrats.

“We are not going to take responsibility for the Democrats losing the election,” said one of the organizers. 

Harris’ response to these protesters poses a stark question: If they won’t take the blame for her potential loss, will the protesters take responsibility for what comes after?

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