Here's what Kamala Harris needs to do to win over Michigan's uncommitted Democrats

You don’t get to be complicit in starving people to death and then demand the votes of their family and friends because the other guy’s worse. 

That's why, back in February, 100,000 Michigan voters pushed their pens past President Joe Biden's name on their Democratic presidential primary ballots and filled in the circle beside “Uncommitted," in a state Donald Trump won in 2016 by 11,000 votes, and lost in 2020 by 154,000.  

Leaders of the "uncommitted" movement hoped for a shift in U.S. foreign policy, one that might stop the killing. And they wanted Biden to listen.

Related:Jewish, Arab voters in Michigan have mixed reactions to Kamala Harris as Democratic nominee

So now that Biden is off the November ballot — albeit for different reasons, somehow — where does his likely successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, stand? And where does that leave Democrats who couldn’t stomach a vote for the incumbent president? 

It depends on what Harris does next. 

'Uncommitted' voters want Harris to listen

Activists say they don't expect a full-throated embrace of their platform — for the U.S. to stop selling arms to Israel — but say she must give them some indication that in a Harris presidency, U.S. foreign policy would shift.  

More:They called for voters to 'abandon Biden' over Gaza. Now what?

And they're feverishly anticipating her next words, examining her past statements for some glimpse of whether Harris will keep in line with Biden's policy of unconditional military support for Israel, amid a war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and a blockade that has led to devastating famine. 

Harris said in December 2023, “We support Israel’s legitimate military objectives to eliminate the threat of Hamas” — the official line of the Biden White House — later adding, “As Israel pursues its military objectives in Gaza, we believe Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians."  

After a few more months of war raised questions about the legitimacy and effectiveness of that military objective, amid little evidence of efforts to protect civilians, Harris adopted a different tone in March, calling for a cease-fire and delivering some the strongest remarks made by an administration official on the protection of civilians in Gaza. 

“Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate cease-fire,” she said during a speech commemorating the 1965 police attack on civil rights protesters in Selma, Alabama. “… People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane and our common humanity compels us to act.” 

The change activists hope for would be a departure from the from the longstanding status quo of U.S. foreign policy toward Israel, which tends to involve a lot of indifference to a lot of Arab suffering, facilitated by a lot of American taxpayer money. 

A reasonable ask

Harris is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, a day after he was given the floor before the U.S. Congress and called the American college campus protesters we’ve been seeing all year “Iran's useful idiots."

Update:After Netanyahu meeting, Harris defends Israel but laments suffering in Gaza

The leaders of the movement, which began in Michigan and led to 700,000 "uncommitted" votes nationwide, aren't asking for much:  

"We’re just asking that the nominee of the Democratic Party espouse a foreign policy agenda that isn’t hellbent on killing people we love," said Abbas Alawieh, a Democratic strategist from Dearborn who led the campaign. "It’s actually a pretty reasonable ask, to stop killing my family."  

Among thousands of Democratic delegates, 36 were assigned uncommitted after the presidential primary. Alawieh is one of two from Michigan who are representing the 6th and 12th congressional districts.  

Tuesday night, during a remote meeting of delegates from Michigan looking to throw their support behind Harris, Alawieh says he attempted to express apprehension over endorsing the vice president without first hearing whether she would adopt a more humane Gaza policy.  

Alawieh says he was cut off by an unidentified delegate who said "shut up, a--hole." 

Rima Mohammad, the second uncommitted delegate from Michigan, views the outburst as an example of the kind of under-the-surface bigotry that has become overt over the last nine months, a phenomenon she says feels a lot like the Donald Trump presidency. 

"You can't convince a Muslim to be scared of a Muslim ban when we're killing people who look like them and have names like them," she said. "I'm more scared of that, and the racism that's happening right now." 

These hundreds of thousands of people who chose the word “uncommitted” over the president in February — they’re not a--holes. And their concerns — tens of thousands of people killed by expositions, gunfire and deliberate starvation in Gaza since October 2023, as reported by the Gaza Health Ministry and validated by the U.N. — shouldn’t be callously dismissed.

The movement isn't going away

Last month, the British medical journal Lancet estimated the actual death toll of the war at 186,000 people.  

Last week, the U.N.'s International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories “as rapidly as possible” and to make reparations in a ruling that found multiple breaches of international law by the Israeli government amounted to apartheid. 

In less than a month, student protesters will return to campus.  

Whether Harris embraces this moment or not, this issue isn’t going anywhere.  

It will grow as the war continues, as more images of starving children scroll along the cellphone screens of engaged Americans. 

Harris can choose the status quo, or she can choose the more difficult route, one that could actually lead to peace. 

These uncommitted voters are eager, under the right circumstances, to commit, to put down their protest signs and put on an “I voted” sticker.  

And Harris needs every vote she can get.

Khalil AlHajal is deputy editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at kalhajal@freepress.com. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters and we may run it in print or online.