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New Hampshire Primary Voters Can Send Biden a Powerful Message About Gaza [1]
['John Nichols', 'P.E. Moskowitz', 'Chris Lehmann', 'Joan Walsh', 'Larry Cohen', 'Elie Mystal', 'Alfred Mccoy', 'Stephen Crowley', 'Matt Wuerker', 'The Nation']
Date: 2024-01-18 13:53:59+00:00
Politics / New Hampshire Primary Voters Can Send Biden a Powerful Message About Gaza A campaign to write in the word “cease-fire” seeks to pressure the administration to shift its policy.
President Joe Biden returns to the White House December 20, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
Andru Volinsky is a prominent New Hampshire Democrat. He served as a member of the state’s elected Executive Council, and nearly won the race to become the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2020.
But on Tuesday, when New Hampshire holds its traditional first-in-the-nation presidential primary, Volinsky won’t be voting for President Biden. Instead, he will take his Democratic ballot, find the line for presidential write-ins, and print the word “cease-fire.”
“I’m not interested in replacing Biden,” says Volinsky, who expects that he will be voting for the president in November. “This is about getting a message to Biden about the urgent need for a cease-fire in Gaza.”
Volinsky won’t be alone. A grassroots movement has taken shape in the Granite State, one that’s urging voters in Tuesday’s primary to use their ballot to send a “cease-fire” signal in support of “de-escalation, humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and a just solution to the conflict in the Middle East.”
New Hampshire’s Vote Ceasefire campaign seeks to “draw attention to the urgent need to stop the violence in Palestine and the Middle East,” and let President Biden know that the United States must take action to end the killing in Gaza. And it’s gaining traction.
Organizers have been fielding calls from across the state and around the country. They’re spreading the word on social media and distributing signs that urge voters to take a pen to the polls and register their discontent with the administration’s support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the brutal assault on Gaza that has left more than 24,000 Palestinians dead, severely wounded tens of thousands, and displaced an estimated 1.9 million men, women, and children.
That assault on Gaza, which followed the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli kibbutzim and a music festival, has sparked an international outcry. In the United States, it has inspired mass demonstrations by American Muslims, Jews, and Christians calling for an end to the violence. It has also sparked significant dissension within Biden’s Democratic Party, as close to 60 members of the House and four Democratic senators have expressed support for a cease-fire.
But the Biden administration has not shifted its stance on the war. It continues to provide military aid for the Israel Defense Forces, as well as to push for Congress to fund additional aid. It’s also kept providing diplomatic cover for Netanyahu’s government at the United Nations. That’s led to frustration in New Hampshire, where Biden will face the first test of his 2024 reelection campaign.
This year’s New Hampshire primary is not sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, and Biden’s name will not appear on the ballot with those of his most prominent challengers, author and 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson and US Representative Dean Phillips (D-Minn.). But there’s an active and reasonably well-financed campaign to write in Biden’s name. If there is a substantial anti-Biden vote in the primary, it’s likely to get the president’s attention—and that of Democratic strategists and pundits—at a point when his approval ratings are already low.
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[1] Url:
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/vote-ceasefire-new-hampshire-biden-primary/
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