The Arab American Political Action Committee didn't drop this on the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas massacres. They missed it by a week. However, their rebuke of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden after a year of desperate pandering to Michigan's anti-Israel fringe Democrats looked bad enough even without AAPAC spiking the football, so to speak.

This group routinely endorses Democrats, Politico explains, so their shunning of the Harris campaign does not look neutral even while AAPAC also shuns Donald Trump:

“This year, we face a choice of two candidates who are harming our communities here and our families and friends in our homelands,” the Arab American Political Action Committee said in a statement Monday. “We simply cannot give our votes to either Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump, who blindly support the criminal Israeli government led by far right extremists, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

The group said “neither candidate represents our hopes and dreams as Arab Americans” and both “have endorsed genocide in Gaza and war in Lebanon.”

AAPAC endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 and has typically endorsed Democrats.

And one's first thought could well be: So what? Just how significant is the Arab-American vote in Michigan, anyway? The answer to that depends on how close the overall election will be, and what role this voting bloc has played in previous elections. Flint's ABC affiliate gave a lot of credit to this demo four years ago when Joe Biden carried Michigan:

By and large, the tight margins of victory in certain states for either candidate highlight how critical every vote is, and perhaps more importantly, the hard work of expanding the electorate. Muslim civic engagement nonprofit Emgage Michigan did just that for the Biden/Harris ticket in 2020, according to the organization’s executive director.

“I want everyone to know that Muslims played a huge role for Biden to win Michigan and the nation itself," said Nada Al-Hanooti, Executive Director of Emgage Michigan.

Al-Hanooti says their efforts resulted in 80,000 absentee and early votes from Muslims. The exact number of Muslim votes cast in Michigan isn’t something that is officially known yet.

If those numbers are correct, the Arab-American vote made most of the difference in the eventual 2020 outcome. Biden won the state by 154,000 votes and some change, 50.62/47.84. That wasn't the only demo that helped turn the corner for Democrats four years ago, of course; Biden also boosted black-voter and union-voter turnout. Both of those demos are slipping this time around with Kamala Harris on the top of the ticket, however, both in enthusiasm and voter choice. 

What really matters, though, is how Biden and Harris see this demo. Almost since the October 7 massacre, both of them rushed to pander to the "Dearborn contingent" in both tone and policy. Despite Hamas conducting the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Biden has publicly and privately pressured Israel into offering massive concessions to the terrorists and to cease fighting against them. Harris and Biden both have made Benjamin Netanyahu their personal villain of the war; they never mention Yahya Sinwar, who authored and executed massive barbaric atrocities and pledged to conduct more of them until Israel is destroyed. Biden and Harris pandered to the radicals on college campuses that intimidated and terrorized Jewish students and faculty while demanding that people remain sensitive to the Palestinian positions.

In fact, Joe Biden did what he often falsely accuses Donald Trump of doing. He made a very good people on both sides argument in a war launched by terrorists against an American ally:

“I condemn the anti-Semitic protests,” the president told reporters en route back from a speech he had delivered to commemorate Earth Day. “That’s why I have set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

After all of that pandering, Harris (and Biden by extension) came up empty. The AAPAC won't back her campaign, and it's probably a given that other grassroots efforts in the Arab-American community won't be terribly enthusiastic about filling the gap either. So where does that leave Democrats in Michigan?

Not resting easy, that's for sure. As I noted yesterday, Trump has a slight lead in the RCP aggregate average for Michigan of 0.9 points. That may not sound like much, but Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by 11.4 points on October 15, 2016, only to edge her out on Election Day. Joe Biden had a 7.2-point lead in the state on 10/15/2020 and wound up winning it by less than three points -- and that was with an enthusiastic base among Arab-Americans, black voters, and union members. And in the Senate race, Elissa Slotkin only has a two-point lead over Mike Rogers in filling the open seat left by Democrat Gary Peters' Debbie Stabenow's retirement [corrected -- Ed]. 

Harris and Biden bet big on the radicals. And it looks like they just crapped out.