OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat nominee for president, does not like tough questions.
She has famously dodged interviews until recently as her polls started to slip, and she still has not given a formal press conference as the nominee.
And on Thursday, when she announced the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, she ran from a reporter who hit her with a tough question about the ongoing war between the terrorist group and Israel.
“Will you be asking Israel to end the war,” the reporter asked several times as the vice president ignored her and ran off the stage.
Part of the reason for that may be her desperation to secure the Muslim-American vote that has all but abandoned her in the important swing state of Michigan.
One activist group, “Drive for 75,” has called for a 75 percent Muslim voter turnout in order to stop the vice president from winning the key swing state, The Daily Caller reported.
The state has around 200,000 Muslim citizens, and if 75 percent of those people voted for someone other than the vice president, it would be a devastating blow for her and her campaign.
Democrats have relied heavily on getting the Muslim-American vote as President Joe Biden only defeated former President Donald Trump by 154,188 votes in 2020 with around 146,000 Muslims in Michigan voting in that election.
Exit polls showed that 64 percent of Muslims nationwide voted for President Biden in 2020.
“[The Muslim American community] lost their faith in the Democratic Party and the Democratic administration, so they’re out to kind of hold them accountable. And I don’t want to necessarily say punish, but it is also a punishment vote, in a sense. I think that they’re desperate. We’re desperate. It’s also a vote of desperation. You know, we want to see an end to this bloodshed and this genocide as soon as possible,” “Drive for 75” head Rex Nazarko said to The Caller.
Others who spoke to The Caller said that they do not believe that the former president’s approach to Middle East policy would be more popular among Muslim-Americans, but that the reason for the vote against the vice president was to send a message about their power as a group.
“We’re hoping that, whether Republicans or Democrats, will not take our vote for granted. So if it is [spoiling Harris’s chances], I hope it teaches not only the Democrats but the Republicans that, you go against your voters, you go against people as well. You continue to support a genocide, you’re going to lose,” the head of the group “Abandon Biden”, which has recently changed its name to “Abandon Harris,” Democrat Khalid Turaani, said.
“She parrots the same line of ‘well on Oct. 7’ and okay, there has been more than 50,000 deaths. Two-thirds of them are women and children and she can’t get past ‘well on October 7.’ And we feel that this callous disregard to the lives of Palestinian civilians and the destruction of not only their infrastructure, the entire place in Gaza has been decimated, and and she just continues to parrot the same line. Meanwhile, continuing to support the Israeli assault and the Palestinian civilians and their lives and their buildings and their every aspect of their lives is under assault,” he said.
“This administration represented by Biden and Harris continues to support that. The other thing is the fact that every effort to stop the genocide has been thwarted by this administration,” the group leader said.
The message was the same from self-described socialist and former Seattle City Council Member Kshama Sawant who has decided to support the candidacy of Jill Stein to stop the vice president.
“We need to be clear about what our goals are, we are not in a position to win the White House. But we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan,” she said.
