War in Israel Won't Decide the Fight for the Presidency in America | Opinion

Maybe you've seen the headlines: "Dem fears mount amid Biden's polling slump and Israel backlash," "Joe Biden Is in Trouble," Battleground voters trust Trump over Biden on Israeli-Palestinian conflict: poll."

Yes, it's all over for Joe Biden. Turn out the lights, the party's over. And it is the Middle East that will do him in.

You may be asking, is what's happening in the Middle East really going to tank President Biden's reelection?

No.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

OK, fine, let's break it down.

First, when it comes to Americans' fears about the conflict, Quinnipiac offers excellent insight. It's not so much the humanitarian issue facing Palestinians or the issue of Israel's right to exist (though clearly, Americans have feelings about those concerns). It's a genuine feeling that this might cause U.S. troops to return to war in the region. In their poll, over 80 percent of voters were concerned that this might expand to involve U.S. troops.

The concern is heavy across the board—young voters, old voters, Republicans, Democrats, independents, men, women, white, Black, Latino. If you can name a demographic, they're terrified that this is the conflict that draws the United States back into a Middle East war.

When do you ever see polling converge like that anymore?

So, barring Biden getting us into World War III by November 2024, there is probably no widespread impact that the conflict will have in the election.

If anything, this offers an opportunity for Biden to frame his positioning on the conflict as one of containment, to allow Israel to defend itself, but also allow help and aid to Palestinian civilians to keep this from spiraling outside the borders and becoming a regional, and then perhaps global, conflict that would mean deployment of U.S. troops to war.

Some point to the generational divide. The Democratic base of young voters is very clearly unhappy with the Israeli response and the Biden administration's show of support. Arab-American and Muslim voters feel the same, much more intensely. Without young voters and Arab-American turnout for Biden and Democrats, he would lose.

But are their feelings right now going to carry over for another year? It's not highly likely. First, barring World War III (again, not a good thing for Biden!), current Israeli operations will have been finished for a while when the next election heats up. Wars often cause pretty intense feelings at the moment, but they and most foreign policy matters very quickly fade away.

I'm old enough to remember when President George H.W. Bush was so invincible after the Iraq War that I read an op-ed in the paper that Democrats should nominate him for president but run a different VP on their ticket than Dan Quayle, thus making the election about the vice president.

Thankfully, no one paid attention to that op-ed, and within months, Bush's reelection odds began fading fast. James Carville put up a whiteboard that said, "It's the economy, stupid," and Bill Clinton went on to send Bush packing.

Younger voters, especially, have a multitude of issues facing their daily lives—problems that won't go away long after Israel ends its current campaign. Polls of both Gen-Z and younger voters overall (including Millennial voters) find abortion continues to be a top factor in their vote.

Arab-American voters and Muslim voters are less likely to simply move on, understandably. This is much more personal and painful to them. But one of the most progressive Muslim elected officials, Minnesota's Attorney General Keith Ellison, sounded pretty sure what voters in the community would prioritize when the choices are clear, as they get closer to having to cast a ballot.

Following a meeting of Arab and Muslim Americans and Biden, Ellison said, "I think Muslim Americans know that the alternative is Mr. Muslim Ban," referring to former President Donald Trump, who has already made clear his intention to be more ruthless against American Muslims—and specifically against Palestinians in America—if he wins a second term.

None of this is to say to any of those voters that their concerns aren't valid or that anyone should dismiss them. Biden was right to bring Arab Americans and Muslim Americans to the White House to hear them out, and absorb what they're telling him. He'll need to do much more of that and do the same with younger voters. Neither he nor any Democrat can afford to thumb their noses at Democratic base voters.

At the same time, what is happening right now isn't likely to have a significant effect on the 2024 election. As usual, the economy will dominate most voters' minds by November 2024, which will have an outsized impact on the election. If Biden's numbers improve there, he'll be ok. If not, he'll be fighting an uphill battle. Especially after Tuesday night's positive results for Democrats in key swing state races, no one should lose focus on women voters, either, with the next election likely being a referendum on a potential national abortion ban.

With any luck, by then, the fighting in the Middle East will have ended, and with it, the massive loss of life. We can only hope so because it wouldn't just be good for Joe Biden. It'd be good for humanity.

Eric Schmeltzer is a Los Angeles-based political consultant who served as press secretary to Rep. Jerry Nadler and former-Gov. Howard Dean.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.