Protest vote is an election warning Biden cannot ignore

Michigan voters have sent a clear warning to the White House that Joe Biden's support for Israel's war in Gaza could cost him dearly in the presidential election in November.

Activists encouraged people voting in Tuesday's Democratic primary to withhold their votes from President Biden and instead mark the box marked "uncommitted" as a protest. More than 100,000 voters did just that.

The protest vote - while a sharp rebuke - poses no immediate danger to Mr Biden, who still won the contest with 81% of the vote. He's the incumbent president and has no serious challenger from within his party, so he can't lose the race to choose the Democratic candidate.

But what if all the people who withheld their support from him this time don't come out to vote for him in the general election? That could be decisive.

Every vote counts in a key swing state that the US president almost certainly needs to win to have a shot at a second term. In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton lost Michigan to Donald Trump by fewer than 11,000 ballots.

Mr Trump, following his own victory in the Republican primary, declared: "We win Michigan, we win the whole thing."

This Midwestern state is home to America's largest Arab-American population, most of whom are deeply upset by the devastation they see in Gaza.

President Biden can't afford to ignore their demands that he call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza - rather than the temporary one that the White House has been pushing for. He did not mention the war or the protest vote in his statement following his victory, but his campaign team will have surely heard the message loud and clear.

I asked Leyla Elabed, manager of the "Listen to Michigan" campaign, if she was worried she might be inadvertently helping Donald Trump back into the White House by damaging Joe Biden's electability.

"If Biden doesn't act now, and listen to the 80% of Democrats and the 66% of Americans that want a permanent ceasefire right now," she told me before Tuesday's primary, "it is going to be Biden, his administration and the Democratic Party that are going to be accountable for handing the White House to Trump in November."

President Biden has offered some recent criticism of Israel's conduct of the war, describing it as "over the top". He appears to be becoming increasingly frustrated with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and has warned that Israel is at risk of losing international support.

His administration is strongly advocating for a temporary ceasefire over the Muslim holiday of Ramadan that would include an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners. But Mr Biden says it's not the right time to call for the permanent ceasefire his detractors in Michigan are demanding.

Dissatisfaction on this issue goes beyond the Arab-American and Muslim communities, however. Many younger voters - another key part of the electoral coalition that voted for the oldest-ever US president - are also angry. Regular protests are taking place on college campuses across America.

In Detroit, the views of students from the Wayne State College Democrats highlighted President Biden's vulnerability on the issue.

Karon Heath, 18, an anthropology and law major, said she was enraged that the White House had not been advocating for a permanent ceasefire despite months of war and "heartbreaking" scenes in Gaza.

Taylor James, 22, who is studying economics, believes the US - Israel's strongest international ally - should stop sending aid to Mr Netanyahu's government.

But Cassidy Collins did vote for Mr Biden on Tuesday. She thinks he needs all the support he can get to stop Mr Trump from returning to the White House. She described that prospect as "one of the most scariest things I could possibly imagine".

Each of these students said they wished Mr Biden had stood aside and allowed another candidate to get the Democratic nomination this year. They think that at 81, he is too old to understand the concerns of their generation, and that he hasn't been aggressive enough on climate change or on forgiving student loan debt.

The complaints from these young people - each of them a signed-up Democrat - were different to the concerns I tend to hear from undecided voters who are considering backing Donald Trump. Those moderate voters - whom I've met in the wine bars of Atlanta, the sandwich shops of Philadelphia and the rural outposts of Iowa - often help decide who wins the White House.

They've told me they felt much better off when Donald Trump was in office. And they're not convinced yet by the Biden administration's attempts to persuade Americans the economy is improving.

Nearly every voter also cites the record levels of illegal immigration at the southern border.

It's a vulnerability that explains why Mr Biden is about to tackle the immigration issue head on with a high-profile visit to the border on Thursday. Donald Trump will also be there on the same day to argue that Mr Biden's policies are to blame for the crisis.

The White House hopes to undermine Mr Trump on his signature issue by highlighting that the former president recently got his supporters in Congress to defeat a bipartisan bill that would have provided billions of dollars to beef up border security.

Mr Biden may soon introduce a presidential executive order aimed at reducing the number of asylum seekers entering the US. Yet it could be too late to convince voters he can be trusted on this issue.

The president is simultaneously under attack from the right by voters who blame him for allowing unprecedented numbers of migrants to enter the US - and on the left by disappointed Democrats who are appalled by his strong support for Israel.

The president needs to address both issues - and to find a way to appeal to the middle, while also motivating his base. It will not be an easy strategy to pull off.

None of the dozens of Michiganders protesting over the war in Gaza that I spoke to this week said they were planning to vote for Mr Trump.

But if the deeply felt anger towards Mr Biden in parts of Michigan leads thousands of voters to stay home in November, or to cast their ballot for a third party candidate, that could still cost Mr Biden the White House.