President Biden and top Democratic lawmakers in Washington distanced themselves from pro-Palestinian protests engulfing many college campuses this week, as Republicans work overtime to associate them with the chaotic scenes unfolding around the country ahead of the 2024 elections.
Democrats appear to feel a sense of political urgency to dissociate themselves from the unrest as they seek to portray former president Donald Trump and Republicans as agents of chaos. But in doing so, they also risk further alienating a key constituency in what are expected to be close contests for the White House and Congress in November.
The campus protests sweeping the country have led to at least 2,000 arrests, according to a Washington Post tally, as students object to U.S. support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack that left about 1,200 Israelis dead.
The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 34,000, according to health authorities there, who have also said they no longer can keep count of the dead. U.S. officials have raised concerns that Israel has been blocking humanitarian aid from reaching the civilian population, some of whom are starving. Congress overwhelmingly voted last month to send billions of dollars in more weaponry to Israel, as well as humanitarian aid to Gaza, throwing more fuel on the protests that had begun to sweep over college campuses.
After largely avoiding the issue as protests raged, Biden weighed in directly this week, warning students to avoid violence after some protesters sought to break into and take over campus buildings and at least one pro-Palestinian faction came under attack by counterprotesters in Los Angeles.
“Violent protest is not protected — peaceful protest is,” Biden said. “It’s against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest.”
Biden also cautioned against bigotry, after some protesters expressed extreme views. “Whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans, it’s simply wrong,” he said. “There’s no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong, it’s un-American.”
Any kind of social unrest cuts against Biden’s image as a force for calm in contrast to what his campaign depicts as the chaos that surrounds Trump, political strategists said.
“The key is for the Biden administration to remind the American people exactly how chaotic Trump was and actually how differently the Biden administration and Biden himself has handled things,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist.
Protests give Republicans something to point to to turn the argument around on Biden. “Trump is going to be out there every day saying, ‘Chaos, chaos, chaos,’” Trippi argued.
In 2020, Republicans used scenes of unrest during the racial justice protests following the killing of George Floyd to paint Democrats as agents of chaos as well, which some believe limited Democrats’ gains in the House when Biden outperformed down-ballot candidates.
“This is exactly the sort of chaos that turns off suburban voters who will decide the election,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who previously worked on Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) presidential campaign. “In the short term, I’m not surprised that Democrats are backing away from it.”
“I don’t think Biden wants to be associated with extremism,” he added. “Biden wants to position himself as the person who can bring people together, the elder statesman who can be a force for normalcy and calm.”
Leading congressional Democrats largely echoed Biden this week, criticizing the protests and voting for a bill pushed by their Republican colleagues that seeks to crack down on antisemitism on college campuses.
“Smashing windows with hammers and taking over university buildings is not free speech,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said this week on the Senate floor. “It is lawlessness. And those who did it should promptly face the consequences that are not merely a slap on the wrist.”
“The antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation deployed by some students and outside protesters on college campuses in New York City and beyond is completely unacceptable and deeply disturbing,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.
The House passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act with bipartisan support this week, which would require the Education Department to employ the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism to enforce anti-discrimination laws. The bill passed 320 to 91 — with a small minority of Democrats and Republicans opposing it over concerns that it would infringe on Americans’ First Amendment rights. Schumer has not yet said when it will receive a vote in the Senate.
“I do not support taking over buildings. That is not appropriate,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told reporters this week. “Our jobs should be to lower the temperature of what we are saying. We should not be doing anything to inflame these discussions.”
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said the First Amendment does not give people the right to “make students who happen to be of Jewish descent feel unsafe.”
Some liberals, however, have questioned the wisdom of antagonizing a key segment of the party’s base in an election year. Nearly 60 percent of liberals say the United States isn’t doing enough to protect Palestinian civilians, according to a recent ABC News poll, and 40 percent of Democrats say the United States is doing too much to help Israel. Just 12 percent of Americans said it would be one of their most important issues, however.
And 51 percent of young voters between the ages of 18 and 29, according to a March Harvard Institute of Politics survey, support a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, though the “Israel/Palestine” topic ranks far behind inflation, health care and housing as the issues most important to them.
“I worry very much that President Biden is putting himself in a position where he has alienated not just young people but a lot of the Democratic base in terms of his views on Israel and this war,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told CNN this week.
He was a rare congressional voice in support of the protesters. “They are out there not because they are pro-Hamas,” Sanders added. “They are out there because they are outraged by what the Israeli government is now doing in Gaza.”
But Sanders also criticized the attention being lavished on the protesters at the expense of Gazans who were truly suffering.
“I suggest to CNN and maybe some of my colleagues here, maybe take your cameras, just for a moment, off of Columbia and UCLA,” he said on the Senate floor.
Democrats fear their convention in Chicago this summer could be mired in antiwar protests, and Biden would likely face student opposition if he appears on any college campuses, further causing headaches in an election year. But the situation in Israel and Gaza could also change rapidly, given the administration has been pushing for a negotiated cease-fire for months, which would likely tamp down protests.
Despite the mostly chilly Democratic response to the protests on Capitol Hill, Republicans blamed the campus protests on Democrats and Biden.
House Republicans trekked to various campus protests in recent days, hoping to draw more attention to the unrest. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) visited Columbia University last week and blamed Democrats for unleashing what he called “lawlessness and chaos,” while at least four Republican House committee chairs are now investigating the student-led demonstrations.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and more than two dozen Republican senators sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland urging a crackdown on what they described as “anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist mobs” on college campuses, including revoking student visas for foreign students who are involved.
Republicans have painted Democrats as responsible for the protests. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said people should not vote for Democrats in the fall if they are unhappy with “the anti-Semitism raging on America’s campuses.”
“If moral clarity does not prevail in the ivory tower and the Biden administration, this could go down as a particularly shameful episode,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.
