If news of this kind continues, the establishment media’s miserably long faces will grow even longer.
On Tuesday, CNN’s John King expressed astonishment over the strength of a protest vote against President Joe Biden in Michigan’s Democratic primary.
Specifically, voters in Dearborn, Michigan — home to what King called the “biggest pocket” of the “key” Arab-American demographic — handed Biden a humiliating defeat by voting “uncommitted.”
“So that’s a ‘wow,’” King said in a clip posted to the social media platform X.
King expressed surprise after reporting early results out of Dearborn, located in southeastern Michigan’s Wayne County.
First, he noted that Biden received 1,141 votes and Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota received another 54 votes. Then, King revealed the number of “uncommitted” votes in Dearborn: 3,703.
In other words, by percentage of overall votes cast, “uncommitted” trounced Biden in early voting, 75-23.
By the end of the night, according to official results from the city of Dearborn, “uncommitted” defeated Biden by 5,770 to 4,204 total votes. In percentage terms, that worked out to a 56-41 shellacking.
“This is a place President Biden carried big time in 2020,” King later added.
CNN reports the first numbers out of Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest population of Arab Americans in the state.
Biden: 23%
Uncommitted: 75% pic.twitter.com/kJWRGsqci9— The Recount (@therecount) February 28, 2024
Earlier in the night, CNN prepared its viewers for the prospect of an “uncommitted” challenge to Biden. In fact, even after calling the state for the president, host Jake Tapper noted that the “uncommitted” protest remained relevant.
“We are still watching the size of a protest vote in Michigan,” Tapper said in another clip posted to X.
“Some Michigan Democrats are voting for ‘uncommitted’ specifically to show their opposition to the president’s policy on the Israel-Hamas war,” the CNN host added.
By that point in the evening, the “uncommitted” vote in Michigan had reached 16.2 percent.
President Biden has won the Michigan Democratic presidential primary.
Some progressive and Arab American leaders had urged Michiganders to vote “Uncommitted” to send a message to Biden over his handling of the war in Gaza — so far it is garnering 16% of the vote. pic.twitter.com/wt6PQ4fRPG
— The Recount (@therecount) February 28, 2024
According to the Associated Press, with 98 percent of votes counted by Wednesday morning, Biden’s statewide lead over “uncommitted” had grown to 81-13. Phillips and author Marianne Williamson combined for less than 6 percent of the vote.
Will Biden lose Michigan?
Although a 68-point victory might look convincing, those results could prove catastrophic for Biden in the general election.
Thirteen percent of Michigan’s Democratic primary electorate on Tuesday equaled 100,995 people. That should cause Democrats concern for three reasons.
First, recall that in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump won Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes. Democrats, in other words, cannot afford voter defections that number in the tens of thousands.
Second, the Associated Press described the “uncommitted” protest as “organized by activists.” It was not a spontaneous outburst on Tuesday evening, but rather a coordinated rebellion inside the Democratic Party.
Finally, though CNN focused on one city with a large Arab-American population, the “uncommitted” campaign actually radiated outward from Dearborn.
Thanks to Detroit’s reliably Democratic base, Biden won Wayne County by a margin of 78-17, according to the AP. Still, “uncommitted” earned 26,458 votes in the deep-blue county. And keep in mind that Dearborn supplied only 5,770 of those protest votes.
Meanwhile, the rebellion spread to Detroit’s northern and western suburbs.
Oakland County, with its seat of government in the suburb of Pontiac, gave “uncommitted” 15,358 votes, or 13 percent of the county’s total.
Washtenaw County, home of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, reported 8,270 “uncommitted” votes, or 17 percent of the county’s total.
For context, Washtenaw and Oakland rank as the 2nd- and 4th-wealthiest Michigan counties per capita, according to MLive. Thus, those “uncommitted” voters hailed not only from Dearborn, but from Biden’s affluent suburban core.
In short, the news for Biden was even worse than King’s reaction suggested.
