The Horse Race: Will the Summer of Anti-Israel Protests Be Enough to Split Biden's Delicate Coalition?

The state of the campaign.

WITH BRITTANY BERNSTEIN & AUDREY FAHLBERG Wednesday, May 01, 2024 Will the Summer of Anti-Israel Protests Be Enough to Split Biden's Delicate Coalition? On January 8, President Joe Biden traveled to South Carolina to deliver his second campaign speech of the year. Minutes into his remarks, pro-Palestinian hecklers began chanting "Cease-fire now!" — forcing the 81-year-old incumbent to reluctantly acknowledge that his administration's approach to the war in Gaza is slowly fracturing his own coalition.   "I understand their passion," Biden said from a podium inside Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. "I've been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza, using all that I can to do."   That early-January interruption ended up serving as a relatively tame precursor to the wave of college-campus protests that have swept the nation in recent weeks. These actions have set the stage for a protest-filled summer that could culminate at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August and undermine the "return-to-normal" pitch Biden led with in 2020.   The election is still a long way away, and it's impossible to predict how long the protests will continue, let alone how developments in the war in Gaza might affect Biden's reelection chances. Still, high-profile Democrats in the president's corner are clearly bracing for more political fallout from the war that may prompt some of their own voters to stay home or consider third-party options in November.   Representative Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.), a staunch defender of Israel, acknowledged in a brief interview with National Review on Tuesday that Biden is "managing a delicate balancing act" that risks losing key . . . READ MORE  > Join NRPLUS and get the full text of The Horse Race delivered straight to your inbox. ADVERTISEMENT 19 West 44th Street, Ste. 1701, New York, NY, 10036 Your Preferences | Unsubscribe | Privacy View this e-mail in your browser.