• psvrh@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    Biden doesn’t really have a good path either way, and Netanyahu knows it.

    If he goes too easy on Bibi, he loses support and Netanyahu gets Trump, which is great for Netanyahu. If Biden goes too hard on him, the same thing happens. It makes sense when we realize that Netanyahu’s goal is to get Trump I’m office so that both he and Trump can stay out of prison.

    What Biden is doing is probably the least bad option, and if he wins Netanyahu’s toast.

    • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      If Biden cut all support to Israel he would win the popular vote easily. I don’t know what losing that AIPAC money does but is losing that really worse than pissing off your entire base?

      • tortillaPeanuts@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        The vast majority of registered voters support Israel Even among Democrats most (77%) will still vote for Biden even if they disagree with him. I had a hard time finding registered voters opinions vs Democrat voters, so I could be wrong. The exact wording seemed to make a big difference. The most disapproval was seen among young voters. This really isn’t a winning issue on either side.

      • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        His overall polling hasn’t changed much since September, so I doubt Israel is moving the needle. If anything he’s polling slightly better than before the invasion of Gaza.

        • casmael@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          The couple of polls I have looked at appear to support this view. Any evidence to suggest otherwise?

          • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Support for a particular view doesn’t always translate into support for a candidate.

            For example, most people are against “shrinkflation”. But when Biden declared his opposition to it, the polls didn’t move. That’s because people generally don’t consider “shrinkflation” to be very important, so Biden’s position didn’t win anyone over.

            Likewise, Gaza consistently polls pretty low as a priority, so changing his position on Israel likely won’t help him.

            In the April 2024 edition of the Harvard Youth Poll, which Della Volpe runs, 18-to-29-year-olds rated the Israel-Palestine conflict 15th out of 16 possible priorities. (Student debt came last.) Among self-identified Democrats, it was tied for third from the bottom. In another survey of registered voters in swing states, just 4 percent of 18-to-27-year-olds said the war was the most important issue affecting their vote. Even on college campuses, the epicenter of the protest movement, an Axios/Generation Lab poll found that only 13 percent of students considered “the conflict in the Middle East” to be one of their top-three issues. An April CBS poll found that the young voters who wanted Biden to pressure Israel to stop attacking Gaza would vote for him at about the same rate as those who didn’t.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      If that’s true, he could at least go hard and at least get something good out of burning that support.

      Hell, he might just gain support from it if they spin it right.