The Arab v Black Electoral Rumble

“I can distinctly remember reporting on a number of Arabic men that willingly referred to Kamala Harris as all kind of b*****s and horrible, horrible names, horrible, horrible opinions.”

— Cleopatra Draper, WVON, “Voice of the Black Community”

African-American radio host Cleopatra Draper is worried. The victory of Democratic Socialist Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Democratic primary for US Senate has revealed a growing political schism between Black and Arabic voters. According to the Cook Report, Stevens led El-Sayed by about 8 percentage points in counties with higher Black populations, while El-Sayed underperformed in traditional African-American strongholds like Detroit.

And yesterday in Wisconsin, Francesca Hong, the gubernatorial candidate of the Democratic Socialists of America, was upset in her primary race by David Crowley, the African-American County Executive of the Black township known as Milwaukee.

WVON’s Draper saw this backlash coming. She told me, “The videos that came out of Michigan of Arabic men and how they felt about Kamala Harris was heart-wrenching.”

Uh, oh. It’s not the Mideast conflict that is splitting up the Democratic Party, it’s the Midwest conflict between Black and Arab voters, a division promoted by new friends of the Muslim community, higher-income white progressives.

There are coastal variants. In New York, the DSA celebrated its defeat of five-term Democratic Congressman Adriano Espaillat, Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in the 13th Congressional District. Way to go, DSA! A brilliant redux of the GOP Tea Party insurgency.

Palast discusses the DSA’s race problem on WVON’s Cleopatra Show.

And then there’s the DSA heartthrob William Lawrence, who won the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s 7th Congressional. Lawrence said that, “Black political leadership are a pillar, frankly, for establishment, capitalist, imperialist American power … It really defangs the White Left.” Yep, they really do some pretty good de-fanging.  Ever ask WHY?

Lawrence doesn’t have to worry, though.  His district, which takes in yuppie-heavy Michigan State college towns, is 81.6% white, allowing Lawrence to write off the tiny 5.5% of voters who are African-American.

Look, I don’t have a dog in this race. But most Americans do. As my guru Jello Biafra would say, these midterm races could be bedtime for democracy. I take my journalist’s non-partisanship very seriously. But I am permitted to take note of the Dems’ preference for circular firing squads.

Back to the question DSA’s Lawrence didn’t ask. WHY do Black and Hispanic leaders “defang” the Left? WVON host Draper says: “I was watching some of the reporting from Black men in Michigan that did not feel confident that El-Sayed could be the victor, and they just wanted a safe bet.”a

[Listen to Draper and Palast on WVON’s The Cleopatra Show.]

Why would Black men go “safe”? Because, as De La Soul explained,“Stakes is high.”

College students and gentry in Madison and Ann Arbor may worry more about Gaza than about food stamps and state employee pensions. I get that. They’re entitled to their opinions. (Emphasis on “entitled.”)

 Mandela Barnes campaigning for Governor of Wisconsin” in 2026. Photo courtesy of the Mandela campaign.

But I admit to some shock that DSA pushed former Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes out of the Governor’s race. I know Barnes well and for the life of me, I don’t see him as less progressive than DSA’s Hong, except that the soft-spoken, but militant Black man — an auto worker’s son — did not think the State of Wisconsin needed its own foreign policy.

As a kid in my twenties, I had a disagreement with my bud Jesse Jackson, who, though a democratic socialist at heart, pushed Black Capitalism. Reverend had a sophisticated Marxian analysis that in capitalist America, Black folk first need to get some capital to get in the game.

In 2016, to Hillary Clinton’s chagrin, Jackson stuck with Bernie Sanders all the way through the 2016 Convention. But Reverend hadn’t the least question about how he would vote in the general election — for Clinton — given the danger of Trump to his community. Opposing Jackson, some of my Hollywood friends joined up with Bernie or Bust and walked away from the election.  So, I ask my friends, How’s bust treating you?

As a statistician (a grim business, nailed to facts), I calculate that the massive Arab community vote for Jill Stein in Michigan handed the state to Trump in both 2016 and 2024. This is based on the findings of the Council on American-Islamic Relations that, for example, in 2024, 59% of Michigan Muslims voted for Stein, the Green Party candidate, while Kamala Harris won only a dismal 14%, half the number of Muslim voters who backed Trump.  

Now you see why WVON’s Draper warned that the Muslim rejection of Harris, a Black woman, would create lasting animosity. “I don’t see how you come back from that.”

Palast’s Wisconsin purge report, issued in 2020 by Black Voters Matter.

It’s not a question of political positioning — it’s political suicide for progressives to target “establishment” Black and Hispanic leadership. These leaders were chosen by their communities, not because they have passed a policy purity test, but because they can deliver and protect the life-and-death services for those not born on the sunny side of the privilege line.

In 2020, Black Voters Matter Fund issued my report showing that the state was illegally purging tens of thousands of voters from the rolls.  Almost all of those who lost their rights were either Black voters in Milwaukee or students in Madison.  In other words, these two Democratic demographics are being strangled in the same electoral noose. So, Dems, listen to the wisdom of a great community organizer, Benjamin Franklin, who said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Are progressives conducting a long-overdue purge of the Democratic Party’s ideological weaklings or creating an ugly racial, religious, class divide?

I can’t say. All I know is, stakes is high.