Leaders of ‘Uncommitted’ and ‘Abandon Harris’ movements reflect on Trump’s victory and early moves

Vice President Kamala Harris had just 107 days as a presidential candidate to change the minds of hundreds of thousands of “uncommitted” Democratic primary voters nationwide, many of whom voted in protest against President Joe Biden and his administration’s handling of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip.

But leaders from the Uncommitted National Movement and the “Abandon Harris” campaign say they felt Harris didn’t do enough to distance herself from Biden or outline how she’d handle the war differently.

And now, they’re closely watching President-elect Donald Trump’s early moves on the Middle East and specifically on Gaza to see what comes next.

“There’s been many ways in which Harris chose the path of Liz Cheney and the donor class on a range of issues, and abandoning working families in places like Dearborn, who make up the people Democrats claim to be fighting for,” said Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Layla Elabed, a Palestinian American activist and the sister of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. “And I think at the same time, Trump came in and fed a community that was grieving and in despair with lies and false promises.”

Trump ultimately ended up carrying Dearborn, a majority Arab American city in Michigan, by more than 6 percentage points — a massive swing from Biden’s nearly 40 point win there in 2020. But most Dearborn voters also voted against Trump, who got about 43% support in a deeply split field.

Elabed decided not to vote at the top of the ticket this year and focused instead on downballot races. 

“We provided Democrats with a pathway for victory and a way to unite the party and they spent 10 months ignoring us and berating us,” Elabed said. 

When Elabed and other leaders from the Uncommitted National Movement briefly met Harris in person last summer, she told the candidate that she wanted to be able to vote for her and asked Harris to talk with activists about how to change her policy toward the Middle East. She said Harris seemed receptive in that moment, but another official meeting never panned out. 

“She never came to Dearborn. She never came to speak to families that were first-hand impacted by our U.S. policy decisions that ultimately killed their family members,” Elabed said.  

About a month before the election, Harris met with Muslim and Arab…