‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Biden tells Michigan voters amid Gaza protests | US election 2024 news

The US President tried to reassure voters in the important swing state that he was a better option than Donald Trump.

US President Joe Biden has renewed his commitment to carry out his faltering re-election campaign, telling voters in the key swing state of Michigan that he is the better choice, despite growing calls for him to drop out of the race.

“I’m running and we’re going to win,” he told a crowd holding signs supporting him at a rally in Detroit.

“I am the candidate,” he said Friday. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Biden, 81, continues to face questions about his mental health and faces calls to resign following his disastrous performance in the debate against former President Donald Trump on June 27.

Al Jazeera’s John Hendren reported from Detroit, pointing out that Michigan has a large Arab and Muslim-American population, centered in Dearborn, south of Detroit.

“To put that in perspective, Biden received about 600,000 votes in the Michigan primary, easily defeating all other contenders, but about 100,000 voters cast their ballots ‘undecided.’ These were largely Arab and Muslim Americans, as well as young Americans angry about his handling of the war in Gaza,” he said.

“So Biden has to change the minds of those voters. But Biden is also having little success with black voters, young voters and Hispanic voters. He’s polling below his last place, so that’s a problem for him across the board. He’s just not getting the numbers he did four years ago.”

During his tour of Michigan, Biden stuck to his rhetoric that a second Trump presidency would pose a threat to the country.

“Do you really want the chaos that existed under Donald Trump as president? Back when three million jobs were lost in the United States,” he said.

Biden also announced that in the first 100 days of his second term, he would codify abortion rights, sign the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, raise the minimum wage and work toward a ban on assault weapons – for which he would need a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Democratic Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters did not attend the Biden rally, but a number of union and religious leaders did.

Among them was Auto Workers Union President Shawn Fain, who praised the president for standing “on the side of the working class.”

But a group of lawmakers, political donors, activist groups, news agencies and Hollywood stars called on the president to step down and let another candidate lead the party.

“Save Palestinian lives”

A group of protesters gathered for the Biden rally in Detroit and sought to express concern about the rising death toll in Israel’s war on Gaza, in which more than 38,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, activist Lexis Zeidan said the protesters had a common goal: “to save Palestinian lives.”

Zeidan was one of the organizers of the “Undecided” movement, in which hundreds of thousands of voters across the country cast their ballots in the primaries to protest Biden’s Israel policy.

“The goal was to make him understand that he will lose the White House if he does not listen to the demands of the people to ensure a permanent ceasefire,” she said.

Zeidan added that Biden still has a chance to win back some voters in the key swing state, but only if he shows an abrupt change.

The US remains Israel’s strongest political and military backer. In a post on X on Friday, Biden hinted at progress in ongoing diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, saying both Israel and Hamas had agreed to a “framework” he laid out six weeks ago.

But recent ceasefire negotiations with international mediators in Egypt and then in Qatar have so far failed to produce an agreement.

Suehaila Amen, a civil rights activist, said Arab and Muslim Americans in the Detroit area felt “disenfranchised and disrespected” because of his unconditional support of Israel’s war against Gaza.

“He is a warmonger and a genocidal advocate. He continues to support and abet genocide against the innocent civilians in Gaza,” Amen told Al Jazeera.

“Biden continues to show the world community that all he cares about is giving his allies free rein to kill innocent men, women and children at will with our taxpayers’ money. As a head of state, he is a disgrace to the nation.”