Where Biden’s possible Democratic successors stand on the Gaza war | News about the 2024 US election

Washington, DC – The political storm sparked by last week’s presidential debate in the United States is still raging, despite assurances from the White House that President Joe Biden will not drop out of the race.

The 81-year-old president’s disastrous performance against his predecessor Donald Trump has raised doubts about his candidacy, if not his fitness for the office. During the debate, observers noted that Biden regularly lost his train of thought and appeared exhausted or confused.

This has increased pressure on Biden to drop out of his candidacy and make way for another candidate to represent the Democratic Party ahead of the presidential election in November.

Although many of Biden’s potential successors have expressed their support for him, this has done little to calm speculation about the president’s future.

Before the debate, Biden faced growing discontent among much of the Democratic base over his “ironclad” support for Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians and led to accusations of genocide.

So if a new Democratic candidate is nominated, healing the rifts the war has caused in the party will likely be a top priority: key constituencies, including young voters, progressives, Arabs and Muslims, have all signaled their dissatisfaction with the Gaza war.

Here, Al Jazeera examines what Biden has said about possible alternatives to the conflict.

Vice President Kamala Harris

If Biden drops out, Harris would be the favorite to succeed him at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Harris, a former senator for California, is the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica. She ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020.

As vice president, Harris represents the Biden administration, which has steadfastly supported the war on Gaza. Yet she was one of the first senior administration officials to use the word “ceasefire” when calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks,” Harris said in March.

Around that time, NBC News reported, citing anonymous sources, that Harris would have taken a more forceful stance against the war if the White House had given her the opportunity.

“This is Biden’s war. This is Biden’s failure,” one source said. “I think she would have asked for a ceasefire a long time ago.”

Harris has publicly stressed that she is completely on Biden’s side.

The vice president has been an ardent supporter of Israel throughout her political career. In 2017, the first measure she co-sponsored as a senator was condemning a UN Security Council resolution denouncing Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Later that year, she told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that she had a deep connection to Israel.

“Growing up in the (San Francisco) Bay Area, I fondly remember the Jewish National Fund donation boxes where we collected donations to plant trees for Israel,” Harris said at an AIPAC conference.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

Almost immediately after last week’s debate, commentators began to suggest Whitmer as a possible successor to Biden.

Whitmer, a popular politician from a key swing state, rose to national prominence in 2020 when she clashed with then-President Trump over policies related to the COVID-19 pandemic. She was easily re-elected two years later.

As governor, Whitmer rarely deals with foreign policy, but she has repeatedly expressed her support for Israel.

“We here in Michigan condemn this heinous act of terror,” she said during an event in a synagogue a few days after the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. “We stand with Israel. And Israel has the right to defend itself.”

At the rally, Michigan elected officials held hands while singing and dancing in support of Israel – a gesture that many in the state’s large Arab community found offensive.

In recent months, Whitmer has also expressed sympathy for the victims of the Gaza killings, but declined to comment on whether the rising Palestinian death toll amounts to genocide.

“I’m not going to get involved because I know that many of these terms are being used to incite and divide us,” she told NBC News earlier this year.

When Whitmer was asked by CNN in April whether she supported a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, she dodged the question.

“I believe that the hostages must be released and that the violence must stop, and that we must talk seriously about rebuilding Gaza and supporting the Palestinians,” she said.

During her 2018 gubernatorial campaign, Whitmer said she “strongly supported” a Michigan law that would penalize companies that boycott Israel.

Governor of California, Gavin Newsom

Since he prevented a recall attempt in 2021, Newsom has been considered a rising star in Democratic politics.

The former mayor of San Francisco is a vocal defender of the Biden agenda and served as a surrogate for the president’s campaign, appearing in the media and at last week’s debate.

Like other U.S. officials, Newsom strongly condemned the Oct. 7 attack and traveled to Israel last year, where he pledged his uncompromising support for the country.

“Despite the horror, I have seen and heard from the people of Israel a deep sense of resilience. A commitment to community and a shared purpose, especially in these difficult times,” he said in a statement after his Oct. 20 trip. “That is the Israeli spirit. And it is also the Californian spirit.”

By then, Israel had killed nearly 4,400 Palestinians in Gaza – about four times as many Israelis as were killed by Hamas on October 7.

In March, Newsom called for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip in a letter to California’s Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities.

“I condemn the ongoing and horrific loss of life of innocent civilians in Gaza,” he said at the time.

“I support President Biden’s call for an immediate ceasefire as part of an agreement to deliver urgently needed assistance to Gaza civilians and the release of hostages. I also strongly condemn Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel.”

Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro

Although Shapiro does not enjoy the national recognition of his fellow governors Newsom and Whitmer, he is still considered one of the most promising candidates to succeed Biden.

The governor, who previously served as Pennsylvania’s attorney general, won the election in this Mid-Atlantic swing state in 2022 with ease. He has enjoyed positive approval ratings since taking office.

Regarding the war in Gaza, Shapiro is a staunch supporter of Israel.

“The whataboutism that some use to justify Hamas’s baseless actions is ignorant and wrong,” he said last year. “There is no moral equivalence here. Israel has the right to defend itself.”

Shapiro also bluntly condemned what he saw as anti-Semitic accusations by protesters opposing the war in Gaza.

In April, he compared pro-Palestinian student protests to the Ku Klux Klan. But the protests on campus have been largely peaceful, and student leaders say the anti-Semitism accusations misrepresent their goal: to get their universities to divest from Israeli companies linked to the country’s human rights abuses.

“We have to ask ourselves if we would tolerate something like this if these were people in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about African Americans in our communities,” Shapiro told CNN.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg launched an unlikely presidential campaign in 2020 despite his thin resume, having served only as mayor of a college town in Indiana. Nevertheless, he did well in the early primaries before dropping out and endorsing Biden.

In 2021, he became the first openly gay cabinet secretary after the U.S. Senate appointed him to head the Department of Transportation. But he has been criticized for his behavior in several crises, including massive delays in civil aviation and a train derailment in 2023 that led to a chemical disaster in Ohio.

However, liberal commentators describe him as an effective communicator who can counter Republican arguments.

In a rare comment on the Gaza conflict earlier this year, Buttigieg suggested he understood why many people voted “undecided” in Michigan’s Democratic primary in protest against Biden’s support for the war.

“First of all, I understand it, and no one can feel good about what’s happening there,” he said on the “Pod Save America” ​​podcast in February.

“And I would also like to say that negotiations are currently underway to ensure that two things happen: an end to the killing and the return of the hostages.”

During his presidential campaign, Buttigieg expressed his support for Israel.

In 2019, he also said the US should not “foot the bill” for a possible annexation of the occupied West Bank by Israel.

But months later, he seemed to change his position. Asked if he would agree to condition aid to Israel to prevent annexation, he said: “If you’re asking me to commit to ending American support for Israel, the answer is no.”