“The targeting of immigrants, the targeting of Muslim communities—we’ve seen this rhetoric climb over the past several months and I anticipate it getting worse,” Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who’s a Democrat, informed the Washington Publish. “The fact that we do not have a strong counterresponse from [Democratic] elected officials at all levels of government is the most frightening, especially when the vitriol is coming from the highest office in the world. Communities are looking for people with courage, people with a backbone, who are willing to stand up.”
Regardless of Dearborn having a Democratic mayor, let’s take a second to revisit the Michigan metropolis’s personal decisions.
Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud
In 2020, the U.S.’s first Arab-majority metropolis backed Joe Biden with 69% of the vote. 4 years later, solely 36% of the town’s voters supported Kamala Harris. Forty-two % voted for Donald Trump. One other 18percentwent with Jill Stein. Though nationally solely 10% of Muslims who voted for Biden in 2020 voted for Trump in 2024.
And the town didn’t simply assist ship Trump’s victory, they celebrated it. Politico captured it with a headline that wanted no embellishment: “Dearborn’s Arab Americans feel vindicated by Harris’ loss.”
They weren’t simply vindicated. “They feel like they’ve been redeemed,” Dearborn Metropolis Council President Michael Sareini informed Politico. “They wanted to send a message and they did.” Message delivered.
A neighborhood activist even described the outcomes as “we became much more politically mature.” However “maturity” apparently meant voting for the candidate who needs to expel Gazans and stamp his personal ego into the rubble with golden monuments.
“They didn’t vote for Trump because they believe Trump is the best candidate,” he mentioned. “No, they voted for Trump because they want to punish the Democrats and Harris.”
And punish them they did.
So why are the identical individuals now demanding that Democrats rescue them from the very penalties of the end result they helped create? Why are they pleading for cover from the person they empowered?
It’s not simply contradictory. It undermines their very own acknowledged trigger. They aren’t directing their protest vitality at President Donald Trump or Vice President JD Vance—the 2 males who’ve backed ethnic cleaning in Gaza. They’re not mobilizing towards the precise federal energy concentrating on immigrant and Muslim communities. As an alternative, they’re protesting Democrats who presently don’t have any energy to cease any of it.
That isn’t a method. It’s a tantrum on high of the final tantrum.
Civil rights activists didn’t march solely in cities that had already built-in. Professional-immigration teams don’t goal sanctuary-city mayors. Professional-choice activists don’t restrict their rallies to states defending abortion rights. Profitable actions confront the supply of the hurt, not the closest comfortable goal.
If “political maturity” is actually the purpose, then it begins with selecting efficient targets and proudly owning the results of political selections. Don’t hand the keys to a person promising to do precisely what he did the primary time round, besides worse. And don’t go operating to the very individuals you labored to defeat, demanding they clear up the mess.
That’s not braveness. That’s not conviction. It’s simply unhappy.
