Why Arab Americans Are Poised To Reject The Democrats – OpEd

By Dalia Al-Aqidi *

In the US, alongside the historical theory that the president’s party usually loses seats in the Senate and the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, the Democrats have displayed many flaws over the past two years.  

This theory will benefit the Republican Party in the upcoming elections. Still, all the signs indicate that the GOP will achieve a massive victory for many reasons, the first of which is US President Joe Biden’s meager approval rate.  

And how could Americans vote for a political party that bears the responsibility for high crime rates, inflation and a questionable education system?  

With the decline of the progressive trend, minorities began to abandon their tendencies to favor the Democratic Party and vote for its rival instead. We saw this clearly in the 2020 presidential election, in which the majority of the Latino community in several states voted for Republican candidate Donald Trump.  

The estimated population of Arab Americans is about 3.7 million, which means they could become a political force if they got involved in large numbers. In this week’s midterms, it is expected that a large number of Arab Americans in particular and Muslim Americans in general will vote for the conservatives, feeling that the leftist progressives’ thinking and priorities have become more extreme.  

The Democratic Party has lost most of these votes, and here is why. Congressional candidates use specific issues to influence the Arab American voter. These include immigration issues and playing the “we welcome immigrants and refugees” card. However, this year, more severe problems are directly impacting Arab Americans’ daily lives and their children’s future, such as education.  

In the debate about abortion and the disagreement between the two parties’ visions, the Arab American voter tends to lean toward the conservative point of view, which prevents women from undergoing this procedure after the first trimester.  

In the city of Dearborn, Michigan, Muslim parents of young schoolchildren were concerned about what their students had been reading in school. They demanded the removal of certain “woke” books from the curriculum. According to Fox News, six books were challenged by parents. Among them were “This Book is Gay” and “The Lovely Bones.” The protesting parents defended their right to tell the local schools that they did not want their children exposed to graphic sexual material, stressing that these books were inappropriate for elementary schools.  

The Michigan demonstrations encouraged parents of students in Virginia, North Carolina and other states to also protest against their children being exposed to sexual content at such an early age.  

And to make it easier for the Arabs in the Detroit area to cast their votes, the state of Michigan is providing Arabic-language election ballots to increase the turnout — a first in US history.  

“The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was amended in 1975 to mandate language assistance, including the translation of election materials and ballots for specific language-minority communities with a history of unequal education opportunities, resulting in high illiteracy and low voting participation,” according to a report published by PBS NewsHour.  

The population of Americans of Middle Eastern origin is largely concentrated between Michigan, California, Illinois and Virginia, and they share the same concerns, goals and hopes as any other US citizen. Safety and security improvements and stopping the spread of dangerous opioids are essential to every American family. Therefore, many voters, including Arab Americans, were against the progressive idea of defunding the police.  

Two years of “wokeism,” chaos and crimes should be enough for Democratic voters to realize that they opened the door to the dangerous ideology of progressive politicians.

• Dalia Al-Aqidi is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy. Twitter: @DaliaAlAqidi