For more than four decades Americans have been on the look out for that October Surprise, nothing to do with department stores putting out discount coupons but of something out of the ordinary happening that threatens to change the direction of a political season.
In 1980, the Reagan campaign was getting bent out of shape in the event of President Jimmy Carter springing a last-minute surprise and getting out the 52 American hostages before polling day; and in 1992 the indictment of Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra Arms scandal that threatened to derail a second term for George Herbert Walker Bush.
And between 1992 and now, historians and media commentators have talked of other things that have been passed off as October Surprises. In 2000, news of George W Bush’s run-in with the law for driving under the influence of alcohol; Donald Trump’s descriptions of how he deals with women or Hillary Clinton’s problems with e-mails in 2016; Covid and Trump or Hunter Biden in 2020; and in 2024 to Iran for being involved in election meddling or a more serious charge of attempting assassination of former President Trump as a way of settling scores for General Qasem Soleimani who was taken out in January 2020 in Iraq.
The Gaza effect
Iran is now back in the news, thanks to Benjamin Netanyahu who has successfully thrust himself into the American elections process — accidentally or by design. The attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists brought forth a brutal response from the Jewish state in the Gaza; and making matters worse was Tel Aviv’s decision to go after yet another proxy of Iran in the Middle East, the Hezbollah in Lebanon.
For the last several months Netanyahu has been cocking a snook at the Biden administration, refusing to play game over Gaza.
The goings on in the Gaza has had its impact in the American Presidential elections, not just related to Washington’s relations with Tel Aviv and reviving the debate over whether Republicans or Democrats are better for Israel, but to the extent to which Democrats were going to retain the electoral hold over the Arab-American vote, especially in a critical battleground state like Michigan.
The louder the campus protests got, Democrats started getting an earful on two fronts: from pro-Palestinian supporters that the Biden administration was not leaning on Netanyahu enough and continuing to supply weapons that were being unloaded in the Gaza; and from conservative Jewish voters that Biden and Harris were not doing enough to stem the tide of anti-Semitics.
In the final stretch, no matter how much the Biden administration says that it has nothing to do with Netanyahu’s strikes in and around Teheran, “only” on military targets and not energy sites is going to make little difference.
The Arab-American community has made it clear that it is neither endorsing Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump in 2024. It is estimated that there are about 400,000 Arab-Americans in Michigan, many of them outside Detroit which is supposed to have a large cluster of Palestinians, Lebanese and Jews.
In 2020 President Joe Biden took this state but not so this time around for Harris. Says Osama Siblani of The Arab American News out of Dearborn, Michigan: “People are really right now in a dilemma. They really don’t know where to go. It’s like somebody hit them with a two by four, right on their head. So now they’re in total disarray. They may vote for Donald Trump, just to punish Biden and Harris, just to say, ‘Look what you’ve done.’” The other scenario would be voting for Trump by way of punishing Harris for her association with Biden; or for the Green Party candidate which would actually be advantageous to the former President.
The writer is a senior journalist who has reported from Washington DC on North America and United Nations