Battleground state Democrats hesitant to support Biden over Gaza: 'Very hard to say yes'
'I have a very hard time imagining myself being able to pull that lever for him,' one PA Democrat said
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Some Democrats in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, are hesitant to support President Biden in November over his position in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
"I have a very hard time imagining myself being able to pull that lever for him seeing what [Biden] has endorsed and allowed to happen," Abe Taleb, who lives in Pittsburgh, Pa., told The Wall Street Journal, referring to Gaza. "It’d be very hard to say yes, because voting is still a tacit endorsement of that individual."
The Taleb family's support for the president wouldn't be in question if it weren't for his support for Israel, according to the WSJ. Biden has faced backlash from the left of his party over his support for Israel as an anti-Israel movement has taken shape across the country.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Witnessing the ongoing suffering of children and fellow parents makes it even more difficult for us to simply overlook the administration’s actions here," Jane Olszewski, 36, a Democratic voter in Pennsylvania, told the outlet.
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President Biden speaks during the United Auto Workers union conference at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24, 2024. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Olszewski also pushed back on the idea that she was aiding the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump by not voting for the Democratic president.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The idea that Democrats are the only bulwark against authoritarianism and fascism is day-by-day proven less legitimate by Biden and his administration ignoring clear evidence of Israel’s war crimes and their refusal to end their unconditional support and take meaningful action to stop Israel," she said.
Olszewski and Taleb, who are married, told the Journal that both their families have gotten into shouting matches over their views.
"I find it hard to believe in the face of, like, 15,000 dead kids, that there is still some greater plan at work. If there were, it has failed," Olszewski said of Biden.
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President Biden speaks during the reproductive freedom campaign rally at George Mason University in Manassas, Virginia, on Jan. 23, 2024. (Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu via Getty Images)
"I used to think a lot of Biden, because he’s a statesman. He’s been around," Lutfi Taleb, Abe's father, told the Journal. "But the words that I heard from this man in the last six months made me go 180."
He said Biden's statements on Gaza were like a broken record.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"[Biden] can’t come and tell me, ‘I’m not that great, but the other person that’s running for president is worse,'" Lutfi said. "If it’s gonna take four bad years of somebody else for [Democrats] to wake up and change course, then so be it."
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A group of Georgia voters told CNN in April that they wouldn't be voting for Biden or Trump, citing the president's handling of the war.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"If there is no substantive policy change, when it comes to the genocide in Gaza, then there's not really a discussion for me," one young man in the group said.
"I think what Biden has done in aiding and abetting genocide is just something I cannot stand for," another woman added.
Fox News' Kristine Parks contributed to this report.