{"id":23430,"date":"2012-11-12T16:45:20","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T12:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=23430"},"modified":"2012-11-14T08:40:42","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T04:40:42","slug":"re-election-the-arab-americans-obama-has-to-thank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-politics-analysis\/re-election-the-arab-americans-obama-has-to-thank\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Election: The Arab-Americans Obama Has To Thank"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Arab Americans are like the majority of American voters–they are primarily concerned about the economy, health care,\u00a0the education of their children, the environment and favor fair tax reforms; they are troubled about the rising number of the unemployed and poor, the human and financial cost of America’s two decade wars, the direction of US foreign policy in the Middle East and their country’s world standing.<\/p>\n

Arab Americans (Christian and Muslim) make up 0.5% of US voters and on November 7th they played a critical role in the 2012 US presidential election casting their votes strategically- impacting the election results in a big way. Collectively they handed Obama a second term, secured Democrats control of the Senate and made their voices heard in local state elections. Concentrated\u00a0 in\u00a0Key\u00a0battleground states of Florida<\/a>,\u00a0Michigan<\/a>\u00a0, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia their 4 million votes were significantly weighted considering the small margin of the popular vote Obama won (3,255829 votes). In Florida alone their vote secured Obama a crucial win.<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a02000 Census Bureau<\/a>, the state of Florida is home of 77,000 Arab Americans,\u00a063 percent<\/a>\u00a0being Christian and\u00a024 percent<\/a>\u00a0Muslim. Florida’s Arab American record voter turnout on Election Day tipped the scale in favor of Obama giving him a slim margin of victory with 73,855 votes.<\/p>\n

Republican Party’s political strategists saw the writing on the wall a bit too late. In late October the Romney campaign launched a coalition of Republican Arab American supporters. The “Arab Americans for Romney<\/a>” was a last ditch effort to garner Arab American support for Mitt Romney’s presidency bid- but Romney’s effort to court Arab American voters was too late to make a difference and by then his record on the issues\u00a0was already sealed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Arab Americans made a deliberate choice to support the better leader for their country. They\u00a0mobilized their community<\/a>, registered new voters and in extraordinary numbers went to the polls delivering a decisive win for Obama, the Democratic Party and while at it made critical contributions to key state wide elections.<\/p>\n

The Arab American vote was not a resounding affirmation of Obama’s past four years record as it relates to his administration’s treatment and handling of Arab Americans. \u00a0They endorsed Obama while well aware that during his administration federal agencies\u00a0continued and expanded the\u00a0Bush administrations’ profiling guidelines<\/a>, broadened the authority and scope of the Patriot Act , sanctioned the employment of ethnic mapping, spying, coercing and unethical use of informants to collect information in the most intrusive manner. During Obama’s first term Arab Americans experienced \u00a0unprecedented wide spread abuse of government powers with multiple cross agency collaboration. The\u00a0NYPD\/CIA<\/a>\u00a0useless surveillance program of innocent people where for six years agents were paid to listen, bait and map the entire NY city Arab American community without uncovering\u00a0one lead<\/a>. \u00a0Undercover agents \u00a0monitored Arab Americans casual interactions at their local hookah bars, coffee shops, houses of worships and community gatherings. Logging thousands of man-hours and\u00a0thousands of pages<\/a>\u00a0with absolutely nothing worth their time– while senselessly wasting millions of dollars that would have been better spent addressing the burgeoning number of\u00a0NY City homeless families and children<\/a>. Most disturbing under the Obama administration the department of Justice has been busy collecting and illegally storing intelligence information on American citizens’ political and religious beliefs, which is a clear breach of US constitutional protections.<\/p>\n

Mindful of these facts, Arab Americans also recognized that during the 2012 campaign President Obama expressed his position on a number of national issues slightly better than Mitt Romney. They overwhelmingly supported his health care reforms, proposal to end outsourcing American jobs, and support US troops withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. They voted for President Obama giving him a last opportunity to fulfill his vision of hope and change that his administration has yet to articulate.<\/p>\n

Arab Americans concerns of the Obama’s first term are legitimate and are not limited to their own community. Many Americans are voicing alarm with the erosion of our civil liberties, constitutional and religious rights. Whether Arab American or not these concerns are central to America’s core beliefs, democratic values and the unity and discourse of our nation.<\/p>\n

Aware that Obama may not deliver in his second term Arab Americans reached out to their local community.\u00a0 They mobilized and built coalition with progressive Americans and the interfaith community to defeat fear-mongering candidates. Identifying common interests they built local support,\u00a0informed and educated<\/a>\u00a0and coalesced around shared objectives. \u00a0Their bet and belief in their American neighbors, friends and community paid off helping defeat Islamophobic hate mongering candidates.<\/p>\n

Each state with a large Arab American constituency made a difference. Florida’s 18th congressional district is home of a large Arab American community that helped defeat extremist hate peddling Republican and tea party darling\u00a0Rep. Allen West<\/a>\u00a0by about 2,500 votes.\u00a0 Also Florida’s 22nd District, two Jewish Candidates were locked in a highly contested battle – Arab American chose to vote for Democrat\u00a0Lois Frankel<\/a>\u00a0defeating former Florida House majority Republican leader Adam Hasner who left a Florida House meeting\u00a0when an imam delivered the opening prayer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Northern Virginia is home of a thriving politically active Arab American community\u00a0organized, funded and endorsed<\/a>\u00a0Democratic former governor Tim Kaine against his Republican rival George Allen delivering a key win for the Democrats.\u00a0Illinois Arab Americans galvanized their community and supporters defeating the\u00a0Islamophocbic Republican Joe Walsh<\/a>\u00a0handing a sweet victory to Tammy Duckworth.\u00a0In Ohio Arab Americans supported Sen. Sherrod Brown a favorite of progressive Democrats.\u00a0 In New Jersey Arab Americans mobilized to support Bill Pascrell (D) against\u00a0Rabbi Shmuley Boetach<\/a>\u00a0(R) who attacked Pascrell on\u00a0his lukewarm support for Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 2012 Presidential elections saw Arab Americans political maturation. Understanding that small minorities can become critical blocks of voters in key states. Banded together in every battle ground state they gave President Obama a second chance and the Democratic Party a decisive edge in the Senate. Their vote deserves recognition – but will it be recognized? Time will tell.<\/p>\n

Locally Arab Americans understood that their fight is America’s fight and the onslaught on their liberties, privacy is an attack on America’s constitutional guarantees. They enlarged their circle and built\u00a0 local coalitions with conscience Americans who share their inclusive American vision and are equally concerned with the use of hate, divisiveness and fear to advance narrow political agendas. Together they managed to deal a major blow to hate peddling politicians. Meanwhile they are still hopeful that Obama may come through in his second term and along the way managed to curtail the spread of the hate and fear politics in their own back yard.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MAI ABDUL RAHMAN: Single women and Latinos had a key role to play in re-electing Barack Obama but Arab-Americans played a major part as well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":23453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,83,692,60,482,135],"tags":[24,15740,423,1103,3182,8550,2105,2652,4536,15742,2106,191,1353,2103,14180,121,2317,7342,4302,1808,3460,3967,18302,8588],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23430"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}