2024-02-28 12:54:00
11:12 p.m. ET, February 27, 2024
Analysis: Barack Obama faced “uncommitted” in 2012, too
From CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf
Democratic primary voters who opted to be “uncommitted” to pressure President Joe Biden to more forcefully address the crisis in Gaza had hoped to get 10,000 or more votes to send that message.
By 10:45 p.m. ET Tuesday, the count was at nearly 40,000 “uncommitted” votes, and results are still coming in.
When former President Barack Obama ran for reelection in 2012, more than 20,000 Michigan primary voters supported “uncommitted.” Nonetheless, Obama easily won the Democratic primary with more than 89% of the vote and went on to win the general election in Michigan.
It’s hard to remember now, but Obama vs. uncommitted was a meme during the 2012 primary, when Republicans were confident he could be defeated.
In Kentucky in 2012, only 58% of Democratic primary voters supported Obama. “Uncommitted” got more than 40% of the primary vote. In more than half of Kentucky’s counties, “uncommitted” got more votes than Obama did.
In West Virginia in 2012more than 40% of primary voters chose a federal inmate over the incumbent president. There were similar stories in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Louisiana.
Was it embarrassing? Yes. Did it keep Obama from ultimately winning reelection? It did not.
Granted, Obama was probably never going to be competitive in Kentucky or West Virginia, or any of the red states where he suffered these primary embarrassments.
Today, Biden very much needs to win as many votes as he possibly can in Michigan if he’s to win the election in November, assuming it’s against former President Donald Trump.
This means Biden will need to find a way to energize and convince the younger voters, progressive voters, and Muslim voters who might want to send him a message.
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