Why pro-Biden Democrats should be cheering the president’s hecklers

What does democracy look like? President Joe Biden, who has rebooted his reelection campaign in 2024 to pivot away from “Bidenomics” and into a full-throated assault on Donald Trump and the threat of tyranny, offered the level-headed, pundit-friendly version on Monday when he spoke at a historic Charleston, S.C., church, the site of a white supremacist mass murder in 2015.

But as Biden was telling his predominantly Black audience that that the “poison” of white supremacy “has no place in America — not today, tomorrow or ever,” and that currently in America “the truth is under assault,” a gaggle of protesters rose from the pews of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church to offer the much messier version of democracy.

“If you really care about the lives lost here, then you should honor the lives lost and call for a cease-fire in Palestine,” shouted one female activist, as others chanted, “Cease-fire now!” at the 46th president as he looked on from the pulpit.

The scene was nothing new for Biden, who was first elected to public office in 1970, and he arguably handled the interruption well. “I understand their passion,” the president said as the protesters were escorted out. “I’ve been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza.” His supporters in the South Carolina chapel, meanwhile, sought to drown out the protest with loud chants of “Four more years.”

On social media, Biden’s most vocal supporters were less polite and more outraged.

“Mother Emanuel AME is hallowed ground in the AME church community and in Charleston especially,” MSNBC host Symone Sanders-Townsend, a former Biden press aide, posted on X/Twitter. “The shock of people in the crowd at protesters yelling out while President Biden was speaking from the pulpit cannot be overstated.” Other mainstream Democrats chimed in to agree — blending their complaints over the appropriateness of a church protest with obvious concern that young activists are hampering Biden’s odds of defeating Trump.

This wasn’t an isolated incident. Biden has increasingly been dogged by protests since Oct. 7, when the Israel-Hamas war broke out, sparking a wave of pro-Palestinian activism on the left. The president’s recent campaign launch in suburban Blue Bell brought out about three dozen demonstrators who waved signs like, “Genocide Joe has blood on his hands.” Larger protests in Philadelphia, New York, and other big cities have also targeted Biden with signs and chants, voicing anger at the U.S. government’s strong support of Israel, even as civilian deaths in Gaza have mounted.

» READ MORE: Is Gaza becoming Joe Biden’s Vietnam? | Will Bunch Newsletter

At times, the size of these protests has been dwarfed by the rage they seem to inspire from a certain kind of loyal Democrat, the kind who is older and more likely to watch MSNBC than read Jacobin. There’s a whiff of “get off my lawn” crankiness in their online yelling at these young whippersnappers, that “don’t you know Trump will be 100 times worse!”

But there’s also a very real fear of what the protests represent: a steady and somewhat surprising erosion of support for Biden among under-35 voters — especially young African Americans — that seems to have accelerated since October, with these demographic groups also most likely to oppose the administration’s policies in the Middle East.

A New York Times poll last month found that nearly three-fourths of people in the 18 to 29-year-old demographic disagree with the White House policies over Gaza, as Biden went from a 10-point lead to a 6-point deficit against Trump with these voters in less than six months. Since most analysts credit young voters for Biden’s narrow 2020 wins in key battleground states, noisy protests like the one in Charleston feel like the tip of an iceberg that could sink the Democrat in 2020.

But here’s my unpopular opinion: The Gaza protests are actually good for Biden — or at least they can be.

There’s two big reasons behind this argument, and the first one is highly practical. Throughout his long career, Biden’s best quality has been his ability to listen. And since he announced for the White House in 2019, protests — and his willingness to respond to those critics — made him first a better candidate, and then a better president.

It’s more than just Gaza. Young voters were starting to grow restless early in Biden’s term when ambitious and progressive campaign promises seemed stalled. There were protests around climate change and busloads of activists who descended on Washington to demand the cancellation of student debt. Biden responded by making climate action the number one priority in 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, and by announcing a plan to wipe out $500 billion in college loans (which was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court last year). Under-30 voters responded to that with a surprisingly strong turnout for Democrats in 2022’s midterms.

On the Middle East, pressure from the left, including some Democrats in Congress, has seen the White House and Secretary of State Antony Blinken go from unabashed, bear-hug support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in October to a more recent emphasis on convincing Israel to curb civilian deaths in Gaza. The shift is too little and also way too late for the estimated 22,000 killed so far in Gaza, but with 10 months until the fall election, there’s plenty of time for Biden and Blinken to become peacemakers instead of bomb suppliers. Good government really would be good politics.

The other reason for applauding protests instead of tsk-tsking them is that Biden has wisely made saving democracy his central argument for a second term, and nothing is a more essential element of the American Experiment than the right to dissent and air grievances with the government. It’s not an abstract thing. The right to protest is currently under assault across the United States, and the main culprits (although not the only ones) are Republicans.

Just this week, in the days after the Biden church disruption, the Tennessee legislature — rocked in 2023 by gun violence protests that led to the brief expulsion of two lawmakers — opened in Nashville with harsh new restrictions that will limit how many citizens can watch their government in action. It was the same story in Columbus, where state troopers inside the state Capitol were barring citizens from handing their petitions to Ohio lawmakers. In Atlanta, a hearing was held in the first case against one of 61 protesters fighting the “Cop City” police training center who’s been charged with racketeering — an extreme effort by Georgia’s top GOP officials to silence dissent.

Over the last seven years, states have enacted 42 laws to restrict protesting, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, and have debated scores more. When he was president, Trump approved tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square across from the White House, sent quasi-military Homeland Security forces to battle demonstrators in Portland, Ore., and even asked his defense secretary at the height of the George Floyd marches if protesters could be shot. A second Trump term would be far worse, with plans already discussed to call up troops as early as Inauguration Day to put down demonstrations if he wins in November.

Simply put, the fundamental right to do what those Gaza protesters did on Monday — to shout their demands directly at the president — will vanish if Trump becomes the 47th president on Jan. 20, 2025. If Biden truly intends to make this election a fight for democracy, he must remind the crowd about this the next time he is shouted down, because he will be shouted down again.

I understand why watching their candidate get called out as “Genocide Joe” is uncomfortable and annoying for Biden supporters. But it’s not nearly as uncomfortable as Trump’s tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue a year from now. These are the stakes.

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