843: A Little Bit of Power

Ira Glass

Maybe you saw this video this past week-- a veteran meteorologist in Florida, John Morales, on live TV, talking about the power of Hurricane Milton as it was still approaching the state. He was reading the barometric pressure numbers. And it just got to him. He choked up.

Ira Glass

He wasn't the only meteorologist who seemed pushed to the limits trying to communicate the scale and intensity of Hurricane Milton. Noah Bergren, who's on TV in Orlando, declared in a tweet, "This is nothing short of astronomical. I'm at a loss for words to meteorologically describe to you the storm's small eye and intensity. This is now the fourth strongest hurricane ever recorded by pressure on this side of the world." He later corrected that to the fifth strongest. "This hurricane is nearing the mathematical limit of what Earth's atmosphere over this ocean water can produce."

Reading that, you get the feeling of somebody trying their hardest to summon words that'll do the job to fully warn people-- evacuate. Get to safety. Fate and circumstance put these meteorologists into a situation where they could use the little bit of power they have to try to alert people and hopefully save lives. That kind of thing where somebody has a small amount of power, and then something happens, some moment arrives where they really can make a difference.

It sometimes happens in politics. And when it does, somebody who is not usually in the limelight, somebody who's not a household name, can end up with immense power. Events shake out so that random political figures suddenly have the entire weight of a country's future in their hands. Classic example, I think of Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state in Georgia, who famously got a phone call from then President Trump, asking him after the last presidential election, to find some votes or throw out some votes just to somehow overturn the results in Georgia.

Ira Glass

Raffensperger, of course, refused. There was another example like that a couple of weeks ago. Nebraska lawmakers were debating whether to switch the way Nebraska gives out its electoral college votes in presidential elections. Nebraska doesn't use the winner-take-all system that most of the states use, which means that it's possible that Kamala Harris could win one electoral college vote from Nebraska, which conceivably could decide the coming election. In fact, that is such a real possibility in this very close election that Donald Trump personally got on the phone to convince lawmakers to make the change.

And in the end, it all came down to one state senator, Mike McDonnell, a Republican actually, who dug in his heels and said no and ended up, it felt like, in every newspaper and news broadcast in the country.

Ira Glass

Today on our show, we have the story of a bunch of people. And fascinatingly, unlike these other examples, most of them are not professional politicians. These are just regular voters who suddenly find themselves in this kind of special political circumstance where they have a little bit of power to nudge and maybe to decide the election in one of the key battleground states this year. And lots of eyes are on them. And it's been a ton of suspense these past two months for how it would all play out. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

This American Life. These last weeks before the election, so much of the fight for the presidency is coming down to battles for individual slices of voters who can help throw swing states to one of the candidates or the other. So campaigns are targeting college educated suburbanites here or young male voters there. And there's a particularly dramatic example of this playing out with a huge chunk of voters in Michigan.

Michigan is a key state for Kamala Harris to win. She doesn't have many paths to the presidency without it. And Michigan, right now, is a complete toss up. So back in February, a reliable bunch of Democratic voters started to shake loose from the Democratic coalition. These were Arab-American voters and other voters who were upset about President Biden's support for Israel right now in the war in Gaza. There's a huge Arab-American population in the cities and suburbs around Detroit. Dearborn's the largest city in the country with an Arab-American majority.

And in February, these Democrats, who, by the way, do not want Trump-- they see him as even more pro-Israel than Biden-- these Democrats wanted to signal their displeasure with the bombings and the deaths of so many Palestinian civilians with US bombs and US support. So back during the Democratic primary, they quickly organized-- in just a few weeks-- a campaign to encourage Democrats to not vote for Biden as the nominee as a kind of protest vote. They would instead vote uncommitted.

They said they hoped to get 10,000 votes like that. They chose 10,000 because that's the number of votes that Donald Trump won Michigan with in 2016. 10,000. They did so much better than that. To their own astonishment, 100,000 people voted uncommitted.

Ira Glass

100,000 Democratic votes in the primary was so many people that, under Democratic Party rules, the party had to give these uncommitted voters delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. There were two from Michigan and about 30 from other states. Once inside the hall, these delegates could try to make deals, try to influence Mideast policy. After all, Kamala Harris needs these voters, particularly in Michigan. Michigan had enough uncommitted voters arguably to swing it for her or against her.

So the question was what could they get in exchange for their votes? Ben Terris, a reporter with The Washington Post, and our producer Zoe Chace, have been following one of the leaders of the uncommitted movement in Michigan for months, Abbas Alawieh. Abbas is a Democrat who's had many jobs working for the party. He very much wants Harris to win.

Ben and Zoe watch him try to broker some deal at the convention, and afterwards, that would satisfy the uncommitted voters and deliver them to Harris. It's been hard. It really could affect the election results. Here's Ben.

Ben Terris

We meet up with Abbas Alawieh the day before the convention starts. Abbas is someone I've known for years as a reporter. He was chief of staff for Cori Bush, one of the members of the squad.

I've met a lot of chiefs over the years covering Capitol Hill. And Abbas boss wasn't like any of them. He was young, barely 30 years old. And he didn't stick to operating in the shadows, commenting off the record, and staying out of the spotlight. He'd be at protests carrying a bullhorn. And he was unmissable, 6 foot 6, built like an NFL lineman. And he was fine standing out.

He also knew how to maneuver behind the scenes. And that really did catch my eye. He was a kind of insider-outsider type-- part policy guy, part activist-- and I hadn't seen a lot of guys like that before. So I stayed in touch. Recently, he left Washington and moved back to Michigan, where he grew up. And there, he got swept up into the uncommitted movement, which is how he ended up here in Chicago for the convention. He's an uncommitted delegate.

Being a delegate, that gets him back inside, back among the Democratic power brokers.

Zoe Chace

Right now, Abbas is standing on a street corner waiting for an Uber to take him to the convention center for a cable TV interview. A bunch of roads are closed for security reasons. No one knows which ones. City's gridlocked. Abbas is unruffled. When the Uber arrives, he folds himself into the car and starts chatting with the driver.

Zoe Chace

We're heading to the drop-off spot for the convention this week.

Zoe Chace

Abbas has a way of connecting with anyone he's talking to. It's partly why he became the de facto spokesperson for the uncommitted delegates. People just like him. He seems sincere.

Ben Terris

Abbas is Lebanese. He lived there till he was six. And he's still got a lot of family that lives in Southern Lebanon on Israel's border. When he was 15, he was visiting his grandmother when war broke out with Israel in 2006. He was forced to spend days sheltering in a basement while Israeli bombs were falling all around him, some of them made in the US. He was scared for his life. And he talks about it a lot. He says this is what activated him politically. It made him want to get inside the US government to make some kind of change that way.

Ben Terris

We jump out of the car. An escort from MSNBC meets us at the back of an hour's long line of journalists and other attendees. We get to skip to the front. And we're hustled into the convention center so Abbas can make his TV appearance. The arena is bumping. There's music blasting and delegates practicing their roll call vote.

Zoe Chace

A big part of why he's here is to talk to the press. It's a way to put pressure on the Harris campaign. There are TV studios set up all over the place. We watch him talk to PBS and MSNBC.

Zoe Chace

Abbas tells us this is their ultimate goal-- a policy change. But there are other ways the Harris team could respond to them.

Ben Terris

One thing he absolutely needs at this convention-- to show that his voters are being listened to and taken seriously by the campaign-- is a speaker. The convention is mostly about speakers, symbols of who the party is speaking to, who the party cares about. A Palestinian speaker on the main stage would be their chance for someone who can represent their perspective.

There are a lot of delegates here who do not want this to happen. Some of them probably agree with Abbas about the war in Israel. But the feeling is-- right now, you're bringing this up? This convention is an advertisement. Don't have a speaker saying Biden and Harris are doing something wrong. This is an event all about "look at how joyful and united we are."

(HOST) ZOE CHACE: Even as Abbas is sitting down for his MSNBC interview, someone who really doesn't see things his way is just leaving the set-- former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh. He's wearing an Israel pen. We grab him.

Ben Terris

By the second day of the convention, Tuesday, it's become clear that Uncommitted isn't going to get much on policy from the Democrats. But what they still might get is a speaker, and so they push on it hard.

Zoe Chace

Abbas is asked about it all the time. He's constantly on his phone, calling people, trying to make it happen, talking to Congress members, people on the Harris campaign, high-ranking DNC officials.

Zoe Chace

The call wraps up without more to it.

Zoe Chace

Abbas is always balancing two very different worlds through his phone. The first, his insider world. He has lots of contacts inside the DNC. He's heard that they're close to getting what he wants, but they can't get to yes.

Ben Terris

The other kind of call he's getting is from friends and family, people in Michigan wanting to know, how are you? How is it? Are you going to get us something? Family back in Lebanon call a lot, too.

This was back in August, when Lebanese militants from Hezbollah and Israel had been trading rocket fire across the border for months. At one point, Abbas hears from his aunt, who sleeps with slippers under her pillow every night, just in case. She had just fled her home in Southern Lebanon and gone north.

Zoe Chace

So his family, they're watching him on the news. They're talking about him in the group chat. They're telling him what they think of his tactics and his demands. And they're also telling him how scared they are. He's holding all these things in his head, which he says can be dizzying.

He knows just getting a speaker at the DNC doesn't change anything for his family, of course. But he believes it would be a powerful symbol that there is a political party in America that sees them, that's listening to them.

Ben Terris

By midweek, Uncommitted is trying to make the request for a speaker as acceptable as possible. They'd initially asked for two speakers on the stage-- one Uncommitted supporter and a doctor who treated patients in Gaza. But now they simplified that to one speaker. How about just any Palestinian? They suggest a few Palestinian-American elected Democrats, and they prepare their speeches to be vetted. Still, nothing.

Finally, it's Wednesday night, one more day left of the convention. They still haven't heard yes, and they still haven't heard no. So, yet another press conference outside the arena.

Ben Terris

And with that, all the Uncommitted delegates head inside because there's a speech they want to see. The parents of an Israeli hostage kidnapped by Hamas take the stage. The Uncommitted delegates tell me it's important to them to be here for this. They think the war is a tragedy. They want to honor the Israeli victims during their moment. And yeah, they also want to signal solidarity.

Zoe Chace

The parents walk out holding hands. The father stooped like he's got a weight on him. The feeling in the room is like heart in mouth. This is really different from most of the speakers so far, who were basically hype men. The audience breaks into this chant.

[AUDIENCE CHANTING "BRING THEM HOME"]

Zoe Chace

Cameras swivel not to the crowd, but directly up at Abbas. They're snapping pictures of him watching. I'm standing next to him in the corner of the arena with the rest of the Michigan delegates. Remember, he's 6' 6". He's so tall with his keffiyeh.

Everyone is standing. He, of course, is standing. For some reason, they really want to capture his reaction, if he has any, to the parents, watching him watching them. His face is expressionless but wet, tears-- tears all over the room, as far as I can tell.

At the time the parents were speaking, there was good reason to assume their son, Hersh, was still alive. His death was announced almost a week after the convention. One part of this speech in particular will hit Abbas hard. I know it.

Zoe Chace

The parents leave the stage, followed by an inexplicable choice of music.

[SMOOTH JAZZ]

And just then, Abbas kind of tears out of the convention hall, as best you can through incredibly crowded, narrow stairs, just makes a break for it. I see him stop just outside the arena. He's in this one weird quiet space, just before the hallway outside. He's alone, which he never is. He covers his face and sobs hard into the wall.

Then he's basically running out through the doors of the venue, through throngs of people outside, trying to talk to him. And he's rushing past them. I see we're headed to the security gate. We go through the security gate, and we're on the street. He doesn't look ready to talk. But I have to say something.

Zoe Chace

I think at that moment, Abbas knew that was all that was going to be said on the stage about the war in Gaza from the people directly affected by the war.

I head back to the convention hall. I see a bunch of other Uncommitted delegates outside. They're from all over-- Hawaii, Washington State, Rhode Island. Some are Arab-American, but not all. They got a text to come out and meet.

There's a weird empty feeling. Nobody's talking much. It seems like they're all just waiting for Abbas to come back. There's a physical energy shift out here, a loss of power, a loss of relevance, kind of, in the air, like the opposite of an adrenaline surge, a lonely exhale when the doors close behind you.

But just then, speaking of adrenaline, Abbas rushes back into the scene looking very intense. He grabs me by the arm and pulls me into a bus shelter that's right in front of the arena so that I'll be able to hear him. And he's speaking in this uncharacteristically quiet, angry way.

Zoe Chace

I have no idea what that means. And then Abbas turns and strides away, like if he were wearing a cape, it would have swirled behind his body. My co-reporter Ben is out here, of course. And he comes over to me. I just talked to Waleed, he says, one of the leaders and the unofficial press guy for the Uncommitted.

Ben Terris

Then Abbas calls people over for a press conference.

There's a huge mass of press, like five different mics, it seems, from Democracy Now alone. He asks for a moment of silence for all the lives that have been lost in the Gaza War. He recaps the ask for the Palestinian speaker, recaps the no, and then he sits down on the sidewalk and whips out his phone in front of all the reporters. And he calls a DNC official he's been talking to.

Ben Terris

Abbas had pulled his whole community into this effort. He drew tremendous attention to the Democratic Party's lack of interest in what mattered most to them. Now he's drawing attention to a tremendous failure. Is it his own? The Democratic Party's? Either way, it's got to be crushing.

Zoe Chace

What follows is a long night. Inside the convention center-- Oprah speaks, Tim Walz speaks. The whole thing is being broadcast on a big screen that hangs on the United Center wall, just behind the sit-in. The screen keeps showing images of the crowd dancing and laughing and giving standing ovations. But the press has noticed the sit-in, and so had the Harris campaign.

Ben Terris

At one point, Waleed, the Uncommitted press guy, comes over to us and says, can I tell you something?

Ben Terris

Waleed motions at one of those outdoor bus shelters, and sure enough, there's a clutch of people-- two women and three men-- on their phones, looking in our direction. One of them was hitting a vape like a steam engine locomotive. It was pretty funny, actually, watching them on their phone with people who were like 100 feet away.

Ben Terris

Fringe and small, not like organizers who could turn out 100,000 votes in a swing state. We've reached out to the Harris campaign about why they didn't agree to a speaker. They declined to do an interview. Usually, when they talk about this issue, all they'll say is that they're working around the clock on a ceasefire. But they were clearly doing some political calculations on this question around a speaker.

My best guess? They worry that agreeing to a speaker would risk controversy and turn off as many voters as it might appease, including Republicans they hoped to win over. Also, they might not feel like they need an endorsement from Uncommitted. They feel like they'll be able to pick up a bunch of their voters anyway. And they might be right about all that.

Zoe Chace

The sit-in goes all night without too much drama. They keep sitting the next day in the August heat. It's tiring. They look a little defeated at times. They're getting a lot of press attention, though, which is a small win for them. In the evening, they give one last press conference. They end the sit-in, and they head back inside the convention.

Zoe Chace

The party is winding down. Kamala Harris speaks, and then the convention is over.

Ben Terris

We head outside while people are streaming out of the United Center. They're carrying giant signs that say "Kamala" and are popping balloons on the street. Abbas has barely slept in days, but he's still standing. He's in a bind at this point. He came here with leverage, sent by a voting bloc in a swing state.

He said they could be convinced to turn out for Harris if the Harris campaign gave them something in return. But what did they give them? No policy change, no speaker. It was a big risk that these voters could be left even angrier or more hurt or more unheard than they were before.

Ben Terris

She's Arab-American, a friend from Capitol Hill. And she didn't want us to use her name. She's an aide to a Democratic member of Congress.

Zoe Chace

Now Abbas has to go home to Michigan, Dearborn, and have the hard conversations. He wants Harris to win. He convinced a lot of people to vote uncommitted so they could nudge her position on Gaza and Israel. They didn't succeed at that. How can he possibly get them to vote for Harris when he's coming back empty-handed?

Ira Glass

Zoe Chace and Ben Terris. We go to Michigan in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's show, "A Little Bit of Power." Ben Terris and Zoe Chace now continue their story about Abbas Alawieh and his bloc of uncommitted voters. They pick up the story three weeks after the Democratic National Convention. It's now mid-September. Abbas and other uncommitted leaders organize a community meeting in Michigan.

Ben Terris

Remember, Abbas helped convince 100,000 Michigan voters to check the box for uncommitted in the primary. Now, if they don't flip back and vote Democratic, it could really determine the results in Michigan. And without Michigan, Harris could really lose.

Zoe Chace

That little bit of power it felt like they had back in February has not gotten them an arms embargo, a ceasefire, any suggestion of a policy change from Kamala Harris, or even a speaker on the stage of the Democratic National Convention.

Still, Abbas and the Uncommitted leadership need to deliver some kind of guidance about what to do to these same voters.

Ben Terris

So we're in Dearborn, where this movement began in the first place. Many people here have family in the Middle East and lots, like Abbas, in Lebanon, which has been bombed and invaded by Israeli ground forces.

The day we arrive is just before that. It's the day a bunch of pagers exploded all over Lebanon in an Israeli attack that killed dozens of people and injured thousands. Abbas's phone is flooded with messages from his family in Lebanon, who are really frightened. Even people in Dearborn seem freaked out by their phones. Abbas has this dread hanging over him of what's to come.

Zoe Chace

Before the meeting, we meet Abbas at the coffee shop in town he calls "the office." He's scrolling through his laptop, through the statement he's going to read.

Zoe Chace

This is a tough crowd he's about to face. It's a bunch of people who are going to render a verdict on what he's been doing, and he's balancing a lot at once. He does still want people to vote for Harris, but Uncommitted promised they wouldn't mobilize Get Out the Vote operations for Harris without getting something from the campaign.

Ben Terris

Later that evening, Abbas joins Uncommitted voters and organizers at this huge Islamic community center in town. It's got tiled floors. It's very echoey. Chairs are set up in rows facing a panel of speakers. It definitely does not have a cozy vibe. It does not feel like it's set up for a discussion. Maybe 50 people show up. They're primarily older Arab men from the area, and it feels a bit like a meeting of the dads.

The organizers sit at a long table with microphones and talk for a while about what they have accomplished and how they got here. And finally, they talk about what's next. Abbas delivers Uncommitted's official word.

Ben Terris

Huh? The feeling in the room is people are confused at this muddled statement, which does not endorse Harris but seems to be telling them to vote for her anyway, and definitely do not vote for Trump or a third party. When it's finally time for questions, many hands go up. An early question is about strategy. Are we throwing away the power of our voting bloc by not recommending one person for us all to vote for?

Ben Terris

Abbas is pretty mad about the way the Green Party has been talking to voters in this part of the state. And he jumps in.

Zoe Chace

They get asked about a third party over and over again-- Jill Stein, the Green Party-- she says no more war; we're going to stop Israel. And she's been making a real play in this area, Southern Michigan, committing to no more war specifically. And another thing people are asking-- Democrats need to learn to listen to us. How else will they listen if we don't withhold our vote from them?

Ben Terris

Some people at the meeting are sick of listening to Abbas altogether.

Ben Terris

I'm voting my conscience as a physician, which means no genocide, he says.

Zoe Chace

The meeting ends pretty abruptly, but no one leaves. People stay trying to talk to Abbas and the other organizers. They have a lot of feedback. Remember, most of these guys voted uncommitted in the primary. Some of them volunteered, organized, phone banked, like this guy Amin Hashmi, who's one of many swarming Abbas after the meeting is over. He's considering voting for Trump.

Ben Terris

Abbas knows pretty much everyone in this room, and some for sure are offering their support, like nice job. I get the feeling that most of these guys, though, are thinking like this voter, Rifaat Dika. He's Lebanese, lived in Dearborn for 40 years now, and he's not convinced.

Ben Terris

As Abbas heads for the door, people are still coming up to him, making the case for voting third party.

Zoe Chace

One Uncommitted leader I talked to worried that maybe this whole thing had backfired, that by making it so visible that the Democrats weren't listening, by asking so publicly for a speaker and then not getting it, they lost more votes for Harris. Who's going to support a party that humiliated us like that? I asked Abbas about this.

Zoe Chace

Abbas had hoped that the Uncommitted movement would be out now, making calls, knocking on doors, mobilizing people, like they did in the primary, but for Harris this time. That's not happening.

He figures the best thing he can do with the time left is talk to people, person by person in his life, to convince people not to vote for Trump or for a third party. One of those people is his own dad. He was at that community meeting and still isn't sure how he's going to vote.

Ben Terris

We meet up with his dad at his warehouse in town. He is in sales, not car sales, though. Abbas was trying to convince him.

Zoe Chace

Conversations like that have only gotten harder to have. The war in Lebanon has escalated. It all feels very close to home in Dearborn. Abbas was recently at the funeral of a friend's father who was killed in Lebanon.

Honestly, every day feels like a funeral, some people told us. People are so upset and so consumed by what's happening overseas, it really doesn't feel like a time to have these difficult conversations about the presidential election.

Ben Terris

Still, the polls in Michigan continue to be incredibly close. The Harris campaign has made some attempts to reach out to Arab and Muslim voters recently. VP nominee Tim Walz met with a Muslim political organization which endorsed Harris. A group of 25 imams threw their support behind Harris, saying in an open letter that she represents, quote, "the best option for ending the bloodshed in Gaza and now Lebanon."

Zoe Chace

One Uncommitted organizer told us, listen, it's just too late to change minds. People she's talking to are sure they will not be supporting Kamala Harris, no matter what she does. Abbas was not impressed by those gestures from the Harris campaign. He said that is an insular, limited, and woefully inadequate approach that does not do much of anything to persuade people.

Ira Glass

Ben Terris with Zoe Chace. Zoe is a producer on our show. Ben is a political reporter for The Washington Post and the author of the book, The Big Break, The Gamblers, Party Animals, and True Believers Trying to Win Washington While America Loses Its Mind.

Well, our program was produced today by Lilly Sullivan. The people who put together today's show include Jendayi Bonds, Sean Cole, Michael Comite, Valerie Kipnis, Henry Larson, Tobin Low, Katherine Rae Mondo, Stowe Nelson, Nadia Reiman, Ryan Rumery, Ike Sriskandarajah, Laura Starecheski, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Nancy Updike, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu.

Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry. Special thanks today to Asma Mohammad, Layla Elabed, Lexi Zeidan, Abbas Al Haj Ahmad, Saul Levin, Jeremiah Ellison, Bernie Porn, Rima Mohammad, Bilal Bedoun, Jordan Acker, The Washington Post Style Section, and The Post Reports podcast.

Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's confounder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He got a Rolex the other day. All he does now is party with his new Rolex friends.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.