Palestinian-American congresswoman secures fourth term after beating Republican James Hooper

Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib defeated her Republican opponent in Michigan’s 12th congressional district election on Tuesday, securing a fourth term as the only Palestinian-American woman in the US Congress.

The Associated Press called the race with just 18 percent of the votes counted.

Tlaib secured 77 percent of the vote, defeating the Republican Party’s James Hooper who received just 19 percent of the vote.

Her victory comes amid the backdrop of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians so far and has been diplomatically and militarily supported by the Biden-Harris administration for more than a year.

Tlaib has been a vocal critic of the war, calling for the US to withhold weapons from Israel. Her opposition to the war on Gaza and support for pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses have drawn harsh criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
      851·
      15 days ago

      We need to go more to the right!

      — Democrats, every time they lose

      • nillocEnglish
        522·
        15 days ago

        No, sadly, we probably need to stick to old white men. Just not as old as Biden was.

          • nillocEnglish
            57·
            15 days ago

            He was half white, and male, 2/3rds of what appears to be necessary to win.

            Not to mention the fact that it was 16 years ago when he was elected. I in college for the 2000 election and have been watching the slide since it was stolen. I told myself that we could swing back when Obama was elected, and thought we’d be ok last night too.

            • jol
              23·
              15 days ago

              Nah, black people are cool. They have funny handshakes, bro. But an Indian president will need a couple decades more to win the racist vote.

        • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
          1·
          15 days ago

          In addition to Rashida Tlaib winning her district, Tammy Baldwin and Elissa Slotkin both won their states, when Harris lost. How does your narrative possibly make sense of that?

        • Piers@beehaw.orgEnglish
          58·
          15 days ago

          I really think if the only thing that changed was Kamala’s race and gender we’d have woken up to different news today.

    • UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      12·
      15 days ago

      They will not. They will do what they always do:

      • rely on people being pissed off enough after four years of Rep rule to vote for the Dems no matter what
      • rely on a few select ‘free’ topics (abortion, LGBTQIA+ rights etc) to show how different they are, when they are mostly exactly the same when it comes to topics that matter to most voters daily (ie topics that affect them personally, like their own economic situation)

      I recon the only thing that could actually make them shift to the left is strong opposition from the left, basically a left Ross Perot, if you want. One that collects all the votes of the people who were too disillusioned this time around to actually vote, and then basically says “Shift to the left enough, be a real alternative, and you can have these”. Without someone or a party like that, no, they will not change. They will continue to further the interests of billionaires, just like the Reps.

    • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml
      9·
      15 days ago

      So, I’m just pondering here, but it seems to me that it’s a bad Idea to run an unpopular presidential candidate because when voters choose to stay home, they also take their down-ballot votes with them.