In one segment on MSNBC, Democratic strategist Don Calloway said that when educational institutions in the Detroit area “don’t get the proper appropriations from the Democratic administration,” voters should “remember that it’s because your Democratic congresswoman told them not to vote for the Democratic president.”

Calloway is describing a hypothetical scenario in which a particular region’s educational institutions go underfunded as punishment for failure to show proper deference in a party primary. Were that to happen, it would be a blatant act of corruption. But Calloway seemed certain that Tlaib, rather than a vengeful Biden administration, would be at fault in this hypothetical situation. “You don’t slap the president in the face and then expect to be treated as a member of the caucus in good standing,” he said.

In another segment, Democratic Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman — who has broken entirely with any kind of remotely progressive values on the issue of Israel, which he supports unreservedly even as it indiscriminately destroys civilian life in Gaza — didn’t mention Tlaib by name, but said of any Democrats “criticizing the president publicly” that “you might as well just get your MAGA hat.”

Later in the segment, former Republican congressman David Jolly — apparently one of MSNBC’s vast stable of Never-Trumpers — chimed in that “if you want to see Donald Trump beat Joe Biden,” then voices like Tlaib’s “questioning Joe Biden’s leadership” are the way to make that happen. Never mind that Biden isn’t running against Trump in Michigan’s Democratic primary.

Even at this early stage of the democratic process, the likes of Calloway and Jolly and Fetterman seem to think, there should be a North Korean standard of loyalty: zero tolerance for any opposition to The Leader. Perhaps you can whisper in private that you wish he weren’t vetoing cease-fire resolutions and rushing arms to the Israeli government at a time when the International Court of Justice has issued a preliminary ruling that there’s a credible risk that Israel’s war crimes in Gaza will rise to the level of “genocide.” But you certainly can’t “criticize the president publicly.”

On one level, it’s absurd that the line of scrimmage has moved so far that the kind of contempt that used to be reserved for third-party voters is being applied to failure to display lockstep obedience even in a primary. On the other, Biden does have reason to worry. This issue could indeed be radioactive to Biden by the time he is actually up against Trump in November.

The disgust Tlaib has been expressing about the US-backed ethnic cleansing in Gaza isn’t limited to Palestinian Americans like her, or indeed Michigan’s large Arab American community more generally. A clear majority of Americans think the United States should promote a permanent cease-fire — even in polls that are slanted by absurdly postulating “defeating Hamas” as a possible outcome of the current slaughter. (Reality check: the mass killing and displacement of Palestinian civilians is far more likely to supercharge Hamas’s recruitment than lead to its disappearance.) And the sentiment is even stronger among Democratic voters. Only 20 percent of voters who went with Biden in 2020 are sure that what he’s backing in Gaza doesn’t rise to the level of a “genocide” — with 30 percent unsure and a whopping 50 percent saying the word fits.

That comes as little surprise when any voter with access to the internet is a few clicks away from footage that would freeze their blood, much of it taken by the very troops carrying out the atrocities. Numerous videos have circulated online, clearly taken by Israeli soldiers themselves, in which they ransack Palestinian homes, mocking their intimate possessions or joking about the home’s destruction. A Telegram channel that turned out to have been secretly run by an Israeli military office, aimed at demoralizing the enemy, ran snuff videos of Palestinians being brutalized and killed in Gaza with posts advertising the videos saying things like “you can hear the crunch of their bones” and talking about “exterminating the roaches.” How exactly does Fetterman expect, in such an environment, not to hear any progressives “criticizing of the president publicly”?

Tlaib is hoping that a major symbolic display of the growing outrage in Michigan might embarrass Biden enough to influence his decisions. I hope she’s right. But there’s an excellent chance that Biden will track a trail of Palestinian civilian blood from here to November, and that so many voters will stay home in disgust or vote for third parties that he’ll lose the election. It could happen.

I have no desire to see Donald Trump return to the White House. If it happens, though, don’t blame Rashida Tlaib. And don’t blame any voters who can’t get the sound of crunching bones out of their heads when November comes. Blame the president who’s providing the ammunition and diplomatic cover to the army “exterminating the roaches” — and who could have stopped any time he chose.