Arnold Plans to Protest Biden/SDDP Support for Israel at McGovern Day

DSU Student Robert Arnold failed to make the ballot to challenge SDDP exec Dan Ahlers for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. However, Arnold remains determined to challenge South Dakota’s Democratic establishment (to the extent that such an establishment exists in any practical, power-wielding way).

Alas, he’s planning to do so in one of the least productive ways possible: showing up to poop on McGovern Day Friday to protest President Joe Biden for not being tougher on “genocidal ethnostate” Israel:

Progressive members of the South Dakota community are organizing a protest on Friday, June 5th at the public areas outside the Ramkota Exhibit Hall in response to Former President Joe Biden’s appearance at the McGovern Day event, and to call for changes in overall political direction from the party’s leadership.

Organizers are gathering to protest the state Democratic Party’s decision to host former president Joe Biden as their keynote speaker this year at the party’s annual convention. Organizers emphasize that there has been political damage in tying the state party to the former president. “People are fed up with status quo politics and the political elite of this country” said Robert Arnold, a progressive helping to organize this protest. “The state Democratic party is showing us that they don’t understand where politics are, here in South Dakota, or the country overall. We need leaders who are not beholden to genocidal ethnostates, as a state with a history of genocide itself, one would hope our state party could be on the right side of things.”

Organizers say participants will call for the state Democratic party to openly acknowledge and condemn the genocide being conducted by Isreal in Gaza and Lebanon.

Exact protest times and assembly points will be announced once event logistics are finalized.

“We want the public to know early that there will be a visible and peaceful demonstration calling for diplomacy, accountability, and an end to endless war,” said Robert Arnold.

Organizers emphasized that the demonstration will remain lawful and nonviolent and encouraged participants to follow local regulations and public safety guidance [Robert Arnold, press release, received by DFP 2026.06.03].

Arnold makes many errors in this mistargeting of resistance:

1. The South Dakota Democratic Party did not invite President Biden to speak at McGovern Day to endorse genocide in Gaza. The SDDP invited President Biden because a former President of the United States is the greatest possible guest the party could invite to draw a crowd, media attention, and big bucks to its biggest annual fundraising event. Bringing Joe Biden to McGovern Day does not damage the party; it brings a net benefit of attention, cash, and enthusiasm (assuming Biden doesn’t fall off the Best Western Ramkota stage tomorrow night).
2. President Joe Biden is an honorable public servant who ably served his country for his entire adult life, 54 years. He could have happily retired in 2017, but instead he came back at age 77 to run a grueling and successful campaign to remove Donald Trump from the White House. Every Democrat in the banquet hall and the world should stand and applaud Joe Biden for his work to save democracy and the rule of law.
3. If you want to disagree with Biden’s policy after you get done applauding his lifetime of honorable public service, go for it. Remember, that as a real public servant and a good and decent man, Biden would sit and listen to your complaint. Donald Trump won’t listen to you; he’ll ask his supporters to beat you up and throw you out, and then he’ll have his utterly unqualified national intelligence director target you for prosecution.
4. Protesting the Biden/Harris Administration over Gaza helped put Trump back in office. To whatever extent Biden’s Israel policy was bad, Trump’s is worse, committing the United States to join Israel in two military assaults in Iran and facilitating a new Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Any available protest energy centering on Benjamin Netanyahu’s aggression should focus more on resisting the current President who is helping make bad things happen now than on slagging the man who is no longer in office.
5. To some extent, Gaza brought its destruction upon itself by allowing itself to be governed by Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel.
6. Democratic candidates Julian Beaudion and Nikki Gronli will not beat Senator Mike Rounds and GOP nominee for House Marty Jackley by running around South Dakota shouting that Israel is a genocidal ethnostate and that Joe Biden was a Zionist stooge.
7. If South Dakota Democrats of any stripe have any effective protest energy, they should be pouring every ounce of it into efforts to ensure that more Trumpists, like vile Toby Doeden, do not assume power. At the very least, if you’re going to show up in Sioux Falls Friday to throw tomatoes at Joe Biden, you’d better come out to occupy Rapid City during the Republican convention later this month and then spend every waking hour getting out every vote you can this fall for Beaudion, Gronli, Ahlers, and every other Democrat and like-minded independent on the ballot. Anything less only facilitates the Trumpist party’s accumulation of power and makes it more likely that the United States will keep backing aggression by Israel against its Arab/Muslim neighbors.

As I said when Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, if you let radical monsters take over your country, you can expect disaster to befall your country. Biden is not the radical monster we need to fight, and the South Dakota Democratic Party is not a radical monster for embracing and celebrating the 46th President of the United States and using him to rake in cash to fight the good and necessary fight against the real monsters in November.