Did you see Trump say police incinerate homeless people? Did you see, Biden forgot his own name? Might AI deceptions so flood media outlets that election 2024 gets postponed while some kind of guardrail is put in place to prevent blatant manipulations? That’s probably not likely, but it’s certainly not impossible.

Suppose election 2024 does happen. Will who wins matter? Will it make sense to proceed to the voting booth to cast a ballot, much less to urge others to do so as well? The argument in the U.S. that says don’t bother to vote says we have a government that has structure, relationships, and history that together determine outcomes more than who is in office. And even when who is in office somewhat matters, that person typically differs greatly from the person whose campaign we voted for. Candidates routinely promise X but then do Y. To vote seeking X involves magical thinking that we will get what we were told we would get. To vote legitimates fraud.

In contrast, those in the U.S. who say the electoral realm matters say “okay, we agree that Democrats and Republicans each exist to maintain society without fundamental changes to misogyny, racism, and the hierarchy of economic classes. However, we also think that even though non-voters’ criticisms are true, sometimes who wins can significantly affect people’s lives and later agendas. In the U.S., for example, the voting matters view says if we elect Trump in 2024 people will suffer and subsequent activism will only try to prevent and reverse changes made by the extreme off-the-rails wing of our one-party state. In this situation, electoral activity becomes highly relevant.

These two views certainly seem contradictory and often even assault one another, but in fact one can rightly believe that the United States government is a gigantic apparatus constrained in countless ways by dynamics built into its operations so that most of the time who wins elections will barely matter. And one can simultaneously believe that sometimes the gap between candidates predictable actions if elected is so great that effects on people and on the conditions under which people have to operate will matter greatly. More, to sensibly hold both views implies that the electoral realm is neither always irrelevant nor always highly relevant. Instead, it implies that in some places and at some times, elections are sufficiently important to warrant close attention and effort. Sometimes a candidate might even go so completely off the rails as to function way beyond otherwise system-preserving behavior. Trump, for example, is not a typical political candidate. He is instead an emissary of an extremely dangerous fascist project. Someday we will hopefully have a different kind of atypical candidate, an extremely worthy emissary of a revolutionary project, but that is not now.

So, all right, the key question remains. Should we vote and work to get out the vote in U.S. election 2024? Should person X or movement Y or organization Z engage with the 2024 U.S. presidential election even though to do so will take some time and take some energy that could have gone somewhere else? More, should X, Y, or Z participate even though electoral involvement not only takes time and energy, but can also adversely affect those who do it? How should we navigate our situation? Should we vote, saying it takes very little time and that to do so won’t overly alter our values and broader commitments? Or should we not vote, saying that engaging in the electoral realm might blunt our critique of government, distort our commitments, and legitimate injustice?

I think a plausible if not definitive answer is that—it depends. We should engage when to vote really matters, and so, for example, need not engage when we’re in a state where the outcome is a foregone conclusion or if the difference between the candidates in office would be nearly indiscernible. If we want to vote in those cases, okay, but it’s not urgent. On the other hand, in a situation where who wins could seriously undermine people’s lives and restrict the subsequent orientation and prospects of movements, we should vote. But, even when that is the case, how should we then vote and/or engage with phone calling or just talking to other people about voting so that our participation doesn’t become a slippery slope that takes us away from our broader and more fundamental understanding of how society works and what society needs?

In the 2024 election, isn’t at least part of the answer that we shouldn’t say “vote Biden, he’s great.” We should instead call Biden any name we want. We should proclaim what’s wrong with his policies and what’s wrong with the electoral system. But we should also say that because which candidate wins will greatly affect people’s well-being and what people will seek during the next four years, we should participate. And we should not just hold our nose when we vote in a swing state or work on the election, but we should organize toward the future.

Indeed, isn’t that the way we should do all things activist? If we pursue better wages at work, a reduction of racist police behavior in communities, or sane policies vis-a-vis the survival of the whole planet, shouldn’t we simultaneously try to build our collective capacity to go further? Shouldn’t we try to affect consciousness and understanding of the world not in a way that wins an immediate change and then goes back to business as usual, but in a way that wins immediate changes and keeps fighting to win more? So too for an election. If we cast a ballot, work to get the vote out, advocate among our friends, or write essays on behalf of keeping the worse candidate out of office, shouldn’t we do it in a way that doesn’t manipulate and lie about the candidate who we want to help win, but that tells the truth? Shouldn’t we vote or even make phone calls or write essays on behalf of voting, but never obscure what we need to do to move toward fundamental change? That seems to me why, when, and how to be electoral.

But that’s too abstract, it’s too general. What about the specific situation we now find ourselves in? A lot of people now say, totally understandably, “never Biden.” They say “of course I’m not going to vote for Trump, but I’m not going to vote for Biden either because how can I decide that the lesser of these two evils is Biden when Biden is financing, cheerleading, alibing for, and arming the genocidal behavior of Israel in Gaza? When somebody is abetting, financing, and arming genocidal brutality, how can we call that ‘lesser’?”

I have to admit, that feels like a compelling argument. Should I just hold my nose to vote for Genocide Joe? Is to hold my nose enough to justify that choice? No, it isn’t, but what can justify voting for Biden is not that we hold our nose to display that we hate him, but that we understand that to ignore the pain people will suffer under Trump but that they might not or will not suffer under Biden means that we care about human well-being. Someone might reply, “to not vote doesn’t mean I don’t care.” And I might respond, of course, “but what will your not voting and telling others to not vote look like to somebody who is concerned about abortion rights, labor struggle, global warming, or Fascist take over if a leftist in a swing state says “I’m not going to vote for Biden to beat Trump because even though polling is close in my state I don’t care about the election’s outcome as much as I care about the fact that I just can’t stand Genocide Joe.” Mightn’t that suggest to people that I operate aloof from their concerns? Mightn’t it be a bit like if during the recent UAW strike, a leftist comes along and says, “Hey, wait a second. The auto industry is a vile, disgusting capitalist, racist, sexist institution. Your strike is not going to change that. It may win some better circumstances and better income for some deserving people, but it won’t address anything fundamental. Worse, it might even ratify the idea that owners should dish out salaries, bosses should make decisions, and workers should obey them. For those reasons I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to advocate it. I don’t want to give my time to it.” Mightn’t that lead striking workers to feel that leftists are divorced from their reality? That leftists don’t give a shit about workers? Mightn’t they reply that “you leftists say you’re for fundamental change, but you’re not willing to participate in this strike to improve our lives and by which people can come to be radical and revolutionary just because you want to appear more radical than us.” These are real feelings that many workers have about a left that seems to be concerned with everything but them. It seems to them that we dismiss or even just ignore them. And couldn’t dismissing stopping Trump send a similar message?

For these reasons I think to favor electing a lesser evil is not crazy. But okay, to get specific about 2024, suppose you feel you’re sensibly advocating voting for a lesser evil because Biden is way better than Trump on many issues, but, then your friend says, “wait a minute. He’s Genocide Joe. Genocide is maximally evil. And it isn’t just that he’s part of the system, it’s that he’s aggressively abetting genocide. “So, again, why will you vote for Genocide Joe?” Well, the reason that I urge is because consequences matter, and the lesser evil’s consequences can be less bad for people now and less of a setback for continuing efforts to get better consequences later.

Could the election process be better? Of course, it could. One thing people propose is ranked choice voting which would allow us to vote for what we really want and when it comes down to two left still have our preference register. Another thing is finance reform. Elections would be better if candidates weren’t allowed to raise money at all and couldn’t spend on the election other than what is provided by the government. The government would provide the funds elections run on. Media wouldn’t profit but would have to provide the same ample space for both candidates, and if there are multiple candidates, then a framework that makes sense should be adopted. For that matter, is the Electoral College ludicrous? Of course, it is. And so is the Senate’s anti-Democratic structure, and of course we could just keep on listing things we could change until we finally propose an assembly structure that would enable real participatory democracy. But right now we don’t have any of that, and since to not have any of that means 2024 will have a ridiculously crazy election after which, nonetheless, people are going to take office, we have to ask ourselves will it matter who wins? Will it matter if Donald Trump becomes president again or if Joe Biden continues as president? Well, will Biden continuing as president be wonderful? Of course not. Will it automatically be bearable? Well, no, not really. Will movements keep seeking to end global warming? Yes, certainly. On the other hand, with Trump in power, movements will try to prevent him from sending police into the houses of people who organize against global warming. Trump in office will be very significantly different than Biden in office. With Biden we would seek positive gains. With Trump, we would seek to limit escalating losses.

So what’s going to happen if it is Trump versus Biden? Many people believe that the “Never-Biden” sentiment will cause him to lose. The totally justified horror and outrage that people feel about Biden’s grotesque Mideast policies will certainly hurt him, and his also grotesque policies about global warming will certainly hurt him, and together many people think those choices will cause him to lose. But at the same time, Trump is slowly but surely unraveling, and he too is losing support, perhaps not from his most fundamentalist base, but certainly from his less zealous support. So who is going to lose more and therefore lose the election? I suspect that as time gets closer to November, the lesser evil argument, which is currently seen as insane by a lot of people on the left who instead say “come on, you’ve got to be kidding, how much worse can we get than genocide,” is going to pick up momentum as being not insane. The world is insane. Our situation is insane. Our circumstances are insane. Fascism is insane. But voting for a lesser evil to prevent more damage and to create conditions for winning more benefits is not insane.

So can we understand our conditions and act in light of our estimate of consequences and retain our principled commitments? It is certainly possible. Countless people have faced horrible circumstances, horrible political arrangements, and fought those arrangements, including trying to get better ones that are short of revolution. Revolution is not going to come tomorrow. I wish it was, but making believe it’s going to come tomorrow and therefore saying that seeking anything less than revolution today is reactionary, is deluded. Sand since revolution is not going to come tomorrow, to try and move toward the fundamental change we seek we have to develop a basis for winning more on that road, for advocating more on that road, and for getting more people to want to travel that road. We have to look at the conditions that now exist and try to change them in a manner that gives us better circumstances for fighting on for comprehensive change.

It’s a horrible thing, but today’s issue isn’t just are the two parties not two parties but two wings of one corporate, racist, sexist party? Yes, they are and many have said so for decades. But 2024’s issue isn’t just is the process of elections corrupt, bent upside down, vile, and not remotely democratic much less self-managing? Yes, that is all certainly the case. And is Biden despicable? I don’t know how else to summarize what his policies in the Middle East say about him. So yes, he is despicable. Is Trump way beyond the pale? I mean completely off the rails? Is he a fascist? Yes, as best I can tell, the only argument against deciding he is fascist is to say he’s an entirely narcissistic egomaniac and he doesn’t care about a fascist vision because he doesn’t care about anything other than where he winds up and how much power and wealth he has. Okay, perhaps that is an argument against him personally being a fascist. He’s not sophisticated enough. He doesn’t care enough about anything beyond himself, but nonetheless, the process that he’s furthering is a fascist process. So all of that is true and it informs why I not only hate Trump but I also hate Biden. It informs why I can’t stand our electoral system but recognize that election 2024’s issue involves two candidates, Trump and Biden, who can become president. So how should we think about that?

Shouldn’t we think about it the same way we think about fighting for higher wages, fighting for better conditions, fighting for a change in policing, fighting for a change in courtroom dynamics, fighting for better housing, fighting for sane policies regarding immigration, fighting for labor rights and higher wages, fighting for abortion rights, and fighting against sexism in all its forms? That is, shouldn’t we think about elections the same way we think about all of that which is to ask how we can best impact outcomes in ways that help people in need and that help prepare means to win more?

We shouldn’t say Biden’s all you can get. Biden’s the best there is. The Democratic Party is our party. The Democratic Party is what we need. We shouldn’t say Boss’s boss. That’s the way it is. Owners own. That’s the way it is. Humans being greedy. That’s the way it is. Racism, ethnocentrism, religious bigotry. That’s the way it is. Men rape. That’s the way it is. The best we can do is to ameliorate some pain. That’s the way it is. We don’t say all that because all that is false. We should know enough to know that one is not denying the possibility of better to vote for Biden in swing states. We do that to reduce pain. But will it reduce the pain of the Palestinians to elect Biden? Not directly, but he’s more possible to force into reducing their pain than Trump is. And it is more possible to impact his foreign policies than Trump’s, which God only knows what they would lead to? Will it be easier to fight against fossil fuels and for ecological sanity with Biden in office than with Trump? We should vote Biden and urge that others do so too while we simultaneously say this is a disgusting, grotesque thing that we have to do and that we urge others to do because our choice is this or something much worse. And because the time that it takes us to vote in swing states, or, if we’re moved to it, the time that it takes us to help get out the vote, will be time well spent as long as we simultaneously advance what we really do believe in.

And finally, let’s consider one last observation. When we do advance what we believe in, in my case for example, participatory society, but in somebody else’s case participatory socialism, and in somebody else’s case just socialism, or in somebody else’s case feminism or anarchism or both, and so on, most of the time we do so for a very small audience hoping it will percolate out from there. In the electoral season, however, if we can psychologically and emotionally simultaneously engage in the electoral process and also advocate what we really want, then we will advocate what we really want to many many more people than usual. The incredible thing is that that will not only not ethically compromise, and not programmatically compromise, instead it will enhance our ability to ethically and programmatically reach out better. That, to me, is the last, I suppose, I don’t know what to call it—clinching argument.

I guess we’ll see who is actually running, how people decide to engage, and what the outcome is in the future. Meanwhile, maybe we can avoid having the discussion of our options become ad hominem.