Several days ago I received an email from a good friend who had just come back from the West Bank in Palestine. My friend has been connected with Palestinians and active in the movement against Israel’s brutal occupation for a very long time.

One line of her email gave me pause: “When you think of voting for Biden, remember that this horror is of his making.”

I have been active since last October in the US movement demanding an end to US support of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, an end to Israel’s decades-long occupation, and for self-determination and justice for the Palestinian people. I’ve participated in weekly Friday street vigils in a nearby town every week that I am home. I’ve written about this issue. I’ve made phone calls to elected officials demanding they call for an immediate ceasefire and massive humanitarian aid for Gaza. But I think to encourage people not to vote for Biden/the Democratic candidate on the basis of this issue is very problematic for two reasons.

1–The next US President is going to be either Trump or whoever the Democrats eventually nominate. As problematic as the Biden Administration’s positions and actions have been for most of the last nine months since October 7, it is a fact that, because of the widespread popular revulsion against Israel’s actions in Gaza, the massive activist movement demonstrating in the streets and the constant pressure brought from within the Democratic Party by its progressive wing, the Biden team a couple of months ago finally began to use its leverage over the Netanyahu regime to demand that they change their tactics, with some success.

Does anyone think that Trump and the Republicans would be a better alternative when it comes to Palestine? Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, with Trump’s support, is bringing Netanyahu to the US to speak publicly from the floor of the House in late July!

2–In general, I don’t think a candidate’s position on any one issue alone should be how progressives decide who to vote for, especially in this Presidential election. I think it is important to look at both the overall program and the past actions on all the major issues by candidates, as well as whether or not a candidate has any chance of winning, or perhaps not winning but generating such a big vote that the progressive mass movement will be advanced despite a loss.

On issue after issue Biden and the Democrats, despite their ties to big money and corporate power, are better than Trump and the Republicans: the climate emergency, women’s rights, abortion rights, voting rights, racial justice, lgbtq+ rights, labor rights, democratic rights and the right to organize and demonstrate, to name just some of the huge differences.

Of course, there are two Presidential candidates whose positions have been strong on the Gaza war and on these other issues, Cornel West and Jill Stein. But neither of them will win the Presidential election or draw very many votes, as reflected in Stein’s past voting results and current, month-after-month polling results. The primary, immediate practical result of their campaigns will be to draw votes away from the Democratic candidate and increase the odds that Trump wins.

There is one thing they could do which would change this inevitable result. They could publicly call for their supporters to vote their conscience, at least, if not for them to vote for the Democratic nominee, in the battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. They could acknowledge the existential threat posed by the MAGA movement. So far this hasn’t happened.

For the planet, for the people, for our rights, for democracy, Trump and MAGA must be defeated at the ballot box on November 5^th.

This article is also published on the Future Hope Column.

---