You happen to live in Michigan or Wisconsin and perhaps even have a family member, friend, or loved one recently murdered by an American bomb or bullet delivered by the IDF in pursuit of ethnic cleansing or literal extermination. Or, you happen to live in Pennsylvania or Arizona and abhor the genocidal assaults on Gaza’s schools, hospitals, roads, and homes sanctioned, aided, armed, informed, and even cheer-led by the Biden-Harris administration. You are pro-Palestinian and anti genocide. You don’t want to ratify much less reward murder. You want to reject it and Harris too in accord with your outrage. You want to vote for Stein or West or some other third candidate, or to abstain in the coming November 5th U.S. election. And who the hell am I, and indeed who is anyone, to suggest that you ought to instead vote for Harris?
I and those who hate Trump who suggest such a seemingly impertinent, arrogant, and unfeeling thing, are your friends and allies, treating you with respect, but also saying and advocating what we believe.
Post election, either Trump or Harris will be President of the United States. It may occur by way of a very small vote margin in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or just enough other swing states to shift the Electoral College tally. For compelling, heartfelt reasons, you of course don’t want to give Harris your vote. The idea understandably, rightly, nauseates you. So what could possibly cause me or anyone else to nonetheless urge that you vote for Harris to stop Trump? How could Trump be worse than Harris for Palestinians? What could be worse than genocidal warfare? For that matter, isn’t Trump just another White House occupant with the White House spewing violence either way?
I hope you will let me offer a long analogy before I answer. It does seem to me to be germane even if far from exact.
Imagine, again, but this time that you live in one of the thousands of small rural towns in Michigan, Pennsylvania or some other swing state. You have family members addicted or dead by oxycodone profit-seeking. You are suffering hunger and indignity at the hands of unemployment, or you fear it’s coming. You believe, with considerable reason, that your future is incredibly dark. You believe Harris will deliver more of the same. You hate her and the Democrats. You believe Trump may be different and that your oppressed community may benefit. You signed on to Team Trump way back despite reservations. You intend to vote for him now too despite reservations. You are not a MAGA fanboy. Perhaps you have some racism in you—who in the U.S. doesn’t—but maybe you voted for Obama and would have voted for Sanders. Perhaps you have some sexism in you—and which U.S. voters have none—but you are not misogynist. Now, however, you greatly fear the on-going dissolution of your familiar prior rural lifestyle and community. And remember, death and destitution have assaulted your relatives and you too. So who the hell am I, indeed who is anyone to suggest that you ought to vote for Harris to Stop Trump?
It obviously isn’t an exact analogy—angrily voting for Trump and angrily not voting for Harris are not the same. But in the second case, pretty much everyone on the left would answer that we are people who know that Trump would be disastrous for you, for rural America, for all America, and for the World, and who want to try to convey that. We want to suggest that while you feel you are about to vote in accord with your righteous anger at Washington killers, nonetheless you are actually about to vote for the predictable, horrible consequences of another Trump Presidency. Thus, might it not be better to vote for Harris to stop Trump in swing states and then follow your anger to pursue beneficial demands against all Washington killers?
So, again, who are we to urge pro-Palestinians and genocide-outraged Americans of all backgrounds as well as all kinds of progressives to help stop Trump? We are also pro-Palestinian, progressive, radical, and even revolutionary fellow Americans who hope to convey that on the one hand Trump in office would simultaneously urge and aid Israel to go ahead and get the slaughter over with. Trump would not back off, nor even complain, much less cut off arms shipments. He would make opposing the U.S./Israel war on Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and beyond massively harder than would Harris. He has warned about “the enemy from within,” the “radical left lunatics,” who should be handled, he says, “if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.” Trump is also doubling down on his infamous “Muslim travel ban”: “I will ban refugee resettlement from terror infested areas like the Gaza Strip, and we will seal our border and bring back the travel ban.”
But let’s say that’s not quite right. Let’s say Trump would just let Netanyahu proceed as Biden/Harris have, so far. An election is not a single policy contest. Palestine is unimaginably important not solely for Palestinians, but also for the world. But so is global warming. Drill baby drill, says Trump. So is the fascist drift around the world that would be greatly strengthened by Trump in the White House important. Go baby go, says Hungry’s own fascist Viktor Orban to Trump. Even if we ignore—and we should not—the increased pain and suffering that Trump would cause—would the left having to focus in the U.S. and elsewhere on defensively preventing horrendous reactionary setbacks rather than on pursuing positive progressive advances be a strategic gain?
You may say, yes, yes, sure, I get that Trump is horrific. But we have to punish the Democrats. They are killers now. If the Democrats pay no price for their criminality they will continue with it. If we punish them, they will listen next time. But Green candidate Nader helped to beat Gore and that didn’t cause Democrats to feel like listening to Greens. Likewise Green candidate Stein helped beat Clinton, and almost Biden, and that didn’t increase the Democrats listening to Green or other dissenters. Quite the opposite in both cases. The way to have impact is to keep Trump out of power and then push Harris as hard as we possibly can for improvements. More, the way to have impact is to develop sustained organization. How would it help left movement building to help Trump win so we then confront far worse circumstances, in the Mideast, in the U.S., and worldwide?
You may still say it will help because next time the Democrats will pay attention. The left will have more influence. If various constituencies who hate Trump deliver defeat to the Democrats come November, you may feel that those constituencies will have a new-found electoral power here in the United States. Again, even setting aside the four or more years of damage with Trump as President and Project 2025 filling out his government, does U.S. politics even work that way? If Democrats conclude that Greens or pro Palestinians caused Kamala Harris to lose the presidential election, then after the election will Democrats decide they need to listen to people on their left? Or will they decide the left is crazy. We hate the left. And like now, decide that they have to try to capture offsetting votes to their right? Dare I say it, perhaps people who don’t vote for Harris out of justified hatred but also a desire to impact Democrats, don’t know Democrats quite well enough.
In 2000, to punish the Democrats, many Muslim Americans voted for George W. Bush. Did that make Democrats pro-Muslim? Did it stop George Bush from invading Iraq and killing half a million Muslim Iraqis? In 2016, after Hillary Clinton’s defeat the Democrats didn’t decide they should have listened to Bernie Sanders and been more left wing. They attacked the Bernie wing of the party, blamed them for Trump, and nominated Biden.
But you say, I want to vote for Stein or West, or even not vote, but of course not vote for Trump. Why do you say that is aiding Trump. It is because you hate Trump and don’t want to support him but by taking one vote, yours, away from Harris, whatever else you do with that vote, she has one less vote. That helps Trump even though that wasn’t your intent. You may say okay, but the feeling of defeat, resignation and futility from voting for Harris, even to stop the massively worse Trump, would be just too debilitating for me to fight on effectively.
Okay, but what might overcome that? Maybe if we spend some time on November 5th to vote for Harris to stop Trump, and between now and then organize for demonstrations November 6 to demand an immediate permanent ceasefire, full withdrawal, and initiation of massive reconstruction and humanitarian aid including reparations from Israel and the U.S. all won by way of a U.S. arms embargo against Israel. And how about if from Election Day to Inauguration Day we do the same, so that after a ten minute honeymoon for President Harris, or a zero minute honeymoon for President Trump—pro Palestine activism surges.
Finally, in which context would such militance more likely succeed? With Trump and Project 2025 and its minions in office attacking anyone who isn’t down on their knees to him, or with Harris in office and a majority of her supporters supporting the demonstrators?
Finally, why do I write these words? I fear that a large number of people who hate Trump, and hate genocide, and hate denying reproductive rights, and hate violently repressing and deporting millions, and hate all forms of exploitation, and hate drilling all the way to planetary suicide may be about to punish Democrats by voting for Stein or West or just abstaining. If so, I believe they may wind up aiding all that they hate and hurting all that they aspire to with horrible and perhaps even horribly unimaginable consequences. So, in swing states, I do urge that in good conscience and with strategic insight people vote to stop Trump even though it entails voting for Harris.
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