I do not think, in my 40-plus years on this planet, there has been a Democratic presidential candidate who has so openly appealed to the right while so blatantly ignoring potential voters like myself, by which I mean leftists who willingly hold our noses and vote for Democrats to stop right-wing extremists—like Donald Trump—as I did in the last two presidential elections.
This election is different—most importantly because of Harris’s commitment to funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza (not to mention the branching out of the massacre to Lebanon and The Occupied West Bank) but also—and the two are certainly related—the Harris campaign’s courting of support from neoconservative warhawks.
When it comes to the genocide of Palestinians, the Harris campaign has sought to silence if not antagonize anti-genocide voters—even Democrats and Democrat-friendly activists. Probably the most notable example of this was refusing to have a Democrat Palestinian-American speaker at this past August’s Democratic National Convention, even though several anti-Trump Republicans spoke at the convention.
Since Harris accepted the nomination to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, she has made it clear she will continue to arm Israel while framing the daily massacre as the nation’s “right to defend itself.” The anti-genocide movement has further had to have our intelligence insulted by Harris surrogates that she is—with zero evidence to support this claim—working behind the scenes for a ceasefire (in Gaza). More recently the Biden-Harris administration has stated that if Israel does not allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, they will cease supplying weapons–in thirty days. In other words, two weeks after the election. Given that Israel has also crossed every “redline” that Biden claimed would be cause for pulling military support, this threat rings quite hollow. Harris has said and done nothing to show she would actually hold Israel to any more accountability than her predecessor.
Harris’s response to voters who demand a genuine commitment to a permanent and just ceasefire has been, in one form or another, what she said, a couple of months ago to Salma Hamamy and Zainab Hakim, two young Pro-Palestinian activists who disrupted a rally: “(shut-up), I’m speaking.”
In the last few weeks of the campaign, Harris has focused almost exclusively on gathering support from the right. The campaign has touted that they have received the endorsement of over 200 Republicans, including very openly embracing the support of one of the most despised figures to hold political office in recent American history: former vice president and one of the central architects of the Iraq war Dick Cheney.
Campaigning with Cheney’s daughter, Republican and former congress member Liz Cheney, Harris publicly thanked Dick Cheney for “his support and what he has done to serve this country”—signaling to neoconservatives warmongers—disenchanted with the isolationist rhetoric of Trump—they have a new home in the Democratic party. Notably, Harris has also received and touted the endorsement of another George W. Bush administration alumnus: former attorney general and torture apologist Alberto Gonzales. And last week she announced she would, as president, have a bipartisan committee (Democrats and Republicans) advising her on policy.
Notably, Harris is not just accepting anti-Trump Republican endorsements, she is actually positioning herself if not to the right of Trump on immigration than close to it.
The Harris campaign lately reminds me of Biden’s 2019-2020 Democratic Primary campaign on acid. Biden, back then, suggested his strong relationships with Republicans over his decades-long senate career showed he could “reach across the aisle” to get things done. Harris is saying, it seems, there isn’t much need to reach across the aisle to Republicans if you become them.
It is difficult to parse out how much this courting of Republicans represents Harris’s ideology or how much is merely an electoral strategy. There is an argument to be made for a kind of “popular front” against Trump, who I believe does pose a real threat to seriously undermine what little democracy is truly left in America—and certainly there is much to be worried about in terms of, among many other progressive concerns, reproductive rights and the rights of LGBTQ+ folks.
While it is true that there are some disaffected suburban independents and Republicans—whose votes are up for grabs—it is also the case that few Americans, historically, tend to vote on foreign policy. In other words, committing to not funding Israel as long as it commits war crimes—for instance—may lose Harris the endorsement of Dick Cheney, but not most centre-right voters. It is additionally difficult to see how touting endorsements of former cabinet members of one of the most unpopular White Houses in modern American history is a good strategy rather than indicative of, at least when it comes to foreign policy, of an ever rightward shifting Democratic Party that has the hubris to be so unapologetically hawkish—at home and abroad—while having the audacity to believe they can count on their progressive base to turn out in big enough numbers for them to win.
At some point the progressive and liberal Democratic base will have to reckon with the fact that they care more about beating Trump than their own party.
A popular front strategy, if it were genuine—that is, if the Dems thought Trump must be beaten at all costs to defend the republic—would denounce Israel’s many violations of international law and cut funding off because of them. That would not be enough for someone as far left as me, but quite possibly is enough for traditionally Democrat Muslim-American voters in the must win rustbelt swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. In those states, anti-genocide Green Party candidate Jill Stein is, according to polls resoundingly outperforming Harris among Muslim-Americans. The Harris campaign’s response, rather than acknowledge these voters and address their concerns, was to invest in television attack ads against Stein. I would not say that was the last straw, but it only strengthened my resolve to vote for her over Harris.
Jill Stein is far from a perfect candidate and of course has a zero percent chance of winning the election, but in a significant way, voting for her is a vote to keep the Democratic Party from sliding completely into the neocon abyss, or at least a refusal to reward them for doing so.
More importantly this election—though the Harris campaign has had every opportunity to avoid this—is now, in large part, a referendum on genocide. As Stein is the only anti-genocide candidate who is on the ballot in the majority of states, a vote for her is the best/only way to register a “no” to genocide vote. To state, as liberal Democrat supporters tend to do, that Trump will be worse when it comes to Gaza, obfuscates this point.
And while my vote in Ohio, because it is a red state, only matters symbolically (and may not be counted as Stein is currently in a legal battle over this due to an attempt, based on a technicality, to disenfranchise everyone who has already voted for her), I want to be clear about this: I would vote for Stein in a swing state if I could. A campaign to withhold votes on genocide can only succeed, in the long-run, if you follow through with the threat.
I don’t think losing this election will change the Democratic Party’s approach to Palestine (though it might have some impact), but there is a principle here that is more important than this or any election: and that is civilization hinges on the agreement that there is no greater crime than genocide. And each generation that is confronted with genocide owes it, not only to the victims of it, but to history (including in honouring the victims of the Holocaust) to never condone or excuse it. I think American society, in the long term, is headed in a disastrous direction (one even worse than what a Trump presidency can bring) if there is an exception to this.
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