Not Electing Kamala Harris Will Harm, Not Help The People of Gaza
This is an urgent moment.
In the days before the most consequential election of our lifetimes, a disturbing fiction has taken hold in many progressive voters’ minds: the idea that rejecting Kamala Harris in the voting booth is a way of hurting her personally; that abstaining or protest voting is an effective individual penalty for what they believe is her mishandling of the deadly crisis in the Middle East (one that began decades ago and that will surely outlive all of us).
They see their vote (or their lack of it) as a righteous middle finger to the Vice President, and almost gleefully imagine they are injuring her by opting out or voting third party, boasting about enjoying her possible defeat:
This emotional response, is and has always been evidence of people of privilege who are either not students of recent history, have not been paying attention to the words and actions of the two candidates, or who refuse to play the movie ahead past November 5th.
Ever since the sickening Hamas-birthed terrorist horrors in Israel on October 6th and Israel’s scorched earth response since then, we have seen a rising sentiment here among some Left voters that has made this a dealbreaker for them regarding the Vice President, despite the simply unthinkable alternative.
And yes, the Biden Administration’s handling of the staggering violence that has unfolded in Gaza is surely greatly flawed and far from what many of us wish to see, myself included. But the reality, is that while a rejection of Kamala Harris would be a political defeat for her, it is an act of premeditated violence against the Palestinian people.
Donald Trump has admitted to weekly conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, and that he has advised him to “do what he needs to do” in Gaza.
He has recently promised to reinstitute a Muslim ban here, and in May of this year, the wannabe president said, "Under no circumstances should we bring thousands of refugees from Hamas-controlled terrorist areas like Gaza to America.”
Trump has also repeatedly promised “bloody” mass deportations of immigrants from this country, both legal and illegal.
In what universe will willfully placing him in power do anything but put the people of Gaza in greater peril?
What is the substantive evidence that this will ultimately be anything but a performative purity stance, that helps no one other than those who squander their votes by intentionally empowering a monster?
Kamala Harris is an imperfect human being, but one who will be accountable to the American people as its leader. She will be a President who we can criticize and call to task in areas of disagreement—and we will.
Donald Trump will be a sociopathic, violent, self-described “dictator on day one,” with complete immunity from any atrocities he chooses.
To both sides these two candidates and offer false equivalencies is tantamount to participation in further bloodshed.
Not voting for Kamala Harris isn't penalizing Kamala Harris, it's penalizing the Palestinian people. It is enabling greater violence against them in the name of protecting them.
It’s also penalizing women, LGBTQ people, people of color, immigrants, indigenous people, Muslims, Jews, the sick, the elderly, the poor, and pretty much every person here and elsewhere who will be irreparably harmed by a second Trump term—not to mention, Democracy, America, and the planet.
Another Trump presidency will place our present and our future in the hands of a several-times indicted, morally-inverted, court-established rapist who has stacked the Supreme and lower courts, the GOP, and local school and election boards with sycophants and surrogates; a man whose complete contempt for our Constitution and for humanity are on full display. There is no justification for intentionally allowing this.
If Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans prevail in November, not only will the violence in and around Gaza continue, that violence will find in Republicans a willing and passionate accomplice. We will see an escalation of the death and destruction, not a reduction of it. The Middle East will become more volatile and unstable, not less so. And Kamala Harris will not be damaged by being removed from the White House, the rest of us will be. That is the point here, one many voters may be missing in their passionate and beautiful outrage to the atrocities in Gaza.
No politician or political party will ever perfectly embody our values or respond blamelessly to the myriad of crises that present themselves. We don’t wait to vote only when we have full moral agreement with a candidate but we choose the one that shares the greatest affinity with the totality of our values.
We vote, not merely intellectually and emotionally but strategically as well, wielding our collective wills like a shield against the greatest threats in front of us. Jill Stein is not a shield. Cornel West is not a shield. A third party vote is not. A silent vote is not.
I can’t fathom moderate and liberal voters who would hold Donald Trump and the Republicans and their theocratic intentions like a loaded gun to the heads of hundreds of millions of Americans because they are angry and disheartened by what is happen to Gaza.
Again, that isn’t at all an excusing of what is happening there or the United States’ role in it, but an acknowledgment that everything is interconnected, that we are all tethered together, and that what may feel good in the short-term is simply an empty emotional intoxicant that will leave us more in danger than ever.
I don’t believe by any measurement that this election presents any decent human being with the moral dilemma of having to choose “the lesser of two evils,” however, if one truly feels this is the case, why on earth would you make a choice that partners with the greater evil?
Kamala Harris is far from perfect, but we should refuse to let that reality cause us to abandon the bigger picture of our shared humanity and to cut off our noses to spite our collective faces in the most important election we will ever participate in.
Donald Trump’s victory will not be a loss for Kamala Harris, it will be a loss for all of us.
Now that we have only 4 days left till Election Day I have totally given the results up to my Higher Power. God. My anxiety level has decreased because I feel exhausted from worrying. I have voted and pray my vote counts. So to all make your choice count and save our democracy from becoming extinct. Vote 🗳️ Blue on Tuesday it is the only way to go
John, you have been writing good pieces to read and to heed as we all run toward Election Day. The bright light ahead is not an oncoming train but the bright light of the election of Kamala Harris as President. The alternative is darkness.