I'm Unconvinced by the Leftist Arguments to Withhold Votes from Kamala Harris.
The sh*tty truth about the state of the American left.
Every four years, America undertakes a national ritual, one that distinguishes our sacred country from its peers: the quadrennial practice in which the disempowered left logs onto billionaires’ websites to decry each other over the “correct” way to cast mostly meaningless votes in an oligarchic system designed to preserve the political power of 18th-century aristocratic slavers.
As you can probably tell, I’m reluctant to wade into the voting discourse. Given the undemocratic Electoral College and our Groundhog Day choice between the world’s most enthusiastic capitalist party and the world’s second most enthusiastic capitalist party, it’s not like Americans have any actual say in who is elected President. Especially in this election, in which the only two candidates who can win have promised to preserve the ongoing genocide of Gaza, I find this to be the wrong discussion. No matter who takes office in January 2025, they will oppose my goals. The only way to change that is by recruiting and organizing American workers so that, in a future election, we can demand concessions from (“Arms embargo Israel or no votes.”) and eventually usurp the bourgeoisie parties. Unfortunately, we are not there. The left is neither organized nor large enough to influence the election, leaving us in a pathetic state of endlessly arguing about how our votes (which likely don’t matter) should be distributed.
Before I explain my thoughts on the matter, I want to clarify that I understand why some will disagree with me. At this point, anyone whose values aren’t represented by either party’s nominee is essentially a crab in the bucket, desperately fighting to escape and save our compatriots already thrown into the boil. It’s a predicament sure to invoke rage and intense emotion, which I don’t begrudge anyone for having.
With that said, I am unconvinced by the arguments as to why leftists should withhold votes from Kamala Harris.
Argument #1: Not voting for Harris will teach the Democrats a lesson and move them left.
The most common citation for this argument comes from the below clip from DNC strategist Lawrence O’Donnell. As a former party insider, O'Donnell states that the only way to pull the Democratic Party left is to abstain from voting for them.
In a rational, functioning nation, this would work. If the American political system were the perfect democracy our 4th-grade teachers claimed it is, then withholding votes would motivate the Democrats to move left. Win or lose, they’d recognize the need for leftist votes and attempt to earn them through concessions: the enshrinement of reproductive rights, an arms embargo on Israel, general anti-imperialist policies, etc., etc.
This sounds great! But it’s a fantasy. Neither the Democrats nor our election system are rational or democratic. While the GOP had a short-lived introspection following their 2012 defeat, I’ve never seen the DNC respond to either voters or common sense. Last week, Hillary Clinton blamed her 2016 loss on James Comey. Despite losing the most winnable election in history, Clinton (and the Democrats) refuse even to consider it was their fault they got beat by a racist game show host. A competent party would have critically examined their strategy and found their defeat was because they failed to deliver on Obama’s promise of economic change. But they are not competent. Democrats had every opportunity in the world to learn from 2016, but as Clinton’s statements and Harris’ election strategy show, it never crossed their minds.
This stubbornness is made even more evident by the ongoing attempt to claim “Jill Stein cost Clinton the Presidency.” Putting aside the false claim that Clinton was “owed” those votes, if Democrats were a reactive party that wanted to win, and they actually believe Stein “cost” Clinton the election, they would have adjusted for 2024.
According to both Jill Stein and 2016 voting data, Clinton would have won Michigan in 2016 had Stein not run. In her appearance on The Breakfast Club, Stein claimed that 61% of 2016 Green Party voters “would not have voted for another candidate” had she not run. That means 39% would have voted for another candidate, likely Clinton. Stein won 51,463 votes in Michigan, meaning 20,070 (39% of her total) would have gone Democrat, almost double Trump’s margin of victory over Clinton (10,704 votes). Though winning Michigan would not have gotten Clinton past 270 electoral points, it shows Democrats are aware of, but have no interest in winning, gettable swing state leftists who didn’t vote for them in 2016. If the DNC wanted to maximize its potential for winning Michigan in the future, they’d have spent the last eight years courting voters who were open to Clinton but chose Stein. They did not, and I’m unconvinced they’d move left if they lost this time around.
While I’ve prescribed the O’Donnell strategy previously, unfortunately, the left isn’t in the place to implement it. I hate to rain on the Green Party, but withholding votes via third party did not move the Democrats left over the course of eight years. Given Harris’ refusal to publicly break from Biden on Gaza, it doesn’t look like a reality this cycle either. However, that does not mean this strategy is permanently doomed. Quite the contrary. I believe this is a valid tactic the left could pursue in the future, which I’ll explain in the concluding paragraph.
Argument #2: Trump and Harris are the same.
This argument usually goes something like this: “Harris and Trump will continue Biden’s reprehensible murder of Gaza, so I’m not going to vote for either of them.”
I cannot imagine how a President could be worse for Palestinians than Joe Biden. If Biden’s Catholicism is correct, he will swim in a lake of fire for eternity, a light sentence considering his crimes. But while we might not know the Gazan genocide could get any worse, Donald Trump does.
Trump recently accused Biden of “holding Bibi Netanyahu back”1 and encouraged Israel to “go further.” I don’t want to find out what that means, and I’m sure neither does anyone impacted by Zionist colonialism. This, in addition to Trump relocating the embassy to Occupied Jerusalem and his pledge to mega-donor Mirriam Adelson to permit Israel to annex the West Bank, were the reasons a coalition of Arizona Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim community leaders recently asked their communities to vote for Harris.2
On practical grounds alone, I would rather have a President who does not want to go “further” in Palestine than Biden. The only “further” I can fathom is lending American military power to help Israel establish Eretz Israel by conquering and ethnically cleansing Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon.
Domestically, the boilerplate Democratic politics of Harris are preferable to the MAGA agenda. Harris’s reproductive policies will result in fewer impoverished women bleeding to death in bathtubs after attempting a self-abortion. She’ll also be better for the working class, which is why over forty unions have endorsed Harris, compared to Trump’s two local endorsements. (And no, police “associations” are not unions.) I also suspect a second-term President Trump will thank his donor Elon Musk by assisting Elon’s ongoing legal crusade to abolish the National Labor Relations Board. If that happens, workers are beyond fucked.
Update: A few hours after I published this,
reported on Donald Trump’s “Project Esther,” a Heritage Foundation plan to target pro-Palestine groups with “anti-terrorism” laws. If realized, this would be the most thorough state repression of social movements since COINTELPRO destroyed the Black Panthers. For both our safety and the longevity of the anti-genocide campaign, this is another reason I encourage voting for Harris.
Argument #3: We should vote third party to build an alternative to the duopoly.
I skeptical of this strategy, simply because I’m unaware of an electoral-first revolution. Contrary to our national myth, progress does not come from legislation from the hallowed halls of the U.S. Congress, but the street-level organization of the masses. The Civil Rights Movement, the withdrawal from Vietnam, women’s suffrage, and the five-day work week were all results of wide, consistent social movements that put unavoidable pressure on the ruling class. Congress was forced to codify these rights into law, not because of an Aaron Sorkin-style debate made them realize it was The Right Thing To Do, but because strikes, protests, and women not sleeping with men who didn’t think they deserved the right to vote threatened to dissolve the social fabric.
I view the Green Party (GPUSA) strategy, the most prominent third party, as an attempt to skip the proven tactic of mass-organizing in favor of believing you can get right to the legislation battles. That doesn’t work, and the Greens’ underwhelming (to say the least) electoral performance proves it. GPUSA won .1% of the popular vote in both 2004 and 2008, .4% in 2012, surged to 1.1% in 2016, and bombed in 2020, dropping to .3%. That’s a +.2% growth over almost two decades. Even at their best performance, they got less than a third of what the Libertarian Party received. I don’t doubt their sincerity, but we should be honest: this strategy has failed to either win the Presidency or move the Democrats left.
The Greens have floated the goal of getting 5% of the public vote to unlock public funding, but even that’s short-sighted. If they win 5% this election and access funds, the most generous conclusion is they get 10% in 2028. Still not enough to win. There’s also the fact Jill Stein is already 75, and the party performs miserably when she’s not on the ticket. If this is a long, long game, GPUSA is going to have to tell the American working class why backing them in perpetuity is worth risking Donald Trump further degrading America’s already meager worker, abortion, and trans rights.
As for other parties, I’m sympathetic to both the Party for Socialism & Liberation and Cornel West. (I’m especially fond PSL, which has an actual organizational strategy, unlike the Greens.) But as they are polling behind the Greens, I don’t think they’ve yet built the popular base necessary to move either this election or the political landscape. Furthermore, having three third party candidates running is a testament to the left’s disorganization. Coalescing around one candidate in one swing state and leveraging that to earn an arms embargo concession from Harris would have been the ideal strategy. But as far as I can tell, this unity push was never even considered. As Trotskyist and Green Party surrogate Kshama Sawant states in this video, the goal was to stop Harris from winning Michigan. This might “punish” Harris for her role in the genocide of Palestine, but it would “reward” Trump for his role. A childish ideology, in my opinion.
I interpret the lack of success from American third parties as a result of a flawed strategy, which overlooks organizing in favor of propaganda. I don’t mean in the “lying” sense of the word, but its original meaning — rallies, high-profile campaign bids, and media. When the Greens ask for people to vote for them to be President without proving to the working class they will materially improve their lives, it’s essentially a political “just trust me bro.” People aren’t going to do that when their family’s livelihood is at stake. This overeagerness to “jump” to the top is not a new flaw in leftism. In fact, the best repudiation of it was written a century ago by Vladimir Lenin in Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.3
“The fact that most British workers still follow the lead of the British Kerenskys or Scheidemanns [centrist politicians] and have not yet had experience of a government composed of these people—an experience which was necessary in Russia and Germany so as to secure the mass transition of the workers to communism—undoubtedly indicates that the British Communists should participate in parliamentary action, that they should, from within parliament, help the masses of the workers see the results of a Henderson and Snowden government [Labour Party] in practice, and that they should help the Hendersons and Snowdens defeat the united forces of Lloyd George and Churchill [the liberal-conservative coalition]. To act otherwise would mean hampering the cause of the revolution, since revolution is impossible without a change in the views of the majority of the working class, a change brought about by the political experience of the masses, never by propaganda alone. “To lead the way without compromises, without turning”—this slogan is obviously wrong if it comes from a patently impotent minority of the workers who know (or at all events should know) that given a Henderson and Snowden victory over Lloyd George and Churchill, the majority will soon become disappointed in their leaders and will begin to support communism (or at all events will adopt an attitude of neutrality, and, in the main, of sympathetic neutrality, towards the Communists).
It is as though 10,000 soldiers were to hurl themselves into battle against an enemy force of 50,000, when it would be proper to “halt”, “take evasive action”, or even effect a “compromise” so as to gain time until the arrival of the 100,000 reinforcements that are on their way but cannot go into action immediately. That is intellectualist childishness, not the serious tactics of a revolutionary class.”
To believe the most prominent third party, which has prioritized propaganda over class organization, will court the American working class with *this* Presidential bid is a mistake. Lenin’s claim, informed by the lessons of the Russian Revolutions, is vindicated by both the history of political progress in the United States and the inability of third parties to move sustain consistent growth among the electorate.
I wish Jill Stein, Cornel West, and Claudia De La Cruz had a chance of winning, or even getting a single concession from a candidate who could win. But my wishes are just that.
It’s an unfortunate reality, but the American left is in the position of Lenin’s hypothetical army. We must “take evasive action” and “compromise” so we can ready the 100,000 potential troops (i.e., the un-activated American working class) to eventually defeat the enemy (the Democrats and the Republicans). This “compromise” is leftist voters casting ballots for Harris, so that we are not “hurled into battle” against the army of Donald Trump, who wants to “use the military to handle the radical left. I’m not sure what Trump means by “handle,” but I know none of us will be able to advocate for Palestine, abortion rights, or socialism from a jail cell, camp, or grave.
In addition to the above arguments, there are a few less-persuasive claims that center on morality. I do not prescribe to the Trotskyist view of placing personal purity over practicality, and I don’t believe it’s possible to “legitimize” (or even delegitimize) the American government by interacting with it. Our entire political system is undemocratic and entirely illegitimate. As someone who lives comfortably inside the American Empire, I feel obligated to vote for the candidate who, if all else was equal (which its not), would send one less bullet to the Israeli Occupation Force. Why? Because that’s one less opportunity for the IOF to kill a Palestinian child. That’s a pathetic situation, but it’s the one we’re in. No wish casting will change that.
However, if you hate my thoughts on strategic voting, don’t worry. They don’t really matter.
The Shitty Truth
Regardless of if you like or dislike my contribution to The Quadrennial Leftist Voting Discourse, 2024 Edition, the hard truth is this debate/discussion/social media spat is irrelevant. The U.S. is not a democracy. It’s an oligarchy with autocratic election systems designed to preserve slavery and cousin-fucking. Approximately 9% of Americans live in swing states, and only 3% of them are persuadable. That’s about .0027% of the American population, and only 18% of them use social media for political information.4
Given our system, the left has neither the power nor the organization to make our votes matter. Our only chance to impact this election was to unite in a single swing state behind a single candidate, and offer the Harris campaign an ultimatum: we’ll encourage everyone to vote for you if you call for an immediate ceasefire. If you don’t, you’re on your own.
We did not do that, which is why Harris is campaigning with Liz Cheney instead of Rashida Tlaib. She knows she can entirely ignore us, insult us, support the IOF burning Palestinian patients alive, and still have a path to victory. We, the people who actually care about abortion rights, labor protections, and the lives of Palestinians, need to be brutally honest about how we can change that. That means organizing workers, educating them on the direct link between capitalist and imperialist exploitation, illustrating that bourgeoise “democracy” is hogwash, and striving to overcome America’s oligarchy through relentless, targeted political pressure. If we do this, next election we might actually have a chance at implementing the O’Donnell Strategy. And as we all know, the American Empire will still be an issue four years from now. Who knows what nations we’ll be pillaging when Democratic nominee Robert De Niro faces off against five-term incumbent Candace Owens. It will certainly still be Palestine, but perhaps President Donald Trump will have acted upon his wish to re-invade Afghanistan. If we desire the political power to challenge imperialism and save lives, we should prioritize ruthless organization, now. Energy spent yelling at each other on social media owned by Elon Musk only hampers that goal. We know neither party will stop America’s relentless exploitation of the global working class. That task falls to us, and if we want any chance at saving ourselves, we need to get serious. And that seriousness starts with introspection.
This is a emotionally charged subject, so I’ll remind people of my rules for commenting:
The comments are open to all.
Racism, sexism, homophobia, or any bigotry is not allowed.
You can call me whatever names you want, but attacking other readers is where I start to remove and ban people. (Unless they’re fascists or zionists. Have at ‘em.)
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https://newrepublic.com/post/187332/trump-biden-tough-netanyahu
https://www.newarab.com/news/pro-israel-mogul-wants-west-bank-annexed-after-trump-donation
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/pdf/lenin-cw-vol-31.pdf
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/07/30/americans-who-mainly-get-their-news-on-social-media-are-less-engaged-less-knowledgeable/
I am dismayed that Harris has curried favor with the Cheneys and the natsec establishment, and moreover, leaned on an administratively complex, tax break-first social welfare strategy rather than pushing for a generational effort to un-submerge the state, with universal benefits such as more public housing and child cash allowances.
However, I’ve made the calculation that millions (perhaps billions) more people worldwide would suffer and die from climate change and the harmful policies that worsen it, under a Trump administration than a Harris administration. Even though the IRA and executive action are weak first steps, they are meaningful ones that turbocharge the transition to a just, net-zero economy, and help America avoid millions of tonnes of GHG emissions. Likewise, there’s a good chance that even without an excellent anti-price gouging statute, a Harris administration would try grasping the problems Lina Khan, Jon Kanter, Jen Abruzzo and co. are tackling, whether or not they’re gone. And I can at least get behind some of the pro-YIMBY housing proposals like a $40 billion supply research fund. While I’m reluctant to reduce a lot of decisions down to cold equations, the leeway of leftists to protest and do civil disobedience would be lesser under Trump. So I voted for Kamala.
I’m not withholding my vote from either Harris or Trump. I voted for Jill Stein because she embodies a politics of urgency that I share. Neither Harris nor Trump earned, or sought, my vote.
Voting is but one way to participate in our democracy*. We can volunteer, caucus, join, serve as a surrogate, contribute our perspectives to the public domain, protest, donate, raise money, or run for elective office. I’ve done them all in my almost 50 years of adulthood. I’ve also spent time in behind bars for my activism. None of the principal advances that I’ve seen or benefitted from came about because of how I voted. They came about because of people pushing back hard against the political class, swimming against the tide as opposed to lining up like sheep.
I vote for what I want, not for what I think I can get. Voting is easy- it requires nothing but a certain age and minimal amount of effort. The hard work begins after the votes are counted.