Letter to a Leftist (from a Leftist)

On voting, conscience, and consequences

In case you hadn’t heard, there’s an election next week. It looks like it’s gonna be a nail-biter. And folks are feeling anxious, looking for people to blame, slinging mud, epithets, accusations. I’m anxious, too.

For months, voters who intend to withhold their support from Kamala Harris over her refusal to break with the Biden Administration’s Israel/Palestine policy have been met, by mainstream liberals, with torrents of condescending criticism. While I disagree with those who would, by abstention, aid Trump’s return to the White House, I am disturbed by efforts to dismiss their concerns—because I share them. As one who is deeply distraught over the catastrophe in Gaza, I want to examine the arguments for casting a protest vote, and then explain why I think it’s a mistake to do so, particularly for those who live in swing states.

First, a caveat: if you have lost family in Gaza, Lebanon, or the West Bank, I mourn with you. It’s not my place to tell you what to do with your grief, or how you ought to vote. It is only through the merciful accident of birth that my family is safe. I hope fervently for a future in which yours will be safe as well, and that peace and justice, rather than continued bloodshed and misery, will visit the Middle East.

Indeed, the Biden Administration has blood on its hands. That the U.S. government continues to arm Israel a year after Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7th is not only a moral failure, but a legal one. Our laws plainly state that the U.S. may not send weapons to nations guilty of human rights violations. In this case, these include the crimes of collective punishment, of the strategic denial of food and medicine, and of systemic abuse and torture in prisons. How can one read the endless accounts of children orphaned, operated on without anesthetic, burned alive, buried alive, decapitated, and not come away infuriated by U.S. complicity?

I suspect that for some, our government’s continued support for Israel is the genocidal straw that broke the camel’s back. Many Leftists argue that Democrats have been crying wolf for the better part of a decade—Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy!—in order to justify the perpetuation of a corporate duopoly. And they’re not entirely wrong. Sure, there are differences between the two parties on social issues—and, crucially, in their attitudes about democracy—but these fall far short of the radical, systemic change many on the Left would like to witness, and they believe that voting Democratic means endorsing the status quo. Kamala Harris, in their eyes, is little more than a pro-choice Republican with an LGBTQ+ bumper sticker, a continuation of the failed neoliberal legacy of Barack Obama, who, for all of his generational talent as an orator, bailed out Wall Street while perpetuating deadly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with extrajudicial killings via drone for dessert. 

I am sympathetic to this line of thinking; in many ways, it overlaps with my own. And yet, while the ethical lines around the war in Gaza may be clear, voting is not simply a matter of making a moral claim around a single issue—even when that issue is as grave as ethnic cleansing aided by our government. 

I know. 

This is a bitter pill. But before you spit it out, bear with me for a moment.

As Noam Chomsky and John Halle argued in 2016: 

…what needs to be challenged is the assumption that voting should be seen as a form of individual self-expression rather than as an act to be judged on its likely consequences… The basic moral principle at stake is simple: not only must we take responsibility for our actions, but the consequences of our actions for others are a far more important consideration than feeling good about ourselves.

(emphasis mine.)

Maria Carluccio - deconstructed flag

So what are the potential consequences of withholding a vote for Harris, particularly in a swing state? Setting aside the fact that Palestinians will be no better off—if not worse off—under Trump than Harris, not to mention the recent endorsement of Harris by 100 Palestinian- and Arab-Americans, the outcome of next week’s election will have far reaching consequences for millions of people at home and abroad with respect to life-and-death issues beyond Gaza. Put simply: if Trump is elected, more people will almost certainly suffer. 

I could talk about the twenty-five million women who live in states where, thanks to the Trump-appointed super-majority on the Supreme Court,¹ abortion has been restricted or banned,² and about the Heritage Foundation’s plan to ban abortion nationwide through a dubious interpretation of the 1873 Comstock Act. Or I might mention Putin’s war in Ukraine, and Trump’s suggestion that Russia do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO members who don’t keep up on their dues—a terrifying prospect given the intelligence community’s assessment that Putin may, without deterrence, invade Europe within 3 to 5 years.

But if you truly care about the lives of marginalized people who suffer as a result of U.S. policy, let’s talk about climate crisis. Soaring temperatures, increasingly powerful and erratic weather events, and rising sea levels affect everyone. And yet the impacts of climate change are disproportionately felt in the Global South, most often in communities that have contributed comparatively little to the glut of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the earth’s atmosphere. 

If you think the situation in Gaza is bad—and it’s hard to think of anything worse—consider that Project 2025 places the Inflation Reduction Act’s repeal at the very top of its agenda, among other planned efforts to hamstring the EPA’s ability to enforce existing anti-pollution laws. How will this play out for hundreds of millions in the Global South? No, we wouldn’t be supplying arms. But in reverting to the GHG status quo, we would be complicit in accelerating the destruction of lands, livelihoods, even entire cultures, as is already happening in places like Somalia, Chad, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Madagascar, Bangladesh, Syria, Afghanistan, and South Sudan. These are just some of the nations ravaged by the effects of climate crisis, having variously experienced catastrophic flooding, extreme drought, reduced crop yields, famine, the proliferation of disease, and forced migration, as lands become uninhabitable or submerged.

As legions of scientists have made clear, there simply is no time to waste in righting the ship when it comes to climate. A second Trump term would not merely delay, but potentially destroy efforts to heal the planet, and to protect its most vulnerable inhabitants and their communities.

The consequences of our actions for others are a far more important consideration than feeling good about ourselves. - Chomsky & Halle

So what are we to do? How do we vote effectively while remaining true to our principles? My suggestion, which aligns with that of the courageous Palestinian-American Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman: vote Harris into office and then protest the hell out of U.S. Israel/Palestine policy, pressuring elected leaders to embrace the notion that universal human dignity is a prerequisite for any future in the region. At the same time, step up the fight against AIPAC. And remember that the executive branch is not a panacea: if leverage with the president is what we want, we need more people in office, up and down the ballot, who share our values.

To paraphrase Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, I would much rather organize and protest under a President Harris than under a second Trump administration. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court, with its Trump-appointed majority, effectively outlawed mass protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Canary in the coal mine? This was months before that same court pronounced Trump above the law. Meanwhile, the guardrails that existed in the first Trump administration—institutionalists who reined in Trump’s most antidemocratic impulses—will not be in the White House for a second term. 

The architects of Project 2025 have spent the last four years ensuring that, should Trump return to the White House, it will be staffed only with loyalists, ready to carry out an agenda that includes mass deportations, the prosecution and imprisonment of political enemies, the use of the military against American citizens, all while increasing Trump’s presidential power. Much as I respect those who believe that incrementalism is insufficiently radical, I fear that revolutionary impulses under a second Trump presidency would look a lot like opposition politics in today’s Russia. And we all know how well that’s going.

In sum: if you live in a swing state, please don’t fall into the trap of viewing political participation as a binary. Be strategic. You can vote for Harris at the ballot box and express your well-earned moral outrage elsewhere. If you hope to “punish” Harris, remember that a Trump victory will likely cause incalculable suffering among the most vulnerable people in our country and abroad. While institutionalism may feel unsexy, it’s a hell of a lot sexier than the alternative, which is to witness the U.S. plunged into an unimaginable era of authoritarian rule in which women lack bodily autonomy, the planet cooks, an unstable despot imprisons his political opponents and uses the military against his own citizens, all while further enriching his billionaire cronies.

How will you feel if you wake up on November 6th and Donald Trump has been elected president?

1. For those suffering from first-term Trump amnesia, a reminder that his chief achievements beyond setting the table for the repeal of Roe include: the departure of the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement; the elimination of more than 100 environmental rules; a historic tax cut for the wealthy that resulted in the 400 richest families in America paying a lower marginal tax rate than the poorest 50 percent of the country; dozens of attempts to repeal the ACA; an attempt to bribe the Ukrainian government into fabricating dirt on Joe Biden; the normalization of white nationalists; and the politicization of vaccines and masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in death rates some 30% higher in red states compared to blue states.

2. For more, see: https://www.thirdway.org/memo/the-economic-impacts-of-overturning-roe