I may need to create a new series where I re-examine the case for refusing to vote on the eve of an election. Last time around, the American people had the following two options (because of course it was only two): incumbent Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden. This time around, advocates of a pluralistic system or ranked-choice voting once again have failed to topple the reigning two-party system, such that whatever the appeal of third party candidates such as Marianne Williamson, Cornel West, Jill Stein, or, yes, even RFK, Jr., the only real choices are, once again, Trump, and—following the incumbent Joe Biden’s surprise withdrawal from the race—Vice President Kamala Harris.
One ogre remains as the control to our analysis—though, given his actions on January 6th and subsequent felony convictions, a stronger descriptor is warranted. Arguably, Kamala Harris also remains as the control of this analysis, since she is the favored establishment Democrat that simply stepped in for Joe Biden, who was himself the establishment pick in 2020. I concede that I am perhaps taking a hopeful step too far by looking past the racial and gender biases that may well work against Harris, as they may have against Hillary Clinton, though Clinton’s time in the political spotlight may have played more of a role against her than her demographic qualities. That was certainly the argument used against her, at least, by Democratic voters.
**A quick note on Harris, particularly on the way she replaced Joe Biden. I remember a time when the Democratic primary for president was open and Joe Biden was not, in fact, the sole name on the ticket. Among Dean Phillips’ arguments for why he should be considered over Biden was the one point that proved to be most prescient regarding Biden’s future candidacy: his age. The other third-party candidates, who generally lean left or caucus with the Democrats, filled the radio waves and occasional airtime with their arguments for why their candidacy should be seriously considered as well by voters who had serious reservations about Biden’s age, or America’s continuing and (let’s face it) endless intervention in proxy wars, or America’s severe shortfalls in tackling the climate crisis. My point is, there was a time for voters to hear from the candidates and decide accordingly. Kamala Harris did not take part in that process. When asked in a press conference following Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’ candidacy—and even more sudden securement of a majority of delegates to make her the official Democratic Party Candidate for President—how Harris’ stepping in for Biden wasn’t essentially a coronation, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, standing aside House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, made the bold claim that Vice President Harris had, in fact, been chosen from a bottom-up approach, rather than a top down one, because the Democratic delegates said so. Notwithstanding whatever the actual process is by which a candidate is ultimately chosen, Schumer’s statement did not make intuitive sense and certainly didn’t align with the actual course of events. Someone should check in with Dean Phillips.**
Are we to assume Harris holds the same policy positions as Biden? It would appear that way, given the copy and paste nature by which she came to be the Democratic nominee. The one variable, then, that a non-voter might look to as justification for why this election is different, and why their withheld vote matters, is the ongoing bombardment of Gaza and, resultingly, the genocide of the Palestinian people. The reasoning goes that one does not cast a vote for the candidate that actively arms the war machine of another that one knows is being used to kill civilians. Since both candidates are expected to continue down this path, however many more bombs are dropped on the Palestinian people, none will bear the fingerprint of support from those of absent voters. It’s a relatively straightforward argument that is nonetheless intellectually misleading, if not purposefully ignorant of reality.
A non-voter is not subject to separate policies that reflect their lacking choice of President, just as any voter is not subject to separate policies that reflect their choice of President. A Democratic voter in the Trump era was actively embarrassed by the immigration policies then in place, among many other things, but would have had no choice but to acknowledge that, if nothing else, those were the active policies in the country they lived in. Non-voters can claim no higher moral standing, but only a lower one, because they could have had a say, through their vote, against whatever policy ultimately won out, if they turned out not to agree with a particular policy result. Just as the member of the losing party has no choice but to accept whatever is “ruining their country”, so does the non-voter who failed to do the bare minimum that the country asks of them, which is to vote.
No one is winning ideological purity tests, here. The honest thing to acknowledge is that progress is not made without compromise. To quote Winston Churchill, “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Our hope should be for compromise to not be fatal, and for whatever deleterious effects borne out of that compromise to be rectified or treated as soon as possible. One should see a potential candidate, then, as the figure who would be most capable of making acceptable compromises, keeping in mind that it’s completely possible for the adverse party to hold the greater weight of the compromise. The reader who scoffs at the idea of “acceptable compromises” would say this is exactly why the world finds itself in the state in which it does. Particularly in the context of Gaza, there is no “acceptable compromise”—there can be no acceptable compromise in the face of genocide! Mass shared Twitter statements aside, what is a ceasefire if not an acceptable compromise? One cannot decry the killing of 40,000 Palestinians and continue to push for complete victory for the Palestinian people, from the Palestinian people. It’s clear that, unfortunately for the Palestinians, there is a stalemate as to their ultimate fate. The only player moving on the board is Israel, and we know that Israel’s intention for Gaza has much more to do with the territory than with the people on it.
If your choice is between not voting at all, or voting for Kamala Harris, you might as well go for the latter because then there is at least the possibility that Harris’ knowledge and involvement with the US justice system left in her an impression that disempowered people are the ones most at the mercy of their government’s power, particularly when they find themselves on the wrong side of it. The ability to exercise prosecutorial discretion hopefully granted Harris the ability to step back and apply that same judgment when the facts were clear, or at least persuasive, that whoever was the target of government sanction did not really deserve to be, especially not where there were clearer cases of misconduct. Campus protests have already succeeded in toppling many University administrations, and it’s clear from White House press briefings that the Biden White House has not been able to ignore them. Harris’ bringing up of civilian casualties to Netanyahu should also offer some assurance that the obvious ongoing brutality in Gaza is something that the United States is increasingly unable to defend, if Secretary of State spokesperson Matthew Miller’s stammering responses are any indication.
Twitter and Instagram posts displaying the Palestinian plight are shared to shift public opinion and inspire action. The most obvious step one could take is to vote for Harris.
