Today, tens of thousands of protesters stood outside the White House shouting, among other things, “No Ceasefire – No Votes!” To be clear: these are votes for Joe Biden they are threatening to withhold. It’s a tactic Rep. Rashida Tlaib has embraced in a recently posted video accusing the President of abetting genocide and concluding: “We will remember in 2024.”***
Knowing that this tactic, if carried out over time and with conviction, is likely to throw the election to Trump – and I assume they do know this, or their threat would be pretty toothless – we have to assume that its proponents would find that outcome preferable to a second Biden term that continued the current policy on Israel/Palestine.
Which is, of course, insane deeply misguided and profoundly irresponsible.
Just on its face, the idea that the larger cause of Palestinian rights would be better served by a second Trump presidency than a new Biden term is ludicrous. Biden’s calls for restraint and humanitarian pauses in the fighting may be dismissed as inadequate — even grossly inadequate — but imagine the situation if Trump were in charge — and then imagine four more years of those policies. This fact alone should warrant extreme caution in deploying a tactic that appears to already be significantly depressing Democratic enthusiasm.
But let’s add some more.
If you were looking for an issue where the US and the West are indisputably not just complicit, but actually the direct cause of unfathomable, widespread conflict, suffering, and death among innocent people, including Gazans, climate change is your single issue. Here’s the World Health Organization:
- · Research shows that 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly susceptible to climate change. Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress alone.
- · The direct damage costs to health (excluding costs in health-determining sectors such as agriculture and water and sanitation) is estimated to be between US$ 2–4 billion per year by 2030.
- · Areas with weak health infrastructure – mostly in developing countries – will be the least able to cope without assistance to prepare and respond.
As readers of the excellent climate diarists on this site are well aware, the next election will be make or break for mitigating climate change. If we fail, present and future generations will face untold suffering and death on a scale that will dwarf what’s going on in Gaza. Of particular note to the “No Votes” crowd: Large portions of the Middle East will likely become completely uninhabitable by 2050, and those most affected will be the poorest, such as Gazans.
True enough, Joe Biden has not done enough to address this crisis – just as many feel he has not done enough to protect innocent Gazans -- but he has done a lot. In particular, the Inflation Reduction Act is predicted to bring up to $3 trillion in new climate investment, potentially unlocking a clean energy revolution. In a second term, he might well be emboldened to take even more extensive action. And it’s indisputable that a second Trump term would effectively be game over for averting the worst effects of climate change. A “No Votes” tactic that even contemplates risking such an outcome seems not just reckless but profoundly immoral.
Then there’s the issue of our democracy, which a second Trump term would likely end. Here’s today’s Washington Post on Trump’s plans:
Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.
Beyond the threat to democracy itself, I find it ironic that the “No Votes” protestors would call for respecting human rights in Palestine while deploying a tactic that risks empowering an Administration that would effectively eviscerate those rights for millions of women here in the US who will be denied the right to make their own health care decisions; millions of queer people who will suffer legalized discrimination; millions of immigrants who will face brutality and persecution; millions of people of color who will continue to suffer from the myriad effects of systemic racism, and so on. If you believe a second Trump term will result in some or all of the above, as I do, then a “No Votes” tactic is in effect a vote for that outcome – that’s just the math.
True, our vote is our voice, and when we cast it — or refrain from casting it — we are “speaking” for our values. But in our extremely imperfect political system, with its imperfect candidates and its imperfect representation and its ridiculously imperfect method of choosing a President, the perfect is not just the enemy of the good, but potentially the ally of the evil. Language and tactics matter. We simply cannot allow the issue of Israel/Palestine, passionate though we may feel about it, to hand the next election to Donald Trump.
***This is NOT a diary about the Israel/Palestine conflict, Rashida Tlaib, the wisdom of a unilateral Israeli ceasefire, or the appropriateness of the word “genocide.” It is about the TACTIC of tying Joe Biden’s position on a single issue to support in the 2024 election. I would say the same thing if the formula was “No End To Fossil Fuel Subsidies/No Vote.” I hope the comments will reflect that and not become another forum for back-and-forth on I/P topics.
EDIT: Several commenters have objected to me using the word “insane” to describe the No Ceasefire/No Vote tactic. I felt the facts of the case excused a bit of hyperbole, but since I specifically call out “language” in the diary I have changed it.