It might take very little to tip the United States toward fascism next year. The votes of a few thousand people in one of the swing states could make the difference, and a significant part of the Democratic-voting coalition is quite upset by what Israel is doing to Gaza and the U.S. role as Israel's patron state. Regardless of what one thinks about Israel and Palestine, we cannot afford the risk of losing those votes.
Meanwhile the geopolitical West is struggling to secure a consensus to support Ukraine as it defends Europe on the front line against Russian expansion. Domestically within European countries and the United States, the obstacle to support comes from factions that either favor Russian appeasement or favor the introduction of fascism locally. (Some amount of that obstruction is due to Russian capture of decisionmakers, I think.)
If Russia's invasion of Ukraine is met with less resistance and becomes more successful, it will then be difficult to muster global support to protect Taiwan as China pursues its own version of expansion. In particular it will be difficult to convince the global South to side with the United States in what we claim is the defense of democracy while we simultaneously assist a nation that is presently committing war crimes and behaving as an expansionist power itself.
However there isn't an easy path away from those risks. Although the Biden administration's backing of Israel is causing fractures in the Democratic-voting coalition, we would lose a different set of voters if the administration were to take a harder line with Israel.
We must find a way out of this mess. And by "we" I don't mean just us as a nation. I mean that you and I and the activists and influencers who read Daily Kos and who inhabit the decisionmaking circles among the Democratic coalition all collectively need to find a way out of it. Somehow we have to engage with this issue differently.
We've got to unify around some kind of de-escalatory policy and we furthermore need to insist that the Biden administration pursue real de-escalation in Gaza. We've got to unify around an approach that is the least unpalatable to those among our coalition who support a ceasefire and distancing and also to those among our coalition who would have the U.S. continue its current level of support for Israel. (And no, I don't know what that unifying policy is, but I know we need to find it.)
The Stakes
If we fail to hold the Democratic-voting coalition together sufficiently in 2024, we risk losing everything.
- The federal government would be directed by a fascist or a fascist-adjacent president, depending on who actually heads the Republican ticket in November.
- Democratic success in down-ticket races depends heavily on turnout driven by enthusiasm for the presidential candidate. Members of our coalition who are upset about an issue as emotional as Israel and Gaza will be less likely even to step out their door on election day. Fascism happens at the state level too.
- A Republican administration and a Republican congress will not act on climate change, and we are all out of remaining chances on that front. We have to succeed in the next few years or expect to write off billions — of lives, not dollars.
The Complaints
1) There's a predictable and petulant response from some here at Daily Kos when anyone mentions the fraction of the Democratic-voting coalition that just isn't having it with what the administration and the Democratic congress are doing. At the prospect of some voters switching to third-party candidates or maybe not voting at all, the complaints generally go along the lines of:
"They wouldn't do that because they know life under a Trump administration would be far worse for them." As I discussed in this comment earlier this week, not all voters use the same calculus that news-addicted political influencers use when deciding how/whether to vote. You have to appeal to voters within the decisionmaking framework each one of them actually uses, and it can be very different from your own framework. Not everybody votes for a candidate or a party because they expect a certain outcome to result from it. A fair percentage of people vote based just on feelings of affinity, and lordy what's happening in Gaza feels bad.
"If they actually do vote third-party, then fuck 'em. They'd be bringing disaster upon themselves." Unfortunately they'd be bringing disaster upon all the rest of us too, and the planet. Fuck 'em is not a practical answer.
"The number of voters who are upset about Gaza isn't big enough to matter." Take a look at the poll I referenced in this story last week. I think there are enough people upset about it to matter, and that poll should alarm you.
Moreover, insisting that progressives and lefties have no choice but to vote for Biden is offensive to those very people whom we hope to retain in our voting coalition. It's equivalent to saying "Where else you gonna' go?" That's the language of the abuser. It doesn't win people over, and it drives a certain number of them away.
2) Pundits and politicians and many here at Daily Kos consistently try to frame the discussion in terms of Israel having the right to defend itself against current and future threats. That isn't the topic of this story.
3) Someone always chimes in that the Israel/Palestine conflict has been going on since forever, and we aren't going to solve it here. A solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict also is not the topic of this diary, although I'm making the case that the Biden administration needs to take a different approach for reasons of domestic and world opinion. It might put Biden and the United States in a good light if the administration were somehow to recruit an international coalition that would serve as peacekeepers, but only if they do so while there's still something in Gaza to salvage.
4) In an earlier discussion about this, someone actually said we'll have to wait until after the 2024 election to deal with the Israel problem. I think it's exactly the thing we can't afford to wait on, because the 2024 election partly depends on our finding a different way to deal with it. We need to do that starting now.