im not american but i consider myself a pragmatist and i am also somewhat familiar w fascism so here are my thoughts in the current electoral climate as far as i can cater them to my perception of the userbase of this website in particular:
if you live in a swing state, vote for whoever you want but do not sabotage or criticize campaigns to pressure kamala on israel (and these include campaigns such as uncommitted)
if u live in a blue or red state, vote jill stein so the green party can reach 5%
don't tell palestinians who to vote for
don't belittle genocide to convince people not to vote for trump
vote blue if you want to, but understand when you vote for the lesser evil (to you) it is still evil and you should be accountable for it. voting for the lesser evil is not harm reduction when the harm includes a genocide. this accountability includes understanding the anger against every biden admin policy, of which the foreign policy particularly has killed between ~40 to ~170 thousand people, and at least twenty thousand children.
you aren't making the correct moral choice when you vote blue, you are making a machiavellian one and you should view it as such. you have no guarantees your organizing or your conditions will survive another democrat administration either. nobody voted biden expecting him to embrace a genocide. like the current labour government, democrats are not reliable partners for even the smallest of their progressive campaign promises. it is not materialist or realist or whatever; it is base self-preservation.
i know thats not a catchy campaign slogan though, but if you're going to campaign (or as muhammed el-kurd put it, if you're going to laugh at the memes) you should do it with your eyes open
if your organizing cannot withstand the inherent and cruel contradiction of campaigning for and voting for people facilitating a genocide, if it cannot navigate this moment with humanity, thoughtfulness and understanding, and above all with the goal of preventing such an atrocity from happening again, and preventing americans from being forced to vote for genocidiares, then it is functionally no different to a trump rally. simply stating 'yes all american presidents are evil' is not sufficient, just as you know that saying 'thoughts and prayers' in response to a school shooting is not sufficient. see above for guidelines.
don't be callous or dismissive of any of this.
i'm seeing a lot of posts with this energy, and as someone who's actually american and votes in every single local, state, and federal election, i am sympathetic to this take emotionally, but also have some tactical thoughts in terms of this upcoming election.
firstly, multiple things can be true at once and that is critical to understand.
when it concerns presidential elections, there are many who never vote locally and who think that once harris is elected that the job is done. you can go home and everything is fine. and thats simply not true.
voting for harris in this election is a strategy, not a solution. i happen to to personally think it's the preferred strategy because it is both a) a party that actually stands a chance of winning, and b) the party that will give us the most favorable conditions to put pressure on our administration, continue to elect better candidates locally and during primaries, and continue to organize both nationally and internationally.
she is not my ideal choice. she is far more center than i would like. i have a laundry list of critiques, one of the largest being her stance on palestinian liberation. i'm still going to vote for her.
which brings me to the point about voting for jill stein: i only ever hear people demanding 3rd party protest votes during the presidential election. truthfully, if what we want is to have a solid 3rd party candidate on the ballot for presidential elections, we need to be voting for these candidates BEFORE the presidential election. during local elections, during congressional elections, during presidential primaries. not now. because the reality is that jill stein isn't going to win. i am 100% positive of that. i don't think voting for her is 100% going to win trump the election either, but i think it's irresponsible to suggest that this is a solid strategy right now.
the push to vote 3rd party during presidential elections also annoys me bc i feel these folks often aren't regularly advocating during any other time for the conditions that would better equip other parties to actually win. i hear nothing about rank choice voting. i hear nothing about community organizing around these candidates. i hear nothing about what comes next.
i'm not telling you how to vote. if it matters to you to make sure your vote is in alignment with your personal morals, fine. do that. but every single candidate (yes, even your green candidate), by product of taking on the helm of president in the first place, is taking on a position that enables genocide. we unfortunately can't avoid that, it is the imperialist system we exist in & it doesn't change just bc we have a certain president. jill stein, on her first day in the white house, would have to play nice with israel bc our foreign policy has depended on their allyship for decades and we can't break that overnight. ANY vote for president is voting in someone who is complicit in genocide.
in my opinion, as americans, our priority IS to vote in someone whose platform provides us the most optimal conditions to pressure our administration to be more left. and then we have to ACTUALLY do that work.
