The Swarthmore SJP caused an uproar on social media when it urged students to vote for neither Harris nor Trump this year. Bryn Mawr’s SJP voiced similar views, promoting a protest at the Philadelphia Democratic Party headquarters.
These organizations articulate genuine tri-co student concerns. The Biden-Harris administration has funneled billions of dollars into Israeli weapons since October 7th, and the U.S. spent nearly half a year vetoing U.N. motions calling for a ceasefire. Many of us are terrified of Trump’s overt attacks on democracy and promises to cut essential government functions, but cannot stomach voting for a leader complicit in funding over 42,000 Palestinian deaths.
It would seem logical, then, to follow the Swarthmore SJP’s advice to “resolutely reject… the legitimization and participation in the presidential election.” But, a worrying number of facts suggest the opposite: a Trump win would dramatically worsen conditions in Gaza in the short-run and long-run. A recent Al Jazeera analysis shows that many Palestinians fear a Trump presidency in particular, despite their broad distrust toward any U.S. president. These views may well spring from the fear of genocide in Gaza getting worse than it already is, and of losing what meager political resources we have to stop it. These concerns should animate any pro-Palestinian advocacy.
Let us start with the obvious: Trump will actively seek to worsen conditions in Palestine. In 2018, the Trump administration cut all $200 million of aid to Palestine, which the Biden-Harris administration reversed immediately after taking office in 2021. Trump proposed a plan that “effectively dismantled any pathway to Palestinian self-determination,” as explained by Lexi Zeidan of the Uncommitted Movement. If re-elected, Trump’s Project 2025 plans to cut all aid to Palestine and the West Bank. According to his former ambassador to Israel, Trump will “keep his promise to help Israel win the current war without worrying about what the rest of the world might think.” At home, Trump policies would “revok[e] legal protection for human rights organizations and criminaliz[e] protests against Israeli policies,” according to Zeidan.
Harris has neither called for an arms embargo nor condemned Netanyahu’s regime. However, she has made several calls for a ceasefire where she promised to take protestors’ concerns into account. Providing “much needed relief to the Palestinian people” and addressing the “heartbreaking” “scale of suffering” in Palestine were concerns which Trump has never addressed. Whereas members of a future Trump administration want Israel to relocate Palestinians to the Negev desert and “finish the job,” Harris claims to have been working “around the clock” with Biden to obtain a ceasefire. This commitment, no matter how rhetorical or pandering it might seem, suggests that Harris is the easier president to strong-arm into a ceasefire deal. Every call for a ceasefire deal (e.g. the one at the DNC) shows her need to compromise with the pro-Palestinian left.
In other words: Trump will actively work to increase deaths in Gaza, while Harris will maintain invaluable aid to Gaza and make a very surface-level, rhetorical commitment to seeking a cease-fire. Voting for Harris would be necessary even if it only meant one less kid killed by our government, or one more life-saving supply cache dropped. But the hundreds of million dollars Trump wants to cut, and the potential for forcing Harris into a ceasefire deal, means that voting could protect many people from worsening American/Israeli crimes.
A Trump win could also damage democracy to the point that pro-Palestine activism becomes almost impossible. Trump plans to use the Justice Department to target political opponents and to deploy the military for domestic policing. If Trump gets elected this year, his attempts to overturn his 2020 loss indicate that he will set a precedent for election interference that nullifies our right to free and fair elections. The fact that politicians can be held accountable by voters leads to more representative policies, like the Biden-Harris administration’s reinstatement of aid to Palestine. By eroding democratic norms, a Trump win could make future administrations even less receptive to our concerns about Palestine than they already are.
The Swarthmore SJP’s main concern about voting is the “normalization of oppressive systems and structures of violence.” It claims that our electoral system is a system of political violence, and that supporting it means backing the “status quo.” I agree that our current electoral system fails to adequately represent popular will, and that multisectoral societal reform, along with switching to a more representative voting system like ranked choice voting, will help mitigate state violence.
However, acting as though the electoral system does not exist fails to dismantle its negative effects. The electoral system and the abusive leaders it enables would exist even if every sympathetic American refused to vote. All this would do is cede electoral power to the most pro-genocide voters. Being a U.S. citizen means inheriting a share in the penny stock of global hegemony. We can’t dissimulate this privilege. We can try to wash our hands of it, to pour everything we have into demonstrations, political donations, and activism, but it will not erase our miniscule, but incontrovertible, power to influence the direction of the American war machine. Change only happens when the beneficiaries of oppressive systems use their relative degrees of privilege to overturn them.
It is for this exact reason that truly abstaining from voting is impossible. One party will benefit from our inaction and encourage it, while the other will suffer from it and discourage it. In a zero-sum game, like that fostered by our electoral system, rescinding your support for one player constitutes supporting the other. Not voting is functionally equivalent to voting for the winner. The only difference is that abstention forecloses your right to choose which candidate is the least bad.
Luckily, activism, unlike our broken electoral system, is not a zero-sum game. Working to overthrow an oppressive, violent government structure does not preclude the many, small opportunities we have to steer it in the right direction. Refusing to vote this year will not weaken the electoral system. But it may save lives, prevent injuries and illness, or hasten a ceasefire without interfering with our other efforts to reform (or replace) the U.S. electoral system.
The Swarthmore SJP’s other argument is that abstaining en masse gives Harris an ultimatum: she can pledge justice to Palestine and clinch the uncommitted voting bloc, or lose the election. Under this logic, voting Harris would dismantle our one negotiating tactic for Palestine. But this is problematic for a few reasons. One is that, as we have discussed, withdrawing our votes for Harris means inadvertently backing Trump. This constitutes a bit of a gamble: tacitly supporting the worse prospect for Gaza in hopes that the better prospect will improve. But, this gamble would be taken without the consent of those living in Gaza. Many people in Gaza, like those mentioned by Al Jazeera, would probably oppose this risky move, preferring the Harris administration’s continued aid.
The second issue is that if Harris is truly in AIPAC’s pocket and can’t be swayed, supporting Palestine would not be a strategic move. Promises to hold Israel accountable might gain some pro-Palestinian votes, but at the cost of donors, thousands more voters, and perhaps the Democratic Party’s general electoral support. Acceding to every demand would sink Harris’s campaign.. The only option is electing the less harmful candidate in the short-run (Harris) while building the capacity to negotiate more effectively with the candidate who’s most persuadable in the long-run (also Harris).
I am awed by how much our Bi-Co community has fought for justice for Gaza–disrupting campus life with encampments and teach-ins, delegating people power to national protests, pressuring administrators and congresspeople about divestment. This is the action that must always take center stage. But the calculation of whether to vote operates independently of these other forms of activism. Truly fighting for Gaza requires voting Harris-Walz–voting against worsening conditions and for a less inaccessible president–while devoting our main energy to disrupting a genocidal government.
It is our privilege as citizens in the “cradle of empire” that we have the tiniest of says in steering the American war machine. We have a button with a low (but not insignificant) chance at improving conditions in Gaza. Gaza citizens suffering from genocide would urge us to press the button, to leverage our privilege through any means possible to improve the conditions they are facing. This does not mean we become more mainstream, or that we decrease our protests; all it means is that we fully accept the reality of our broken system.
I encourage my classmates to do whatever we can to fight for justice for Palestine–and, as part of this, to vote for Harris-Walz this November.
When I first arrived at Haverford, I was an “anti-imperialist” liberal just like you. I knew that Joe Biden supported the Iraq War, something I thought clearly exposed the US government as a giant, disgusting criminal enterprise worthy of overthrowing. But I still voted for him in 2020 on the lesser-evil rationale.
Over time, this line of thinking became increasingly incoherent to me. How could I simultaneously think (as you do) that the US is an empire which, in addition to presiding over the mundane suffering of billions that is capitalism, regularly enforces its order through genocidal violence, and also cast a vote for one of the two principal factions of that empire? Besides, the whole argument of being able to effectively organize under the lesser-evil is eviscerated by the fact that this genocide is occurring now under the “lesser” evil!
True opposition to empire does not involve propping up imaginary Palestinians who tell us to vote for an imperial spokesperson that unapologetically endorses their destruction. Real Palestinians are showing us the cost of opposing US-led imperialism.
With all due respect, what is true opposition to empire? Sitting by while Palestinians continue to die WHILE hundreds of thousands of people are also harmed stateside? I won’t go to bat for U.S. Empire, but it does matter who is at the reigns and we do not want someone willing to use that power for unilateral evil. Be pragmatic on election day and then get back to work. That’s what we can do.
With all due respect, what is true opposition to empire? Sitting by while Palestinians continue to die WHILE hundreds of thousands of people are also harmed stateside? I won’t go to bat for U.S. Empire, but it does matter who is at the reigns and we do not want someone willing to use that power for unilateral evil. Be pragmatic on election day and then get back to work. That’s what we can do.