I am a Palestinian American in Pennsylvania, a contested state. I plan to write in “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary on 23 April and in November, I will vote for a third-party candidate.
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For many, myself included, a vote for Biden is simply impermissible – the extent of the moral calamity is so great as to render a vote for Biden a vote for complicity.
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As the president of the Center City mosque in Philadelphia, Mohammed Shariff, said to me: “My vote is the purest form of expression and speech.” President Biden ignores our voices at his own peril, and ours.
There is actually a right way to do this – Ralph Nader talked about it in his article in Mother Jones. Basically, you decide on something you tactically can achieve, get a coalition together, communicate to the candidate that you’re asking them to do X, Y and Z in order to earn your vote, and then follow through. That effectively puts pressure on the Democrats to start to pursue decent things instead of the grim neoliberal crap they tend to like to do when they’re left to their own devices.
Just deciding you’re going to make a private decision to protect the Palestinians by refusing to vote for Biden, when Trump is 100 times worse on the Palestinians as well as many many other people, doesn’t make any goddamned sense. You’re wrong two times over – one for failing to be vocal enough about your priorities to make a difference, and then again by failing to support the obviously better choice (in cases like this where the worse choice is absolutely catastrophically bad, for the Palestinians as well as for many other people.)
The vote for aid to Israel is coming up this week, separated out from the Ukraine aid, and a lot of Democrats seem like they’re waking up to the idea that supporting Israel is a monstrous crime. Infinitely more productive than voting third party would be to call your congresspeople and tell their staff how you feel about it, right now of all times.
You’re commenting on an article in The Guardian. People are protesting in the streets. The uncommitted movement is seeking out all the media coverage they can get. The ask, a permanent ceasefire, has been stated loud and clear from the beginning. They are literally doing everything you are suggesting they do.
I do think there’s some fairness to this – I was talking more to the person reading the article that the person who wrote it. Writing an editorial to put pressure on the candidate sounds fine to me.
At the same time, I don’t think you can say the ask has been stated loud and clear, when the article says not “I won’t vote for Joe Biden unless he does X” but “I am not going to vote for Joe Biden and will not change my mind; at this point I prefer to enable a much worse outcome for the Palestinians instead.”
they never said it would protect anyone
My eyes rolled out of my head the moment you said Ralph Nader
His organization was the one that got us OSHA, the Freedom of Information Act, and the Consumer Product Safety Act. What have you done that makes you qualified on producing change in Washington?
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I think we’re done here 🙂
Yet you keep replying