5,150 words | 20 minute read
"the left" has done it now. we ruined kamala's chance for victory and now we're stuck with trump. it is not kamala's fault that she lost. it's anyone but's -- it's tim walz' for not sticking up enough for his running mate, it's the socialists' for asking for dialogue, it's the women of color's for not standing up for one of their own, and of course, more than anyone else, it's the palestinians' and the people who support them, for daring to say "no more genocide." it's anyone and everyone's fault except for kamala harris'.
this is, of course, what centrist democrats would have us think, in the months following the genuinely heartbreaking loss of the harris/walz ticket and the second swearing-in of trump. but when i think of the lead-up to the watershed moment of early november 2024, the signs were there. when i think back to the campaign, i think back to all the times that the democrats have stressed that they are the only ones within the race that stand for justice, for liberty and truth, for human rights, to be on "the right side of history". this has been a constant theme not just in the past year but the past decade -- ever since the ascension of trump, the democrats have called the republicans lawless and cruel and "weird", and have insisted over and over that they are the party that stands with the people, that stands with international order and a moral sense of rightness. and relatively, that may be true, especially when it comes to domestic policy. but every president of the united states, even the most progressive, have had "blind spots" of sorts when it comes to international policy. whether these spots are true ignorance or deliberate decisions made by, at times, otherwise "progressive icons" in support of the american imperial project is a matter for historians to debate and records to reveal; the point is, from post-wwii liberal icon woodrow wilson's complicated views on paternalistic authority in the philippines to signer-of-the-1964-civil-rights-act lyndon b. johnson's "stubborn" handling of the vietnam war, even the most powerful and influential democrats of their times have had issues remaining consistent with their own professed values. for me, and many leftists, this problem could not be clearer in the modern day when it comes to the democratic party's position on the israeli genocide of palestinians in gaza and throughout the territories.
and yes, it is a genocide. this has been affirmed countless times: by amnesty international in their report on how israel has defied the international court of justice's ruling to prevent genocide by failing to allow humanitarian aid into gaza; by the lemkin institute (an organization named after the man who coined the term genocide) in their statement on israel's "systematic campaign of mass killing against innocent palestinian civilians, along with the destruction of civilian infrastructure, including housing, cultural and religious sites, and medical facilities"; by south africa and the forty other countries and international organizations that have charged israel with genocide in the international court of justice; and over and over and over again by the united nations itself: through the use of starvation as a weapon of war, the use of sexual violence against palestinian women and girls as a weapon of war, and the brave francesca albanese's anatomy of a genocide report that was released in april 2024 and outlined that "the overwhelming nature and scale of israel's assault on gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy the palestinians as a group." israel's program of warfare against palestine amounts to nothing more, and nothing less, than ethnic cleansing -- a fact that has been admitted by israeli leadership themselves. this is the unavoidable conclusion to what we have witnessed over the past year and a half -- no, since much, much longer. the conditions of life in palestine are deplorable, with the whirring of drones drilling into the heads of every man, woman, and child who lives under the threat of israeli fire at any time; the psyche of israelis perhaps permanently damaged by rabid hatred of those they view as less than human and entitled to destroy.
all of this is backed, and funded, and encouraged by the united states, and other western nations. and kamala harris has defended it.
since the "founding" of israel in 1948, which was succeeded by the ethnic cleansing of palestinians off of large swaths of their ethnic homeland in order to make room for european jewish settlers, the united states has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to this one foreign country in order to ensure their ability to continue this colonial project. this aid, both monetary and material, spiked to astronomical levels in 2024 when the israeli genocide ramped into high gear. according to the council on foreign relations, the biden administration has made "more than one hundred military aid transfers to Israel, although only six have met the aforementioned congressional review threshold and been made public" (x). this includes drones, tanks, rockets, and bombs. the source of the us military aid to israel lies in the "qme" doctrine, or israel's "qualitative military edge," which in 2008 was formally enshrined in us law to "require the us government to maintain israel’s ability 'to defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damage and casualties'" (x). essentially, we have made ourselves beholden to israel's military efforts, and the biden administration has willingly and enthusiastically fulfilled its duties to its favorite genocidal foreign state. just in the past year and a half, over $20 billion of american money has flowed into the israel military complex in order to continue perpetrating the horrors explored above, even after they were exposed. naturally, this has drawn criticism from people across america, and around the world. when faced with such strong evidence of ethnic cleansing and international condemnations of genocide, including from such organizations as amnesty international, the lemkin institute, and the united nations itself, any self-respecting political party that has claimed its commitment to human rights and international order surely would immediately call for at least a stop to the flow of weapons and money and at least the launch of some sort of investigation or something, if not cutting off the offending nation altogether, right? surely anyone trying to gather enough support to be the next leader of that party and president of that country would want to address the concerns of their constituents as well as the international community at large, and at least promise to look into what's going on here, right? well, not kamala harris: in the midst of her few months of campaigning, she, in all her vice-president and democratic-party-nominee glory, promised "no changes" to the biden administration policy of seemingly unconditional aid and support to a nation accused of genocide.
the democratic national convention's 2024 party platform mentions "human rights" seven times. three of these references promise biden's commitment to and america's leadership in the promotion of human rights globally (p. 78 and 89). and yet, their position on palestine is a complete and utter betrayal to the very concept of human rights. it is outright ignorance of international law and order -- and ignorance not even in the sense of being unaware of international law and order, but ignorance in the sense of knowing and completely ignoring international law and order. the democratic party's position on palestine the entire 2024 election cycle was an insult to the very ideas that they claim to stand for -- justice, equality for all, alignment to and participation in the international community. and frankly, it was an insult to the intelligence of the very constituents from whom they wanted support. essentially, the democratic party's policies in the 2024 election cycle asked us to look at trump and the republicans, and notice how horrible they were, and promise to be unlike them in every way, except. for. palestine. women's rights? we're better, say the democrats. racial equality? we're better, say the democrats. lgbt rights? we're better, say the democrats. taking a stand against ethnic cleansing and genocide? well, say the democrats, hemming and hawing, well, i mean, it's, it's...it's complicated.
to me, and to many other leftists, it was hard to see past this. no, we responded, it's not complicated. just don't do genocide. just stop doing genocide. just tell us that you'll at least take a look at these policies you're perpetrating, that you'll at least give an ear to the international community, to the united nations. it's not complicated, we said; the countless un reports and other international organizations that have been reporting on this for months made clear that this is a genocide, a genocide being perpetrated in large, large part by american money and american bombs. we the people have heard, and we have listened, and we have said enough is enough. the majority of americans want a ceasefire, the majority of voters have increasingly disapproved of the way that biden has handled this crisis, the majority of democrats have supported a ceasefire since december 2023. please, we said to kamala harris, listen to your voters, listen to the people whose support you are asking. listen to the entire international community. and if those don't convince you, maybe try listening to your conscience.
how did kamala harris answer us? she told us to sit down and shut up, "unless we wanted trump again."
well, it's 2025, and here we are. with trump again. and the centrist democrats, the kamala megafans, the surface-level liberals, are furious. as they should be! i'm furious too. but the difference is that i am furious at genocidal politicians, and the liberals are furious at me.
i hate that i even have to type this out, but i guess it bears stating in no uncertain terms: the pro-palestine left did not want donald trump to win. why on earth would we? we can accept that what the democrats say is true: they are relatively better on women's rights, racial equality, lgbt rights, worker's rights, than the republicans are. all of those things matter to me, and to all pro-palestine leftists. they matter hugely. of course we did not want donald trump to win; we knew he would be a disaster, both at home and abroad. but the difference is that we thought the democrats were better than that. we thought that perhaps, if they really were the party of human rights and justice that they claimed to be, perhaps they would listen to their constituents when we raised concerns that tied directly into issues of human rights and justice. shouldn't a party that embraces diversity be open-minded, willing to communicate with those raising concerns about their platform, if only to hear what their own constituents might like them to focus on, to truly be in dialogue with the people that they claim to represent and stand for? but instead, they fell into the all-too-easy trap of simple, blatant, authoritarian hypocrisy. no dialogue here. no discussion to be had. you're going to vote for me and you're going to be happy about it. if you have any concerns, complaints, doubts, i don't want to hear it, and if you're unhappy with that, you must be either an idiot, a child, or a big big fan of the other guy.
it was condescending. it was paternalistic and dismissive and frankly it showed us who the democrats truly are. we just wanted them to keep their word, to truly stand what they claimed to stand for. because if they don't actually stand for justice and liberty, if they don't care what the united nations or the international community says about human rights and political ethics, if they don't actually care about the people that they're representing, then what do they care about? who will they stand for unconditionally, instead of giving lip service when it's convenient and then throwing them under the bus as soon as they need to get ahead in the polls? it truly is, as defined by many palestinian-rights activists and organizations, the "palestinian exception to free speech," the palestinian exception to human rights, to human dignity, to our interest in aligning with or even caring about international law or political ethics or human morality.
the pro-palestine left did not want a trump presidency. we just also didn't want a kamala presidency if she was going to continue be a genocider, just as trump is. we hoped that the traditional democratic rhetoric about, well, democracy would open them to at least discuss this, but their short-sightedness blinded them. the biden adminstration's gaza policy goes against every value of human rights that the democratic party purports to stand for. they doubled down on their genocidal policy and they told the people who wanted to engage in dialogue to just shut up and vote for them anyway. the pro-palestine left saw through their hypocrisy, instead of blindly supporting them like they wanted us to do. we are comfortable criticizing our politicians because we know that they should work with and for us. we know that they are here to serve us, to represent us, and that we do, or should, have a say in what goes on. no politician will ever be perfect; we recognize this. we're not looking for "ideological purity;" there are times when concessions and compromises need to be made. but we did not view perpetrating genocide as an acceptable compromise. this, i think, is the biggest difference between leftists and liberals. the latter group was, and seems to continue to be, comfortable with it. the former is not.
and this is not to say that anyone on the pro-palestine left had any sort of illusion that trump would be better on gaza than the democrats. of course we did not think that. the answer to "trump is just as bad on palestine as kamala is!" isn't, or shouldn't be, "oh, okay, that's fine then, i guess i'll just have to vote for a genocider." it should be incredulity that both mainstream candidates for president of the united states of america in the 21st century are genociders. again, it goes back to the image that the democrats present of themselves. only one of the major american political parties at least pretends to be in favor of justice, international law, liberty, human rights. but when we called on them to actually stand up for those things, to act in alignment with the values that they profess, to take a stand for humanity, they caved. they buckled. and then they got mad when they were called out on their lies. and it's just disappointing. it's disheartening, and embarrassing, and disappointing.
now i'm not a campaign manager or staffer or anything, and i'm not going to pretend like i know what it's like to run a presidential campaign. but i will say that the "blue no matter who" voters were not the ones kamala needed to convince. they, after all, would vote for "blue no matter who." the liberals were a lock. she didn't need to appease them. there were two major camps that she could have reached out to -- the right-wing or centrist democrat fence-sitters, who were maybe debating between her and trump; or the leftists, who were maybe debating between harris and not voting at all. she couldn't have feasibly gotten both of them, and so she had to make a choice. and with the apparent muzzling of walz and the embrace of neoconservative icons like the cheneys, the choice was clear: the democratic party sacrificed the left to appease the center. personally, palestine wasn't even the only issue i had with the harris/walz campaign that shows this: as someone who spent a service year in texas working in a migrant detention center providing legal aid to women seeking asylum, seeing her embrace a conservative "tough-on-migration" border policy that echoed trump's own rhetoric was incredibly disheartening, and the democratic party as a whole's decades of inaction on abortion rights models the "vote for us because the other side is worse" strategy that seemed to underlie the entire 2024 campaign. and this approach crashed and burned, and got us here today -- now, to where the most milquetoast centrism is called "left-wing extremism" and the new normal is fascism. and when even the vice presidential nominee of the very duo they wanted us to vote for is criticizing way they ran the campaign, then maybe that's a sign that that was a mistake.
some might say that it could have been possible to vote for her anyway and then try and change her mind about palestine after she was in office; but this is always a very politically risky move. what would that show her? it would only prove to the democrats that yes, they are out of touch with a large portion of their base for a major reason, but it's not a deal-breaker. we won't abandon them "just" for this. and then the political pressure would evaporate. essentially, we would tell them that there's no red line -- as long as the republicans are as big of a threat as they currently are, the democrats can do simply anything, or nothing at all, and not face any loss of support for it. similarly, some say that it is a sign of privilege to be able to risk not voting for the blue party "because of just one issue." after all, pretty much every minority group in america is now at high risk of targeting by the trump administration, and quality of life for everyone is gonna go way down fast. to this i argue, in my opinion, that i see it as a sign of privilege to not know, or understand, or care, about the fact that the united states is a global empire, and that what happens here, especially in the federal government, has ripple effects out to the whole world. i see it as a sign of privilege to feel comfortable sacrificing an entire country of men, women, and children to bombs and guns and tanks and drones in order to protect ourselves back home. i see it as a sign of privilege to be able to ignore the most extreme and pressing human rights abuse of our time, to be able to ignore a genocide, or to be able to write it off as "just another issue," in order to focus on ourselves.
but i also recognize that politics lately has become such insanity, and that so much is happening all the time, and it is really, really hard to keep up. i recognize that the trump administration and project 2025 has promised to come for pretty much every single definable group of people in this country, and so i know that for a lot of people, the palestine issue was important, but it didn't necessarily "trump," for lack of a better word, the worries that they had about their own safety, or that of their loved ones, or their community. i'm not trying to imply that every person who did vote for kamala harris and tim walz are stupid or ignorant or heartless. in fact, i am not trying to criticizing any voters at all. i am only noting what i see as the failure of our leaders to truly stand for what they claim to stand for; the failure of our leaders to earn our respect and support instead of simply demanding blind fealty. it's a terrible thing to have to choose between "us" and "them"; the choice this election cycle was even more complex. it was a choice between us and them, or just them. pro-palestinian leftists did not want to be forced to choose. we do not see palestians as less worthy of protection and of support and of human rights than americans. we do not see our lives and freedoms as americans as any more valuable than theirs as palestinians. and because the horrors perpetrated against the palestinian people are backed by and provided by the american government, we view them as a group of people who did not have a voice in this election, but faced all of the stakes. and we hoped that kamala and the democrats as a whole would be able to step down from their pedestals and see that. we knew that the republicans would not, because they had never claimed to -- but we hoped that the democrats, who have spoken about standing up for those with no voice, who have spoken about the dignity of all americans, who have spoken about the value of international order and universal justice, would at least engage, would at least dialogue, would at least consider putting their lofty ideals into action and not just talk. they didn't. they betrayed us their constituents, they betrayed their own professed values, and they betrayed the palestinian people, who will continue to suffer and die because of the hypocrisy of the "most progressive presidency in us history."
so no, no one is happy that trump won. that's not what we were rooting for. no one sees it as a "gotcha" moment against the centrists; there were so many different reasons why the harris/walz campaign failed, although gaza is sure to be cited in the history books as one of the bigger ones. but we are not gleeful that trump won "just to teach them a lesson." yet, i cannot say the same about some liberals. i have seen more criticism from centrist "blue no matter who" liberal democrats of leftist activism than i have of trump policies lately -- in fact, when trump does anything, it becomes an immediate basis for liberals to say, "you happy now, leftists? is this what you wanted?" how frustrating. how childish. how embarrassing. it's a mentality of "nothing is ever my fault." to be sure, i can't say that loud and outspoken liberals on social media speak for the whole democratic party. but for some reason, many people in the middle feel very comfortable punching left when they purport to punch right. i can't say why. perhaps it is the natural continuation of the mentality of the people we saw dismissing and even mocking the genocide this whole time. perhaps it is the mentality of sore losers. but whatever it is, instead of the horror that gaza currently is, the year-and-a-half-long genocide that has wiped entire families off the face of the earth, the "palestinian issue" has been turned into a sledgehammer wielded by liberals against the left. trump does anything, related to the genocide or not, and someone who still has a palm tree and a coconut in their display name is quick to jump on the stories with seemingly no criticism of republicans, just "but good job standing up on for palestine, lefties." what a world for those who just a few months ago were hoping the democrats might stick to their word about decency and dialogue. what a wild, wild world we live in now. there is just a deep, bitter, anger to current centrism, and it is couched in what strikes me as only false concern. they seem to be saying, "we could have done something about palestine, but you leftists made way too big a deal out of it before, and now there's nothing we can do at all." but we know that this isn't the case. we know that because the left tried, over and over, to reach the democrats, to break through, to do something, and at every turn, we were rejected, we were mocked, we were ridiculed, and we were dismissed. and now, after essentially being told that we were not important enough to engage with in the first place, we are being blamed. how frustrating. how childish. how embarrassing.
and so to these centrist democrats who seem to hate the left more than the right, i would say: stop acting like you care about palestinians if all you are doing now is using them as a sledgehammer against all the people who have been trying to do right by them the whole time. stop acting like you care about international order if you were silent for a year and a half and before because it was your party carrying out the genocide. stop acting like you care about human rights if you're not standing with survivors of an ongoing genocide and fighting for their full and complete liberation on the grounds of nothing but their human dignity and their right to exist, no matter what comes your way for it. if you do support human rights and international law like you and your party claim, do something about it. act on your convictions. red and blue doesn't matter. left versus right doesn't matter. "us" vs. "them" doesn't matter. all that matters is justice, liberty, and life.
the "palestinian issue" is not a tool to be used against trump or against leftists. it's not a political "tool" at all -- to me, it's the biggest moral issue of our era. will we stand idly by while our government aids, abets, and commits genocide? if your answer to this question is anything other than no, then you should take a good hard look at yourself. and that includes if that no is dependent on who's in the oval office giving the order to fund or attack or strike. it was wrong when biden did it and it is wrong now that trump is doing it. and it would have been wrong if kamala did it, too. so don't get mad at the people demanding accountability; be mad at the people refusing to be held accountable.
because again, i at least am trying to channel my frustration not towards ordinary voters, but the people who are actually in power, who had the choice to put their money where their mouth was and actually stand up for what they purport to stand for. and i think that centrists should do the same. instead of fighting ghosts on elon musk's twitter, yelling into the void about how leftists cost them everything, maybe it's time for "blue no matter who"s to turn around and take a good hard look at the people that they are defending unconditionally. calling out our leaders doesn't mean that we hate them and want them to fail, it means that we want them to be better, for the sake of our communities. and so what would i want to say to democratic leadership, if i had the chance? probably "listen to your constituents more." but also something along the lines of, stand up. fight back. do something. let go of "decorum," let go of "going high," if you really care about us like you claim to. take a good long look at the values that you give lip service to, and have a good long think about what it actually means to put those into action. and if you're not willing to do so, don't act surprised when the people holding you up start jumping ship. i don't know what the future holds. but what i do know is that the leftists who interrupted your rallies and protested outside of your offices saw this coming. whether it was trump or the inheritor of the party after him or fifty years from now, we could see coming the inevitable breakdown of the democratic party as it crumbled under the weight of its own inconsistency and incrementalism. the democrats in 2024 election were the party of the status quo, whether they want to admit it or not. and because they could not accept that some people did not like the status quo for leftist reasons instead of rightist ones, they abandoned us all to the steamroll of fascism that has been chugging along slowly since 2016, and before.
i'm not a trump supporter. but i do have to say that the efficiency of the new trump administration is stunning. imagine if we had a truly left-wing party that ran as well as the new project 2025 puppetmasters do. or imagine if the opposition party was actually opposing it. imagine if we had a party that was truly dedicated to the essence of freedom and liberty and international order and human rights instead of just the buzzwords of them. imagine if we had a political system that truly represented the people, and engaged in dialogue with them, and could admit wrong-doing and change course accordingly. imagine what a strong coalition founded on the true ideals of liberty and justice for all could do for the betterment of americans and people around the globe alike. the 2024 presidential campaign has shown us that despite the last-ditch efforts for leftists to reach out to the democrats, to desperately try and build a bridge between us for the sake of the rights of americans and people everywhere, to try and force them to live out the actions they love to proclaim, the democrats will never be that party. they are too blinded by empire and immune to hypocrisy to care. and this, fundamentally, is where the democratic party failed in 2024. this was the summer of our discontent, and this is the root of leftist frustration with the blues now.
finally, i must conclude that as an american, i am absolutely privileged in my social and physical location in the world, and even in the country. as a woman and a queer person, i feel the threats of the trump administration's agenda in many regards, but as someone living in the northeast i know that i am absolutely safer than many of my brothers and sisters living in more conservative areas who are already feeling the effects of new laws or abrogations. i want to stress again that i am not angry at anyone who decided to vote for the democratic party for their own safety when faced with the threat of project 2025 on the other side. i am only upset with the people in power who were able to manipulate that very real fear into turning us, the people, against each other, instead of against the people actually doing the harm.
and as a non-palestinian, i am not the arbiter of what is good and right for palestinians. i encourage you to listen to and read from people like hind khoudary, bisan owda, and the countless other palestinians reporting on their conditions live from the gaza strip. hear what they are going through, and understand them as fellow human beings, as your neighbor. learn about the history of this people, this place, and allow them to speak to you, not as a political issue, but as human beings. it will only be when we bring humanity back into politics that we will be able to progress, together.
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