by AD Nachalo
This month Vice President and Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris was speaking at a campaign rally in Detroit when she was interrupted by Palestine solidarity activists. She retorted: “You know what, if you want Donald Trump to win, then say that, otherwise I’m speaking.” The activists were stating that they will not vote for genocide. Harris’ response says a lot: she is not concerned with the issues or concerns of the people, and instead treats any criticism of her policies as equal to support for Trump.
This all follows efforts from centrists in the Palestine Solidarity movement to pander to the Harris-Walz campaign. These centrists promote the false idea that the Democratic Party has a “willingness to listen to the people,” a dangerous and dishonest position. The so-called “uncommitted delegates” are doing their part to attempt to save the Democrats from losing votes by pretending that their calls for an arms embargo will fall on sympathetic ears, while the Democrats remain backed by powerful Zionist lobbies and, even more so, the arms monopolies who are making massive profits directly from the genocide of Palestinians and Harris’s regime.
Asma Mohammed of Vote Uncommitted Minnesota told Democracy Now that Walz being selected was “a gift for a lot of people” despite her recognition that he is Zionist—it is a reminder, somehow, that “Kamala Harris is different.” Such language only prepares the solidarity movement for impending capitulation where its right wing can push “lesser of two evils” rhetoric, as if the agreements on Zionism and the occupation of Palestine do not constitute the main aspect of both ruling class parties. Those who still cannot see the real character of the imperialist Democratic Mafia are prepared to say they did their best and then do their duty to vote “against” Trump, which is still a vote to continue support for genocide.
All the positions are softening into the most infantile and farcical insults. The Democrats have changed tactics following the shooting at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania. Biden, on numerous occasions, had likened Trump to Hitler, with all his supporters framing the Republican nominee as an “existential threat to democracy” only to pivot and settle on the idea that Trump and the Republicans are just “weird”—a pejorative first forwarded by Harris’s vice presidential pick Tim Walz. In retaliation, the Republicans have taken to calling Walz “Tampon Tim”, referencing his mandate as governor of Minnesota to place tampons in public school bathrooms. Walz has only embraced the intended insult as a way to inject humor into the election, a desperate bid to appeal to younger voters, a demographic this section of the ruling class depends on. This is the substance of what passes for politics in this country, petty, superficial quarrels attempting to conceal a univocal support for genocide, attacks on foreign-born workers, and increasingly right-wing policies at home. Personality and performance mask the sickening similarities in the ruling class.
While both ruling parties boast about how many millions they have raised for their campaigns and unbelievably large sums of money are injected into even local elections by Zionist organizations that can accomplish results with their wallets, it is all shaping up—as predicted—to be the most expensive farce to date. All of this reinforces the election boycott as the correct course of political denunciation, a moral and class-conscious choice. This must be combined with unrelenting struggle against imperialism, oppression, and exploitation. Only then can increasing numbers of the masses of people begin to find hope in a better tomorrow, snatched from the jaws of today, outside of this inhumane, ugly, and pathetic system.
