Here we go again, eh? For a short but wonderful period, it looked like Donald Trump’s political career was over. An indicted former president running again? It had never happened before. Trump’s legal problems looked insurmountable.
And yet, like a phoenix with a toupee, Trump has risen from the ashes. It now seems inevitable that 2024 will be a repeat of 2020: a Joe Biden vs Trump rematch.
What’s very far from inevitable however, is that Biden is going to win again. I don’t need to tell you that his polling figures are dire. I don’t need to tell you that there are serious concerns about his age and mental competence. As November creeps closer, there is increasing panic in Democratic circles about Biden’s ability to win.
Amid that panic, there’s also a lot of finger-pointing and recrimination. Anyone who raises concerns about Biden is immediately accused of helping Trump. Anyone isn’t jumping at the bit to vote for a man many of us now think of as “Genocide Joe” is being told that we’re useful idiots who are going to hand the election to the former guy.
I’ll put my cards on the table: I’m a permanent resident of the US which means I’m not allowed to vote. (I’m not sure what happened to the whole no taxation without representation idea.) But if I could vote and the election were tomorrow I would not be able to bring myself to support Biden. And I’d feel betrayed by my American wife if she voted for Biden. As someone of Palestinian heritage I have watched aghast as Biden has given Israel a green light to do whatever it wants in Gaza, international law and civilian deaths be damned. I have watched in horror as the entire population of Gaza starves and the US vetoes ceasefire resolution after resolution. And I have watched in disbelief as Biden has cast doubts on the number of Palestinians who have died, repeated inflammatory misinformation and ignored the suffering of Palestinians in official statements on the conflict.
I’m sorry but I simply could not bring myself to cast a vote for a man who doesn’t seem to believe that people like me are fully human. I cannot support a man who seems to think that it’s OK that babies in Gaza are needlessly starving to death. A vote for Biden is not just a vote against Trump, it is a vote endorsing his clear disdain for Palestinians, his dehumanization of Arabs, and his complicity in what many experts have termed a plausible genocide.
But, Arwa, Trump would have been even worse on Gaza! I know that. But, let me tell you something, that argument loses a lot of its potency when Gaza looks like hell on earth as its. There is not a single university left. The health system has basically collapsed. 1.9 million people have been forcibly displaced. The UN has said 100,000 people in Gaza have been killed, injured, or are missing. And Biden seems to think so little of the devastation that he seems to think it is appropriate to weigh in on a ceasefire while eating an ice-cream cone. It’s honestly very difficult to think about how things could possibly be worse.
I am obviously not alone in my anger with Biden. Muslims, Arab-Americans, and many progressives feel conflicted about supporting a man who refuses to listen to our anguish about the horrific humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza. It doesn’t seem to matter that 76% of Democratic voters want a permanent ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza. It doesn’t seem to matter what we do—how many protests we go on, how many petitions we sign, how many letters to our state representatives we write—every protest is met with some variation of ‘you idealistic morons had better just hold your nose and vote for Biden or Trump is going to win and he’ll be even worse!’
See, for example, the response from many high-profile Democrats to the Listen to Michigan campaign, which urged Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in Tuesday’s primary in order to send Biden a warning that his policy on Gaza is alienating voters in the heavily Arab-American swing state. There was never any doubt that Biden would win the primary—the “uncommitted” campaign hurt him in no way whatsoever, it was just another desperate attempt to be heard.
Yet, once again, the Democrats didn’t listen. In an interview with CNN on Sunday Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan governor, warned voters that that protest votes in the primary would help Trump. “It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote that’s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,” Whitmer said. “A second Trump term would be devastating. Not just on fundamental rights, not just on our democracy here at home, but also when it comes to foreign policy. This was a man who promoted a Muslim ban.”
We all know who Trump is; we all know how devastating a second Trump term would be. It is important not to understate this. But it’s also important not to understate the damage that Biden is doing to democracy and foreign policy right now by funding a plausible genocide. People aren’t asking Biden to suddenly become pro-Palestinian: we’re asking him to do the bare minimum. We’re asking him to respect international law and do what (famed liberals) Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush did: put some conditions on US aid to Israel.
To be very clear: I am not saying that people shouldn’t vote for Biden. I’m saying that it would behoove the Democrats to realize that bullying people into voting for the not-so-bad option is not a winning strategy. If they want to safeguard democracy they should start practicing it: and that means paying attention to why so many of their young and progressive voters are angry. I don’t know what’s going to happen in November but I do know this: if Biden loses, it’s not going to be the fault of progressives. It will be Biden’s fault and his alone.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist
