Voting for Biden? Question Mark?
Woowee, friends, we are talking a LOT about the upcoming U.S. presidential election in our house.
Specifically, about whether we can stomach voting for Biden.
Maybe you are having these conversations, too.
Isn’t it extraordinary that our two choices for president are 1000 times worse than in 2020?
And yet they are the same two people?
Genocide enabler or convicted felon who wants to be a dictator?
What a choice.
Who knows what can happen in eight months.
I’m not telling you whether or not to vote for Biden or not. (Don’t vote for Trump — I will say that.)
And I will not argue about what you decide.
But I do want to say this, and I will keep saying it because it is important:
Please. Please. Please. Do not direct your blame, ire, fear, or anxiety about this election at young people (or any people) who say they cannot stomach voting for Biden.
Put the blame were it belongs.
Blame the system that is making us choose between two evils.
Yes, I can hear you:
“But J.J., my unruly Quaker friend. I don’t understand how people can say they won’t vote for Biden. Don’t they know what’s at stake in this election?”
Yes, they know.
There are two threads to unravel here.
One: the moral stance. A lot of people, especially young people, are watching a genocide being perpetrated in Gaza that could not happen without major support from the U.S.
They are watching it live and unfiltered on Instagram and TikTok — which is exactly why Congress wants to ban TikTok.
(TikTok isn’t pro-Palestine. It just doesn’t throttle pro-Palestinian content. It’s reflecting young people’s views. Meta, on the other hand — well. According to Human Rights Watch, Meta’s “policies and practices have been silencing voices in support of Palestine and Palestinian human rights on Instagram and Facebook.” And that’s been my experience, for sure.)
Remember the fuss over media coverage of the Vietnam War?
Folks said it was the “first war to be brought into our living rooms on the evening news?”
Multiply that by 1000.
Our young people are watching carnage on their phones, all the time, unfiltered, from people directly affected. They have watched schools, hospitals, homes, aid vehicles, refugee camps, and more completely destroyed.
Many of these young people are taking direct action to try to stop the genocide.
And they simply cannot imagine voting for one of the handful of men on earth who could stop the carnage.
Two: the other thread is the political stance. While some folks may have both a moral and political stance — they are not the same thing.
This is why a lot of people are talking past each other.
The political stance can have you sitting back, weighing options, discussing the electoral college, and systems, and strategy, and whether Trump is, on balance, worse than Biden.
So let’s talk about that.
“Trump is worse. If Trump wins, fascism will come to the U.S.”
Yes. Trump will attempt to bring fascism to the U.S.
And —
— and in 2020, and 2016, we were told to “vote against fascism.”
Well, a lot of us did. We voted against fascism.
And I was happy that Biden won in 2020. Elated, even.
But … since then, how has he protected us from fascism and the fall of democracy?
What has he done to shore up our institutions?
Show me the coalitions, the legislation, the executive orders, the collaborations that he has engaged to aggressively and substantively build bulwarks against a president that wants to be a dictator. (Or a runaway SCOTUS.)
I don’t see it.
On the contrary:
We are in more of a carceral state than before. Police killed more people last year than when Trump was president. Police funding in most cities has increased significantly since the summer of 2020 — the summer of Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police — even though Biden’s campaign talked a good game about systemic racism and Black Lives Matter and they counted on the votes of progressives and BIPOC folks.
Too, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice has been dragging its feet on charging January 6 insurrectionists, including Trump and his allies. The DOJ’s stance has been … underwhelming, to say the least.
The Supreme Court is fully out of control (with Thomas about as corrupt as a Justice could be, and Alito literally letting his freak flag fly. Chief Justice Roberts is over here just letting it all happen without so much as a shrug).
Reproductive justice is GONE. Abortion went bye-bye with SCOTUS’ Dobbs decision, and Biden did nothing to shore up abortion and reproductive freedom, did not call an All Hands On Deck conference of governors or legislatures to prevent abortion being outlawed, even with plenty of advanced warning provided by the leaked Dobbs draft.
Wait, actually, he didn’t do nothing: he called it “a sad day” and then had the gall to blame progressives for being too shrill with our outcry.
Anyway. SCOTUS is about to take away gay marriage and likely make it a crime to be homeless. And likely to say that January 6 was just another beautiful day in the neighborhood. What has Biden done to get corruption and dark money out of the Court? Nothing.
Immigration? Biden took Trump’s southern border policies as a BASELINE for the horrors he has enacted. Are Dems and libs upset about it? Do we even pay attention, if it’s not Trump we’re railing against?
“But there’s so much at stake with this election.”
Here’s the thing, and it’s important: young people, poor people, and many others, have little left to lose.
Young people can’t afford groceries, let alone “the American Dream” of buying a house.
The climate they are inheriting is a catastrophe.
(What are Biden or the dems doing to curb corporate or developer greed? Where is the Green New Deal?)
That’s why I get so, so mad when I hear people blaming young people for being stupid, or witless, or suggesting they don’t understand the stakes of this election.
If you want to BLAME anyone, blame the evils that we are forced to decide between.
Blame the Democrats for running Biden.
Blame Biden for running.
Blame Biden for enabling a genocide that could not happen without his support.
Blame Biden for advocating that campuses send in cops to crack the skulls of protesters — and for calling the protesters antisemitic and/or dumb — for speaking out against genocide.
Blame the Democrats for not running a genuinely progressive candidate in a race against an unpopular convicted felon - in a race that a progressive could actually win.
Blame Trump and people who vote for Trump.
But don’t blame young people who care enough to care.
“Remember 2000? Bush versus Gore? Progressives voted for Nader instead of Gore and look what happened.”
This was the response from a dear soul to a recent post.
And I am so grateful to my friend for her response! It is a wonderful invitation to look at the ways we are wont to point our fingers at fellow progressives (or liberals) instead of oppressors.
Just like Malcolm X warned us.
Bush v. Gore had many folks pointing at those who voted for Nader — including me.
And let me tell you: I wasn’t stupid. I knew my vote in New York State would not change the election. New York would easily elect Gore. I wanted to cast a protest vote and I did and it did not change the election.
Why in the world would you blame someone like me, who thoughtfully weighed my options and cast a vote to make a claim for something better?
There are so many legitimate, impactful places to direct our rage and action.
Let me count some of them:
How about the outdated, ridiculous Electoral College, which made the election come down to 537 votes in Florida? Florida!
Why don’t we push for a national popular vote? It’s doable. We just need to work for it.
How about blaming our two-party system based on money, billionaires, and corporate interests, that makes us chose between two crappy, “viable” candidates.
Oh! I know! Here’s another one.
How about we blame Jeb Bush, brother of the freaking Republican presidential candidate, who tried to shut down the recount?
Ooh!
How about we point to Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State — and co-chair of Republican George W. Bush's election efforts in Florida. Harris was not only totally impartial (eye roll), she was a real gem in other ways, too. She was involved in purging 173,000 individuals from the state's voter rolls using “an extremely inaccurate list of those supposed felons who became disenfranchised via misidentification. The list was derived from, for instance, a Texas felons' list which included common names that were used to strike Florida voters from the rolls. Thousands, including a disproportionate number of Black [folks], were prevented from casting ballots.” And that was before the recount.
How about we blame SCOTUS, who tried to make it look more like a group effort but essentially voted along party lines with a decision that was both craven and bullshit and decided the election in Bush’s favor?
If you ask me, those are much more appropriate place to laser your gazers than on comrades who care about a good and progressive America.
“But Project 2025 is a nightmare. It is a police-state. It will be the ruin of America.”
Yes. It’s a total nightmare.
AND the “and” that isn’t being addressed in so many conversations is — many people are already living a police-state nightmare.
People here and abroad.
The police state that folks are worried about is already a reality for many Black and brown folks and folks living in poverty.
There is already a genocide happening against brown people (Palestinians) that could not happen without Biden’s support.
There is already a police state against dissenters here. Against Native folks and against our Black and Brown and poor brethren.
And there has been for quite some time.
American policing grew directly from slave patrols.
Not for nothing, I’ve seen police beat up women, beat up students, beat up and kill BIPOC folks, beat up LGBTQ+ folks. But I’ve never seen them beat up white supremacists. Why might that be?
The police state __is already here - has been here since the founding__ for a whole lot of folks in the US.
Many of us just aren’t LISTENING to young people, to our poor brothers and sisters and queer folk, to our BIPOC brethren, who are directly harmed by the system as it stands.
What about you?
Are you listening?
How can you incorporate solidarity and listening in these next months as the election nears?
Sending love.
Thanks, as ever, for reading.
XOXO