The People Backing Genocide In Palestine Were Never Going To Save You

At the risk of adding to the flood of hot takes about the election, I think it's worth reminding people about the realities of the political situation here in America.

This piece was originally posted at Palestine At IU, the official newsletter for the Palestine Solidarity Committee at Indiana University

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There wasn’t too much discussion about the election within our organization, but I suspect the distance came from the fact that all of us have watched as the so-called protectors of democracy commit one of the single worst war crimes of the 21st century. Not only have we seen the daily massacres, bodies being ripped apart, homes being annihilated and the perpetrators dancing on the graves, but we’ve also seen the ostensibly defenders of democracy enthusiastically support them doing it. Through all the misdirection, gaslighting and straight up lies, many of us find the idea that these are the “good guys” difficult to swallow.

The undeniable fact, acknowledged by Israelis themselves, is that Israel’s onslaught could not continue were it not for the Biden administration’s repeated gifts of weapons to the occupiers. On average, the US has provided weapons shipments to Israel once every 16 hours since the bombing began on October 7, 2023. Throughout this time, they have pretended to be “working tirelessly” for a ceasefire, while ensuring that one did not happen. Kamala herself has expressed sympathy and sadness about the deaths while calling for the slaughter to continue. 

Not only have they embraced the genocide, they have clearly done so at the expense of whatever progressive agenda they claim to have. Polls have repeatedly indicated that a majority of Americans support an arms embargo against Israel and a ceasefire to the current war. Democratic politicians largely ignore that preference, knowing full well it could hurt them in the election. One poll found that 34% of voters said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports an arms embargo

Defenders of the Democratic party tend to point to progressive policies that are officially part of the platform and occasionally make an appearance in campaign rhetoric. There were positive aspects of the Build Back Better plan, as well as some important picks for regulatory bodies like the NLRB and the FTC. However, it’s not even clear that the Democrats want to be associated with whatever progressive policies happen. As the chart below demonstrates, Biden all but abandoned talk about good policy after his first year in office: 

In fact, despite some progress, Kamala seemed poised to undermine this anti-corporate shift by cozying up to the very corporations that were under government scrutiny, and indicating a reappraisal of some of the tepid anti-corporate moves. 

Even before Kamala’s possible backtracking, the Biden administration did little to reverse the distressing trends facing the American public. At the beginning of the Biden administration, one wonky, progressive, DC-based publication called The American Prospect put together a robust suite of executive actions that Biden could take regardless of congressional approval. You can read through it yourself, but it’s clear that these items had the ability to reshape the political battlefield. An editor of the magazine said that he was certain many in Biden’s camp had seen the document. But the tracker now shows that much of it went untouched, keeping in line with Biden’s promise to major donors that “nothing would fundamentally change.” 

The emergency measures passed during the pandemic—under Trump—reduced poverty. The Biden administration failed to ensure that these most popular policies were not extended or enhanced. The trouble began when Biden reneged on his explicit campaign promise to provide an additional $2,000 in stimulus checks, reducing the final check to only $1,400. 

The destruction of pandemic era protections continued. Many healthcare advocates criticized Biden and Harris for failing to stop 30 million of the poorest Americans from being kicked off of pandemic-era medicaid expansions. Instead, the Biden administration allowed poverty and food insecurity to increase dramatically. Journalist Stephen Semler created numerous charts that help explain why the average voter didn’t see Harris’s leadership as worth voting for:

As the domestic population suffered, the Democrats continued pouring money into war and death.

The people who run the Democratic party are certainly not so incompetent that they believed they could win without delivering serious change to Americans. No, they made a conscious choice to enrich the already-wealthy, fuel wars and continue business as usual at the expense of the everyday person. While America nominally has two parties, there is only one regime, and that regime is committed to empire, Zionism and corporate power at the expense of impoverishing us all. 

Voters living through this have a keen understanding of that dynamic. We can rightly worry about what new horrors the Trump administration will unleash on the world, but we should not kid ourselves by assuming that the genocide party was ever on our side, had any intention of saving us or any intention of meaningfully altering these nightmarish trends.

The work continues.