Why Kamala Harris must be defeated

Man holds up sign with Palestine flag protesting the Democratic Party — Protesters march on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on 22 August.
Maureen Clare Murphy

Are voters in the Democratic Party’s base actually disturbed by the genocide in Gaza? Or do they merely crave the psychological comfort offered by the Democratic Party and its hollow gestures toward a ceasefire?

Every supporter of Kamala Harris in the 2024 US presidential election must answer this question. There is no getting around it.

Neither can American citizens ignore the harsh reality that the Democratic Party today represents the most bloodthirsty, war-hungry elements of the US ruling elite. It is, unabashedly, the party of neocons, Zionists, hawks, interventionists and security state apparatchiks.

This does not excuse the Republican Party, which has been a joint partner with the Democrats in supporting and funding Israel’s genocidal rampage against the Palestinians.

But the fact remains that the Biden-Harris administration is uniquely responsible for the genocide in Gaza. Harris is not some powerless bystander in this equation. She is an active and willing participant in it.

Simply uttering the word “ceasefire” and weeping crocodile tears over the loss of civilian life does not make Harris better than Biden. It just means she knows how to play her part.

It also means that Democratic Party elites recognize they must try to assuage the guilty consciences of some of their voters if they are to have a chance of beating Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris administration continues to arm the Israeli regime as it razes the Gaza Strip and assaults the West Bank; deliberately slaughters children, dawn worshippers and journalists; and provokes Iran and Hizballah, accelerating the current massive bombardment of Lebanon in the reckless hope of precipitating a regional war in western Asia.

In a July 2024 letter published by the renowned medical journal The Lancet, researchers estimated conservatively that the deaths of 186,000 Palestinians “could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza,” including people killed directly by Israel and indirect fatalities “from causes such as reproductive, communicable and non-communicable diseases.”

By the war’s end, this number could reach as high as 600,000 people killed – around one-fourth of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million – from the combined impacts of military onslaught, disease, starvation, malnutrition and lack of medical care. With children currently comprising 33 percent of direct fatalities, this would mean nearly 200,000 martyred children.

Red line

For their role in underwriting these crimes against humanity, Biden and Harris alike deserve to be voted out of office – as a bare minimum punishment. Their pathological dishonesty and grotesque virtue signaling only add to their reprehensibility.

Anyone with a shred of morality must see this as a basic, irreversible red line.

Liberals will retort: What about Trump? Wouldn’t he be worse than Biden and Harris?

Frankly, it is a moral obscenity that so many of my fellow Americans can proclaim so blithely that there is something “worse” than an actively unfolding genocide.

But let us address the question directly. Today there is only one administration that is currently strategizing for simultaneous nuclear confrontation with China, Russia and North Korea.

There is only one administration that has made the reckless expansion of NATO the lynchpin of its foreign policy agenda.

And as Israel pushes for a full-scale war with Iran and Lebanon, the US is likely to become a direct participant: because there is one administration that has sent aircraft carrier strike groups to the region to protect Israel. That is the Biden-Harris administration.

On these terms, the Democratic Party’s leadership and army of willing functionaries must be treated not only as guilty of genocide but as a unique existential threat to humankind.

A recent survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 57 percent of Republicans believe the United States “needs to reduce its involvement in world affairs.” By contrast, only a minority of Democrats (35 percent) want to see America reduce its foreign involvement.

At a time when growing numbers of Americans are becoming wary of US global primacy, the Democratic Party stands as a haven for those who still believe in an ideology of empire.

Voters who are gravitating to the Republican Party are undergoing a distinctly different transition: toward a form of isolationism or imperial retreat. Each side has its own contradictions – especially when it comes to Israel – but the two constituencies are not exactly the same.

Indeed, the Democratic Party base’s opposition to the genocide in Gaza is the one glaring exception that clashes against the wider war agenda pushed by party elites. This exception is currently being drowned out by a much stronger impulse to support Harris, no matter the cost in Palestinian lives.

In the final analysis, those Americans and institutions that most embrace the ideology of empire, regardless of political affiliation, embody the most insidious and vicious form of white supremacy.

That said, Trump too must be held to account for his actions: from his embrace of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to his urging of Israel to “get the job done” quickly in Gaza, to his gloating that he has done more for Israel than any US president in history. His groveling toward the Zionist forces in American society and global politics, exemplified by his dependence on the Adelson family for campaign funding, deserves unequivocal condemnation.

We cannot forget that Trump arose as the figurehead of a movement which overtook the Republican Party in 2016. This movement, though it drew from genuine anti-war sentiments among the US population, is now being harshly tested by Gaza – and by all measures, failing that test, trapped by its own contradictions and worst tendencies.

The last crucial element of this dynamic is that of America’s own history. The flood of student encampments in the spring of this year showed what is possible when Americans pick up the mantle of their revolutionary inheritance: the songs and strategies, the creative spirit and the moral courage that emanate from the example of the Civil Rights movement.

True freedom

It is for this reason that the Democratic Party has invested an enormous amount of energy to present itself as the torchbearer of that same legacy.

The attempt to portray Harris as the continuation of freedom fighters like Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash is not merely a distortion of history. It is an ideological attack upon the American people at the exact moment when so many of us are reaching toward the memory of the Civil Rights movement as a resource and guide to help us in this moment of profound crisis. Here, Harris’ identity as a woman of color gives an air of legitimacy to the Democratic Party, as if it is steering us safely to progress, democracy and freedom.

One must contrast these vapid claims with the actual suffering inflicted on the Black community through inter-generational poverty and mass incarceration, and with the widespread social despair faced by all sections of the poor in America, whose search for true freedom is indivisible with the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom. This indivisibility was born during the great anti-slavery struggle in the 19th century, which reverberated and breathed oxygen into the burgeoning world anti-colonial movement of the 20th century.

Moreover, one must distinguish the Democrats’ fatuous moral posturing today from the courageous moral choices once made by participants in the 1950s-’70s Black freedom movement to struggle and sacrifice for the sake of humanity.

The Democratic Party is saying, in effect, that the legacy of the Civil Rights movement is compatible with war and genocide: a genocide whose architects are explicitly defending Western civilization and white supremacy. It does not take a genius to realize that this is a preposterous and exceedingly dangerous notion.

In taking his stand against the US war in Vietnam, Martin Luther King Jr. declared that war is the antithesis of democracy. He recognized that America’s rulers had become fundamentally more interested in managing and protecting an empire than upholding a basic social contract with their own citizens.

Today, the US government’s unrelenting support for Israel as it undertakes a genocidal crusade – against the wishes of the majority of Americans – exposes the brutal truth of King’s message.

What it comes down to is this: Are we truly so powerless, so meekly acquiescent, that we will allow these atrocities to be performed in broad daylight, repeatedly, in our name?

The Black freedom movement gave the American people a new vision of democracy: one that is inextricably tied to King’s concept of positive peace – peace with the presence of justice and freedom, both at home and abroad. This is a vision we cannot afford to lose, for it is what binds us to the Palestinian people and world humanity.

As such, the effort to prevent our ruling class from precipitating armageddon is both a moral imperative and a monumental political task that will bring out new democratic capacities of the American people. And if the ruling elite want to wage a battle over the true legacy of the Civil Rights movement, we will bring the fight to them.

In the immediate future, this must mean defeating Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Whether it means not voting, voting third party, or anything else, we must be willing to say – to both parties – that we do not accept the terms of their “democracy” of war.

It is up to the American people to make the 2024 election a referendum on war and peace, to prove that the endless massacres of Gaza’s children cannot be permitted without consequence for those who commit the murder.

We are now arriving at a conclusion reached by James Baldwin, one of the great prophets for the Black freedom movement and a proponent of Palestinian freedom, a generation ago:

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”

Jeremiah Kim is an organizer in Philadelphia with the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation and an editor for Avant-Garde, A Journal of Peace, Democracy, and Science.