This column is particularly for those people who live in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada who are thinking of or planning to vote for a third party candidate like Jill Stein or Cornell West.
In general, I get it on why some people, even in battleground states, are thinking that come election day, or before it, they intend to vote for someone other than Harris or Trump. These are people who believe that both parties are the problem.
For almost 20 years of my life, from the mid-90s to the mid-2010s, I always voted for the Green Party candidate for President. It was the party whose positions on issues were closest to my views, and I felt that I should vote that way accordingly.
Today, in 2024, there’s another reason why some people with progressive ideas are planning to vote for Jill Stein or Cornell West: the Biden Administration’s continuing military support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. However, in my view, a good argument against this is the fact that Donald Trump will be even worse for the Palestinian people than Kamala Harris. Trump and the MAGA’s are united in their support for war criminal Netanyahu.
This is not true for Kamala Harris, and it’s not even true for Biden. Both have been increasingly open in their calls for an end to the war and, particularly for Harris, an addressing of the underlying issue of Israel’s illegal, brutal and long-standing occupation of land that is legally Palestine’s. Under a Harris Presidency there are reasons to believe that the mass movement in the United States in support of Palestinian freedom, aligned with the vast majority of the world, can force changes to US policy.
Another argument against voting in the battleground states for anyone other than Harris is the threat of fascism in the US. When Trump’s former US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley says of him that he is “fascist to the core,” those are words to take seriously.
But as I drove back yesterday from door to door canvassing for Harris/Walz in the Allentown, Pa. area I thought of another very good reason why a vote for them in battleground states is so strategic.
If Trump wins, the extremely broad—strange, actually—united front against him, from Bernie and AOC on one side to Liz and Dick Cheney on the other, will have no choice but to stay together to fight his administration on one issue after the other as the MAGA’s try to carry out their Project 2025 backwards-looking agenda.
If Trump loses, on the other hand, and a Harris/Walz administration moves forward as best they can with their agenda, the progressive Left can come together in support of the much stronger policies needed to address the structural injustice and the existential threat all life forms face worldwide because of our fossil fuel industry/corporate-dominated political and economic system. We can get better organized to advance strong action on the climate crisis via a Green New Deal, for improved Medicare for All, for a world-changing shift in US foreign policy so that money now used for military dominance around the world can be used for something like a full-fledged campaign to end poverty, and so much more.
It will be almost impossible to advance these and other righteous causes if we’re constantly on the defensive dealing with mass deportation round-ups, the use of the courts to indict and prosecute who knows how many of us, the rise of poverty, racism and rampant hetero- and transphobia, and more.
To put it another way, if Trump is defeated and Harris/Walz take office January 20, the conditions are much, much better for the advancement of an independent, progressive, program-based mass movement of many millions.
Battleground state leftists: all the polls are showing, at best, an extremely close race in the state where you live. It is possible that just a few thousand votes one way or the other could be decisive in who wins the Presidency. Please consider seriously.
Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution. More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.
