Palestine Won't Decide the 2024 Election, We Need to Build a World Where it Would
By: Rose DuBois
As the genocide in Gaza enters its second year and the ongoing war expands to new fronts, Palestine looms large over the presidential election tomorrow. Israel’s genocidal war has had a particularly salient effect on the American Left as we debate to what degree we should support Harris against Trump despite her role in the Biden administration. Setting aside the moral and strategic questions that drive this discussion, a lot has been said by many on the Left on how the war in Gaza will impact Harris's chances of victory. These arguments have emphasized the overwhelming popularity for ending the war with a permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo against Israel, in addition to focusing on the special place of Michigan as a key swing state with a high Arab and Muslim population (about 2% and 1% respectively, these categories are not coterminous).
This is a smart propaganda strategy, which puts pressure on the Harris campaign and the Biden administration to take action to stop Israel, and it’s a strong rhetorical argument to employ. But we should not confuse good rhetoric with good analysis of how the electorate is actually behaving, and what it is taking into account as it heads to the polls. This is especially true in the case of a Trump victory, as narratives will be spun to explain how we found ourselves here again. While we will not know the decision of the voting public for a few days, there is evidence that we are not accurately assessing the present moment. If Kamala loses and we double down on a potentially inaccurate existing narrative, there is a real risk that the Left will tell ourselves a false story about the election and set ourselves and our movement up for failure. With the stakes so high, both for Palestinians and the whole world, we don't have the luxury of such errors.
Why Palestine Matters in the 2024 Election
While many Democrats prefer to ignore it (or in the more delusional cases, try to spin it as a success), Palestine does play a big role in this election. Jumping back to before the War in Gaza began, Biden was in an interesting spot. His approval rating sat at around -10, having never recovered after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the inflation which peaked in mid 2022. On the other hand, despite a few hiccups, Biden had gained a strange degree of affection from many on the Left. While the full scope of his labor, welfare and industrial agenda were blocked by Manchin and Sinema, he had still managed to pass a few critical pieces of legislation, most notably the Inflation Reduction Act, which were closer to the vision of economic policy the Left had been calling for than many anticipated. This culminated in our “most pro-labor president in history“ walking the picket line during the UAW strike. It was not uncommon to hear Biden described by leftists and progressives as the best president of our lifetimes. The 10/7 attack, which was just ten days later, changed that permanently.
After the start of the genocide in Gaza, the Left turned hard against Biden and his policy of unequivocal support for Israel. This built on previous anger, as the crisis in Palestine that occurred in May 2021, and Biden's handling of it, had already reduced support for Israel among young Democrats, and worsened perceptions of the administration on the issue. Shifting from uneasy alignment to hardline opposition, the Left attacked the president, put pressure on his administration to push for a ceasefire, and ultimately launched the Uncommitted campaign. Uncommitted went on to win impressive numbers in various Democratic presidential primaries, starting with 13% in Michigan, then 18% in Minnesota, going as high as 29% in Hawaii, ultimately receiving 37 delegates from 9 states.
We shouldn't overstate the anti-war movement's role in bringing down Biden. Other factors, namely his age, played a much more significant role in taking him down than Palestine. But it's undeniable that Israel’s war and anti-war organization did have an impact on Biden's ability to effectively make the case for his reelection. For one, while the war did not directly lead to his decline in approval, it certainly fed into existing perceptions of his foreign policy failures. Ironically the withdrawal from Afghanistan—something the Left approved of—followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine created a sense of chaos and instability in the mind of the public, only worsened by the declining economic situation that followed as gas prices and inflation surged. Biden seemed incapable of controlling the international situation, or the domestic one, which played perfectly into Trump's campaign message. The ongoing genocide in Gaza only bolstered this perception, and his refusal to use his considerable powers as chief martial and diplomatic guarantor of Israel to bring the war to an end, despite claiming to be close to doing so, made it even worse.
Trump's pitch on foreign policy is fairly straightforward. In his view, the world has fallen into chaos—and Joe Biden, a weak, incompetent leader, has allowed this to happen. He frequently references the risk of World War 3, and the anti-war protests and occupations of campuses by pro-Palestine students almost certainly fed into the perceptions of a world gone to hell. This is in contrast to how it was when he was president (or so he claims), in which the world was safe due his diplomatic skills and relations with foreign dictators, and his more aggressive foreign policy striking fear into those who would otherwise attack America (or Israel). He promises to swiftly end the war between Russia and Ukraine, and to unchain Israel to “finish the job.” The issue for Biden is Trump does have a point, the world has felt unstable under his leadership. Of course this leaves out the fact that Trump's own presidency was characterized by a messy foreign policy that accelerated conditions toward the crises we face today, but in 2024 voters are not thinking about the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, or the Abraham Accords which isolated Palestine.
Meanwhile, the legitimate focus on the War on Gaza weakened Biden's ability to actually make a pitch for his genuinely good economic policies, even as the economic situation improved. Rather than engaging with the public about his support for labor, or how he was bringing investments to their communities, he was defending Israel as it was committing crimes with US-made weapons. It also further undermined his ability to rely on more left leaning surrogates to shore up his support among progressives. A great example of this is both Bernie and AOC, who continued to lift him and his economic policies up as a success, even as many of their core supporters turned on them due to the assault on Palestinians. Left opposition to our own standard bearers made it more difficult for them to amplify pro-Biden messaging, and made energizing the base a more complex project (something important to keep in mind given the key role of volunteers to electoral campaigns).
Finally, the War in Gaza led to obvious missteps and errors which the Biden campaign and subsequently the Harris campaign walked into, which would have easily been avoidable had the war not occurred. The most obvious example of this is the sidelining of the Uncommitted delegates at the Democratic National Convention, turning what could have been a point of unity and uplifted the campaign in the eyes of progressive voters into a demoralizing moment with relatively little trade off.
To summarize, while the war didn't bring Biden down, it contributed to a sense of impotence that played directly into Trump's messaging (which linked well with points about his age). It led to division and disunity among the Democratic base, distracting from the president's already weak ability to frame himself as fixing the economy and dealing with the problems Americans are facing today, and generated new hostility toward Biden which did not exist prior to the genocide. Along with other foreign policy bungles and Biden's advanced age, this created an atmosphere in which a strong authoritarian leader who could handle our problems seemed more palatable, which fed into nostalgia for the Trump era, even if he is personally detestable to many.
The Role Palestine Doesn't Play in the 2024 Election
So far this piece has illustrated how the War in Gaza matters in this election. However, there are also a number of claims floating in left wing circles that make this case, but in a way which is misleading or down right untrue. As we prepare ourselves to analyze the election results, particularly if Kamala loses, it is critical that we are not seduced by narratives which highly align with our preconceived ideas about the world. These narratives over-exaggerate the specific role Palestine plays in the election results in ways that do not hold up to scrutiny. In a just world, a genocide, unspeakable acts of mass bloodshed against an occupied population, and an expanding regional war would be the single issue to define an election but unfortunately, tragically, we do not live in such a world at present.
One of the central claims here is that the campaign’s approach to Israel and Palestine is damaging enough to Harris (and before her Biden), that it will cost Democrats the White House. While the specifics of the upcoming election results remain to be seen, this is extremely unlikely. Not because Harris is guaranteed to win, but because the number of voters for whom Gaza is high on their list of priorities is low. Even when looking at young voters, who in the same poll had a +26 support (and +41 among Democrats) for an arms embargo, only 5% said Israel-Palestine was the most important issue, and 3% said the second. Issues like the economy, democracy, abortion and immigration rank much higher on the list of things most voters are thinking about as we head into the election, even young ones. We shouldn't be too dismissive here, as 8% ranking it this high is significant, and given the closeness of this election, could prove decisive. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves that a vast amount of young voters, or even voters generally, are going to be deciding how to vote primarily based on disgust at US support for genocide abroad.
We also should not forget that the shift from Biden to Harris has energized young voters, even if this is no longer so obvious months later. Biden stands at a -11 point favorability rating among young voters. This is in sharp contrast to Harris, who has an extremely high 19 point net favorability, higher by 6 points than AOC, and only bested by Walz and Sanders. While support for the Democratic ticket died down among leftists since the DNC, Harris remains overwhelmingly popular with young Americans. Meanwhile enthusiasm for the ticket has reached the level of Obama in 2008. While we shall see what exactly occurs on Election Day (in particular there may be a huge gap between young men and young women), there is little evidence to suggest that Gaza is significantly damaging Harris’s appeal among most young people.
In addition to how young people are reacting to Gaza, Michigan and its Arab and Muslim population has taken on an almost mythic place in left wing discourse. According to a common narrative, Harris is on track to lose the state due to her support for Israel, and therefore will lose the election. There are, however, a few complications in this narrative. To begin with, if we are in a scenario where the pro-Palestinian vote in Michigan is decisive, the election is probably lost anyway. This is due to the fact that of the three Midwestern swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Michigan consistently votes furthest to the left, and has in every election this century by margin of victory, with the largest swing to the Democrats from 2016 to 2020. What this means is that if Michigan is looking like it's going to go for Trump, it is fairly likely that so are Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, meaning there are much bigger obstacles to a Harris presidency. This is not to say that these voters do not matter. In an election this close every vote matters, and in particular if Michigan does vote to the right of other swing states, and one can see in a precinct level that this loss is due to a decline in vote share among pro-Palestinian voters, then there will be a case to be made about the role of Palestine in the election. But barring that evidence, it is not helpful for the Left to loudly make the case that Harris is guaranteed to lose Michigan, because if she does not, and if this is due to trends other than Palestine, it undermines our credibility to make electoral threats in the future. One can see this with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Many claimed that if such an invasion occurred, it would damage the Democratic position so much that it would cost them the election. Yet no slippage occurred in the polls following the Israeli invasion.
It is also worth pointing out that while the state does have a major Arab and Muslim population, it also has many Jewish voters and voters who are pro-Israel. We are missing this reality when we attack the campaign for sending Ritchie Torres to Michigan (no matter how despicable we may find him), as he is specifically being sent to speak with pro-Israel Jewish voters. While we may fault them for not doing similar outreach to Arab and Muslim voters (and in fact have done everything to alienate them), these are separate issues for the campaign. It does not help our analysis or our credibility to speak as if the state of Michigan and its diverse voters are universally pro-Palestine. If she wins Michigan (which seems more likely than not) acting as if the state's presidential vote is a referendum on Palestine makes it far easier to dismiss the issue moving forward, and contradicts the strategy of groups like Uncommitted to turn out voters against Trump.
One piece of hard evidence that does help build the case that the election hinges on Palestine is a YouGov poll of swing state voters commissioned by the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding Policy Project. The poll suggests that a large number of voters in swing states are more likely to support a candidate who supports an arms embargo, that an overwhelming amount (80%) support a ceasefire, and that approximately a quarter say the violence in Gaza is important to them and will impact how they vote. These are impressive numbers, and they undoubtedly make clear that voters support an end to the war. But they also do not necessarily suggest the degree of importance to the election itself that they might seem at first glance. A voter who is already going to be voting for Harris on Election Day, and who is supportive of an arms embargo, would say yes to the question of whether, if a candidate opposes military aid to Israel, you would be more likely to vote for them—which is presumably the exact position of a significant number of progressive voters. It is therefore unclear from this poll to what extent taking such a position would actually net Harris new voters, versus further exciting her existing ones. Given opposition to Israel being strongest among self-identifying Democratic voters, it is likely far more the latter than the former.
Likewise, while Gaza may be important to a quarter of voters in swing states, this says nothing about how they value it. We should not forget that the official position of the Harris campaign is that she alongside the president is working for a ceasefire, and that this is a reason to cast a ballot for her over Trump (recall how the line about Gaza in her speech at the DNC got the loudest cheers above anything). It is also worth remembering the variety of polling on core progressive issues, and how frequently popular they are, yet rarely do these translate into electoral outcomes favorable to those positions (if they had, Bernie would have won both primaries due to his support for Medicare for All). All of this is to say that the data does not show a mass of voters ready to sit out the election if Harris does not come out swinging against Israel. It instead illustrates a more complex picture, in which voters are overwhelmingly supportive of an end to the war, and many want some sort of limitation on military aid. Harris should listen to them, but not because it necessarily means the election hinges on her doing so.
There has been a consistent rallying cry that should Harris lose, the Democrats have only themselves to blame. This exculpates ourselves and our movement's failure to more widely demonstrate that taking a stance against Israel is worth the electoral risk. While their opposition to the Israeli war was not necessarily the decisive issue in their defeats, our failure to defend Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman from primary challengers backed by AIPAC money did us no favors in our efforts to move either Biden or Harris on the issue. Debates about the specifics of these races, our particular efforts in them, and our internal disagreements are outside of the scope of this piece, but it is undebatable that their losses weakened our claims about the popularity of the Pro-Palestinian position, and contributed to a sense of fear around AIPAC money, things we may want to keep in mind as we strategize for the future. We should also not forget that Andy Levin similarly was defeated in a congressional primary in 2022 after proposing legislation which would have conditioned American support to Israel on compliance with international humanitarian law. Likewise, while our efforts to organize anti-war protests outside of the DNC were admirable, they were far smaller than we might have otherwise hoped, nowhere near as large as the 1968 protests as some had promised (which almost certainly impacted the DNC’s decision on the inside with Uncommitted).
All of this is to say that while the decisions of the Harris campaign are those of the campaign itself, it is too easy to ignore our role in shaping US political narratives. While we may have a relatively small role to play, we are actors with agency, and it does us no favors to pretend otherwise. What would it take for us to sustain mass action at scale for Palestine, or any issues we are willing to struggle for, from the streets through the ballot box in elections? We must be rigorous in how we organize to demonstrate our power, not just moralize and deflect.
No Heaven for the Saints
If Trump wins the election, it is critical that we do not allow ourselves to be swept into inaccurate narratives just because they fit neatly with our worldview. Under such a scenario, it is likely that the Democratic Party will shift rightward. Liberals will blame the Left for sitting out the election, while leftists will blame the party for not appealing enough to them. As we attempt to navigate these waters, it will be important that we do not act like Palestine is an electoral silver bullet. We need to be clear headed about what factors led to the outcome that it did—not because it means we need to sideline international solidarity, but rather that if we hope to be a majoritarian movement that can speak to the needs of most working Americans, and build a broad based anti-war movement at the same time, we need to know what is actually driving people to make the decisions that they do. Writing everything off as “too pro-Israel” or “not left wing enough” is lazy, and enables us to rest on our laurels in a way that will prevent us from developing the power and support we need to actually bring an end to US imperialist ventures. With many millions of lives on the line we cannot make this mistake.
Much of the debate on the topic revolves around the morality of voting for Harris, or whether we should vote for a third party candidate. We should never shame people for feeling an urgent need to do anything they can to end the genocide, even if that action is largely illusory. This is a perfectly understandable reaction for those of us who sympathize intensely with the suffering of Palestinians. But we shouldn’t justify our votes to ourselves based on our feelings about the ongoing genocide when those votes will do nothing to bring it, or the occupation, to an end. It is a hard reality to accept after a year that our votes have no impact on the genocide, whether we vote for Harris or another candidate, but we must face it. No matter who wins this election, the genocide will not suddenly end. This does not mean that our votes do not matter, or that down ballot races and other issues which this election are being fought for aren't important, but we can't kid ourselves into thinking that Jill Stein getting 1% higher in the election does anything for Palestinians facing Israeli bombs, anymore than the idea that Harris will suddenly about face on the issue. We cannot lull ourselves into that particular sleep. Nor can we act like who we vote for has any bearing on our own implication in America and Israel's actions. To narrow our participation in society down to our consent to it via voting is to buy into a metaphysical understanding of the ballot as a social contract or an expression of one's conscience, more deeply than even the most ardent civic patriot. Capital infuses every aspect of our existence, and we cannot step outside of it by checking a box.
Politics, especially socialist politics, is not about keeping our conscience clear. It is not an escape from the horrors of our world, nor is it a way to lift ourselves out of the violence that permeates capital. Politics is the means by which groups of people exert control over resources and gain the power to make decisions or impact them. If we believe that enabling Israel to freely murder Palestinians is wrong, then we must outline the straightest path to achieving this aim — which includes forcing the US government to end military aid to Israel. Trying to absolve ourselves of sin—whether by voting for Jill Stein or by simply blaming the Democrats—only obscures our hard choices and the terrain we are on. In the face of so much death, it is all the more important that we set a strategy for how we can concretely change US policy. This means grappling with the landscape of American politics and voters, identifying where as a movement we can meaningfully impact them, and where we still have a ways to go. If keeping your conscience clear outweighs all analysis, that is between your god and you. But to make paradise in this world, we must throw our lot in with the devil of politics, our souls be damned.
Palestine Matters Because Palestinians Matter
It is clearly useful to refer to support among the American public for an end to the genocide in Gaza, or to articulate how ongoing American backing of Israel might harm a candidate's electoral outcomes. But we cannot forget that these are rhetorical points. They are not an analysis of what is happening in the American electorate, anymore than right wing claims about voters hating trans people. Yet it is also important to remember that they are also not the actual reason why ending the war matters.
Palestine matters today, not because of an election, but because it is a necessity to stop the deaths of innocent people, and the occupation of a whole population, even and especially if it is unpopular. It is ironic that many on the Left, we who advocate for the power of politicians to not only follow but to shape narratives for progressive ends, and who so constantly go against the grain, are increasingly seeing ourselves projected in some fictional majority for whom Palestine is the decisive issue.
The dark days that immediately followed 10/7 were some of the hardest moments for the Left in recent memory. Standing up against war is often the heaviest task the Left is called to do. Our modest stance—that war is wrong, and that an immediate ceasefire is necessary—was genuinely radical, and we came under vicious attack for it by our enemies. Yet in spite of this we stood our ground, and were able to slowly begin to shift public opinion. There is a lot we can be proud of, but we still have so much work ahead, which we who live at the center of the imperial core must do, in order to bring the siege on Gaza to an end, and then to end occupation and apartheid, and then to win a free Palestine in our lifetimes. Acting as if the American people cry out for an end to war, but the feckless Democrats prevent it, absolves us of the necessity to organize to actually make this a reality. The struggle to build opposition to apartheid South Africa in the US took decades, and we should have no illusions that our own work to build out a coalition to reorient America's stance on Palestine will be a marathon of its own. Whatever happens in the weeks and months to come, we must struggle with all of our collective analytical and organizational might to understand our political terrain, to develop sound strategies, and above all, to stop our government’s abominable actions in the Middle East. To shirk this responsibility would be unforgivable.
