My views are my own.
I am voting third party in the 2024 presidential election. I have as little faith in the Democratic Party as I do in the Republican Party: none.
I am a pro-Palestine socialist. I am against genocide, capitalism, American imperialism, and Israeli apartheid.
A vote for Kamala Harris, like a vote for Donald Trump, is a vote for genocide, capitalism, American imperialism, and Israeli apartheid.
I understand that many people who hold these same beliefs will vote for Kamala out of fear and because they believe they have no choice. (This also tells me that it is a lie to say “we are voting for the future of our democracy,” since it is dead.) Materially, one vote is one vote whether it is reluctant or not. But I have more sympathy for these folks who vote for her while holding their noses than for the majority who eagerly cheer her on and support her without question.
For me personally, genocide is my red line.
Uncommitted
If Kamala wanted my vote, she knew what she would have needed to do to get it. Along with over 60,000 other registered Democrats in Pennsylvania and roughly 700,000 registered Democrats nationwide, I voted uncommitted in the 2024 Democratic primary to send the message to the candidate at the time, Joe Biden, that I would not vote for him or his party until or unless they demonstrated a commitment to:
- An immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza
- An end to the siege of Gaza
- Reinstating humanitarian aid and UNRWA funding
- End of U.S. aid to Israel
Neither Biden nor Harris have given any indication that this loss of 700,000 votes sways them from their plans to continue to subsidize the slaughter of nearly 200,000 Palestinians (a three-month old estimate).
Instead, they are confident enough that they can win on nothing other than fearmongering about Trump and Project 2025.
CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Kamala’s wall
Meanwhile, the Democrats are hardly any better about some of the scariest parts of Project 2025. The Harris campaign has put out ads about how “tough” they will be on “border control,” bragging about how “as Vice President, [Harris] backed the toughest border control bill in decades.” Harris also said at the Democratic National Convention that “as President I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that [Trump] killed and I will sign it into law.” This bill explicitly says that once it passes, construction of the wall will resume.
This is the same wall that in the past Harris has called “wasteful,” “useless,” and “un-American.”
Abortion
Another Project 2025 bogeyman is abortion rights. Project 2025 alarmists frequently point to the Mandate for Leadership’s attacks on medication abortion and emergency abortion medical care. But we didn’t lose Roe under a Republican president. Yes, Trump’s Supreme Court picks were responsible for the Dobbs decision. And? Biden hasn’t done any of the several options in his power to restore abortion rights in the two years since the decision. Even when the White House, the House, and the Senate were all under Democrat control from 2021-2023, they did not repeal the Hyde Amendment, abolish the filibuster, or pack the Supreme Court, all of which could have paved the way for things like opening abortion clinics on federal lands, overturning Dobbs, or even codifying Roe.
I voted for John Fetterman in 2022 with the understanding that having a Democrat-controlled Senate would mean a codification of Roe, but thanks to a Republican filibuster, that didn’t happen. And instead, Fetterman will be remembered as a rabid pro-genocide Zionist who hates his own constituents and voters.
Democrats don’t care
If I had known in 2020 and 2022 that Democrats would do next to nothing to make life better for working class Americans and would instead spend billions of dollars on bombing children, I wouldn’t have voted for them.
I was a Democrat for a long time. I thought that voting blue was the right thing to do because it would protect abortion rights, immigration, and religious freedom. But it is clear that Democrats don’t care about these things. If I had known then that Democrats would be the ones to enable Israel to bomb hundreds of thousands of innocent people, I would not have been telling you to vote blue. So I am beyond disgusted to see so many self-identified progressives and self-identified humanists enthusiastically support candidates who pay for genocide. They can’t say they don’t know. They just don’t care.
Democrats will pretend to care about genocide, sure. When it’s a hypothetical genocide in the United States waged by Donald Trump against immigrants, Democrats are up in arms. When it is a real genocide that has been going on for over a year to people who have been living under apartheid for 76 years, Democrats are nowhere to be seen. They will condemn crimes America has committed in the past, but never while they are happening. Never while they can actually do something about it.
Two evils
Democrat voters call leftists blind for not seeing the Democrats as the lesser evil. Thus, Democrats only consider something evil enough if it is happening here, to them. In reality, a Democrat-funded genocide in Palestine is equally as evil as a Republican-funded genocide in the United States. Palestinian children are just as innocent as your children.
Right now, in the midst of a genocide that our administration is actively and enthusiastically supporting, y’all are already showing up in the comments of people who are voicing their disgust with Biden and the Democrats to remind people that “it would be worse with a Republican.”
I have some questions I want y’all to consider – NOT IN MY COMMENTS – on your own just to ask yourself and your conscience.
1) If you’re prioritizing what might happen to you and yours in the future over what is absolutely happening right now to others, what does that say about how much you value those currently being maimed and killed by this administration?
2) If right now, even before primaries, you are pressuring people to signal that they will support Biden no matter what, what exactly do you think his motivation would be to stop this genocide? His conscience? The thing that hasn’t factored in how a single US administration has made a foreign policy decision ever??
3) If you’re telling people it would “be worse” with a Republican are you thinking of those whose loved ones were killed by drones in the Obama administration, or those who were deported in record numbers? Or the Palestinian and Arab Americans whose tax dollars are being used to wipe out their entire families and they’re being called antisemitic for trying to stop it while also facing increasing Anti-Muslim violence at home? Or are you just thinking of yourself because you’re pretty sure that none of the above would ever happen to you and yours?
4) What would our Democratic party look like if we had held our “representatives” accountable for their drones, their deportation, their mass incarceration, their bombs, their ableism, their racism….just once…if THAT was what cost them their elections….what do you think your party would look like today?
5) If it’s clear that our representatives would eagerly support ethnic cleansing and genocide in order to keep power, do you think they just might STOP supporting it to keep power as well?
6) Is it still “harm reduction” if it kills, but just doesn’t kill you?
7) Do you think there should be a price to pay for supporting a genocide?
A single issue
Democrats argue that third-party voters are being stubborn and that we only care about a single issue. For one, I have yet to see any indication that Democrats will fight for working people, enshrine abortion rights, stop Cop City, or welcome immigrants. More importantly, how busted must your moral barometer be to not see a literal, real, happening-now genocide as a dealbreaker? Actually decapitated Palestinian babies—which there are photos of—is an issue treated as inconsequential as a papercut, a niche peeve about which radical leftists should stop nagging you.
If someone is willing to cause the amount of mass destruction that I’ve seen every time I open social media for an entire year, why should I trust them with my own rights?
Kamala knows that over 700,000 of her own base have committed to not vote for her next month. We made ourselves extremely clear. She knows what she would need to do, and she is the one that doesn’t care if she has our votes or not. If she wanted to, she would. She doesn’t call for a ceasefire, and she doesn’t get our vote.
Why third party
Voting third party isn’t a perfect solution. But I refuse to vote for any pro-genocide candidate. I don’t want to abstain from voting because I don’t want to be mistaken for someone who doesn’t care. I care about things that neither of the major candidates’ supporters can honestly say they care about.
My vote won’t choose the winner. They’ve both shown they don’t want my vote anyway. Underneath the reds and the blues, they are both genocidal capitalists.
Instead, my vote is a message: Abandon the two-party system, free the American working class, and free Palestine.