Progressives acknowledging the fact of genocide is a good first step, and it’s useful that Ocasio-Cortez and others have done so — “I think [unconditional aid to Israel] enabled a genocide in Gaza,” she said in Munich — but it is not in and of itself sufficient. Before anyone in the party can move on to selling a post-Biden vision of human-rights-first foreign policy, they must address what accountability for the war criminals in the Biden administration — those who aided, armed, and funded genocide — should look like.
What you’re describing is a strategy for primaries, not the general.
The vote in the general election comes at the end of the race. Any response to the input of your vote or lack thereof is irrelevant at that point. We just have to live under the policies of the winner. Even if Kamala changed her stance on Gaza as a result of you and other 1-issue voters withholding your votes, it doesn’t matter; it’s too late and now we have Trump.
If your plan is to let MAGA run roughshod over the world until Democrats share your stance on the issue, then you are as responsible as Trump voters for what is happening.
No, I am not talking about primaries. If a candidate holds a position which will prevent them from winning a general, in the context of election like the previous election, you have the responsibility to take whatever actions are necessary to move that candidate, including withholding your vote if they don’t change their position.
You need to look at the modifier here: the candidate holds a policy that will prevent them from winning the general. If they maintain the policy, the lose the election. Period. How you vote is utterly irrelevant, because the millions of people who won’t vote for them aren’t going to vote. Voting or advocating or a candidate who is running on a losing set of policies isn’t harm reduction or strategic.
FTFY.
Hell, even do it in secret and claim even after voting, that you didn’t vote for the Dem because they wouldn’t take a stand against Genocide in Israel. You can even still claim today to have withheld your vote, for all I care. If you didn’t actually vote, or voted 3rd party, or even (God forbid) voted Trump, even though your vote is private, then you are a piece of shit, and the criticism being levelled at you is appropriate.
But many politicians who hold a position you claim makes them unelectable won in 2024, including the president. How do you square this with your theory?
Like, its so tedious to have to be your tutor for a basic understanding of elections and electoralism. You really do have a responsibility to study these things yourself instead of expecting the world to feed decades of study and work into your mouth like a baby bird.
What gets a Republican elected has nothing whatsoever to do with what will get a Democrat elected. Voters do not exist along a one dimensional continuum centered on a normal distribution. Voters who would vote to get a Democrat elected are not voters who would vote to get a Republican elected. If you run a campaign, as a Democrat, focused on appealing to Republican voters: you will lose the election.
What percentage of Democratic congresspersons who won in 2024 share your position on Gaza/Israel?