Watching Joe Biden put the full force of our country behind Israel’s genocidal response to the horrific Hamas attack of October 7 has been a gut-wrenching experience for me as it has for huge numbers of Americans and people of conscience around the world. Across the US, Palestinians students and progressives have quickly built a robust movement in support of a ceasefire and divestment, using tactics ranging from university encampments to massive campaigns to withhold primary votes from Joe Biden. While some actions such as the pause in the delivery of a few munitions, public criticisms of Netanyahu, and the recent push for a brokered permanent ceasefire seem to show that our efforts have had at least some impact, our government is still pushing huge amounts of weapons to Israel and by and large standing by as civilians are slaughtered.

This has made progressives across the country question how they could possibly work to support Biden, given the horrors being committed daily in Gaza with our government’s support, not to mention his return to some Trumpian policies on closing the border. It makes total sense that so many of those among the young, progressives and people of color who were so key to Biden’s victory four years ago are loath to turn out for him this time. Despite the recent pressure for Biden to withdraw, that prospect seems extremely unlikely. 

For me, it helps to go back to 1980, when much of the Left argued against supporting Jimmy Carter’s re-election race against Ronald Reagan, a position which I believe in retrospect was wrong. Carter was not the universally respected icon that he is today. After we had pushed Lyndon Johnson out of the 1968 race for his conduct in the Vietnam War we got, instead of a more progressive president, two terms of Richard Nixon. After Nixon’s administration collapsed in disgrace, with his vice president Spiro Agnew resigning to avoid prosecution on bribery charges, and Nixon himself resigning to avoid impeachment, 1976 gave us a Democratic president, the relatively conservative, uber-Christian, governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter.

Carter’s term was marked by a faltering economy, an energy crisis, and increasing tensions between superpowers. Carter’s conduct of his first term was, in a word, bad. 

Domestically, Carter endorsed the Supreme Court’s racist Bakke decision outlawing the use of racial quotas to achieve affirmative action in university admissions. He pushed corporate tax cuts, rolling back pollution regulations, and weakening OSHA to “strengthen the economy”. His budget cuts overwhelmingly targeted minorities and the poor, slashing funding for food stamps, welfare, job training, and aid to the cities. He conciliated with religious fundamentalists who wanted to teach creationism in the schools.

Carter’s record in foreign affairs was no thrill either. He supported the bloody regimes in El Salvador and Iran, backed Israel in its continued expansion onto Arab lands, and declared the Persian Gulf to be within the US’s “Sphere of Influence” to be defended with military intervention if necessary. He was also a key architect of rearmament and speeding up the nuclear arms race.

“While Jimmy Carter was the point person for Democratic neoliberalism that gave us the Clintons, Ronald Reagan was amazingly effective in his two terms at slashing …’

It was not surprising that in 1980, when former California governor Ronald Reagan ran against Carter, many on the left argued that there was no meaningful difference between the policies of the candidates or the interests and ideologies that they represented and advocated non-participation in the election and that Reagan did not represent a concrete danger of fascism. At the end of this article are links to the League of Revolutionary Struggle’s position, published in Unity Newspaper, making that point. Much if not most of the organized left took similar positions as did the Communist Party USA, which ran a slate of their Chair, Gus Hall, and Angela Davis for President and Vice President.

The Marxist left were not the only ones incensed that Carter was the nominee. International Association of Machinists President William Winpisinger declared Carter “the best Republican President since Herbert Hoover” and led a walkout of 300 delegates from the Democratic convention to protest Carter’s nomination, and the choice between Reagan and Carter was later characterized by AFL-CIO head Lane Kirkland, who was far from being a progressive, as “a choice between Dracula and Frankenstein.”

In retrospect we were wrong, not to participate in that election. While Jimmy Carter was the point person for Democratic neoliberalism that gave us the Clintons, Ronald Reagan was amazingly effective in his two terms at slashing the safety net of the New Deal, mobilizing white supremacism as an electoral force, dramatically transferring wealth to a smaller and smaller fraction of US society, dramatically weakening the US labor movement through such actions as breaking the air traffic controllers’ strike, actively intervening militarily abroad as in secretly arming right-wing forces seeking to overturn the elected Socialist government of Nicaragua. For all of our legitimate criticism of Carter, his election would have presented us with a less dangerous opponent.

Today, now

Today, we face a somewhat similar choice, but the difference between our options is overwhelmingly sharper, and the potential outcomes are far more consequential. Clearly, Biden is not a change agent. He represents the liberal wing of mainstream capitalism. For all of the reasons laid out at the start of this article, and despite the ways in which his administration has moved on such issues as workers rights, student debt, climate change, etc., he does not fundamentally represent a positive direction forward for the people of the US or of the world. We have had to fight to get much of what we have gotten from his administration and if he is re-elected we will have to continue to fight. However, Donald Trump has already proven himself and continues to prove himself, an exponentially more dangerous threat.

Trump, as opposed to Ronald Reagan 44 years ago, legitimately represents a clear and present danger of fascism in the US and of disastrous impact on the world. I hardly think it necessary in this piece to make that point, as his advisors and handlers have been remarkably open with their “Project 2025” agenda about their plans to deport 15 million people. To crush the labor movement, and roll back environmental regulations. To shut down initiatives dealing with climate change by moving away from fossil fuels. To make the US a white Christian nation. To eliminate the Department of Education.  To set women’s,’ and trans folks right to control of their bodies back decades further than was accomplished as a result of his last term. To remove tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with committed fanatics, and to eliminate by any means necessary the Marxist radicals whom they see as threatening the nation.

Of course, Biden’s recent disastrous debate performance has likely increased the chance that Donald Trump will win, and the recent Supreme Court decision granting virtually complete immunity to a sitting president for any violations of the law and constitution while in office makes the prospect of a Trump presidency exponentially more dangerous to the people of the US and the world.

Better Ground On Which To Fight

It is no accident that Trump’s election is supported by right-wing anti-democratic forces around the world. He has already moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, is now accusing the Biden administration of “abandoning” Israel. He has supported the extension of Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank, and some in his orbit have called for nuclear strikes to defend Israel. He proposes to bomb the cartels in Mexico and invade that country, if necessary.

We in this country have the privilege of selecting the most powerful person in the world, whose influence will impact billions of people who have no say in the election. We cannot afford to simply walk away from that privilege. If we sit this election out because of our righteous anger at Biden we, and the rest of the world, will regret it for generations because without our support Trump will win and will implement Project 2025.

Additionally, if we sit this out and Trump wins, it will clearly be far worse for the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank. Trump has clearly indicated his support for the State of Israel extending sovereignty over the entire Occupied Territories and integrating them into a religious state. This ties into his evangelical Christian allies’ mystical vision of a new Jewish state and rebuilding of the temple as a precondition for their mythical apocalypse (in which, ironically, they believe that all but “true Christians” would perish, including the Jews).

If we defeat Trump in November, that means that we (and the Palestinian people) have better ground on which to fight, and that our movements and institutions will not be forced into totally defensive battles for survival. That is a far cry from saying if we elect Joe Biden, or whomever might replace him, we have won – but it is supremely important for us in the US and for the people of the world.

Defeating Trump would give us far more space to build a movement inside and outside of the Democratic party to support the people of Palestine and to move a Progressive agenda across the board.

There is a binary choice before us, Trump or Biden. Who would we rather have as our opponent?

…

The choice that isn’t: A communist view of the election Unity Newspaper (Vol. 3, # 19, October 10, 1980)

Thanks to my daughter Jessica Tully for content and editing help and to old Unity comrades and the OWG book group for content suggestions.