Democrats and Republicans: The Differences Do Matter!

Democrats and Republicans: The Differences Matter!

We are just a few short weeks until an election that will have enormous consequences for the future of our country, our vulnerable communities, and our earth.  I’m a life-long activist for justice, as are many of my close friends and allies. The majority of us are strongly supporting Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.  But some of my dearest friends, especially those who, like me, have been long time activists for justice for Palestine, are angry and disheartened at the Biden administration’s continued support for the slaughter in Gaza, and now an expanded war in Lebanon. The Harris campaign’s refusal to let Palestinians speak at the Democratic Convention, or to meet with Palestinians, has been especially dispiriting. I understand those who feel that they cannot vote for the Democrats. It's a moral position that I respect.

But what I hear from some dear friends is “The Democrats and the Republicans, they’re all the same, all subject big money and their corporate masters.”  No one can deny that big money has an inordinate amount of influence over our bloated, obscenely costly elections, and getting it out of politics must be one of our primary goals. But however you choose to vote, please, please, don’t tell us that the Democrats and Republicans are just the same! That’s a tired truism I’ve heard for decades, that stops us thinking, and excuses us from seeing clearly just how extremely dangerous a Trump victory would be, including for the Palestinians and all of the Middle East.

While people are starving and dying in Gaza, while the rockets are pounding Southern Lebanon and a new invasion looks likely, the joyfulness of the Harris campaign can seem offensive.  But, to paraphrase a classic saying, you cannot counter a toxic energy with the same kind of energy you’re fighting.  To defeat the whining, self-pitying, endlessly complaining tone of grievance motivating the ultra-right, we need hope, joy, and optimism.  I believe that it is a very good thing that masses of people are excited and enthusiastic to elect a highly qualified, experienced, sane woman of color to be President of the United States, instead of a racist, vicious, lying fascist. We should celebrate that enthusiasm and build on it, while also holding the anguish of those who are dying in war and strengthening our commitment to shift the Democrats’ position on the Middle East. We should be glad that thousands of previously uninvolved folks are now engaged with the political process at a whole new level. Our short term strategy must be to support Harris, Walz and Democrats up and down the ticket.  Our long-term strategy must be to build a more broad-based, welcoming and powerful progressive movement.

I also hear some of my friends saying, “Well, if the Democrats get elected people will get complacent, but if Trump gets elected, that will mobilize people.”  I heard similar arguments in 1968 when a few leftists voted for Nixon, sure that his regime would spark the revolution.  That didn’t work out so well then, nor has it since.  Masses of people did mobilize after Trump’s election in 2016, but the enormous Women’s March and the other waves of organizing could not protect Roe v. Wade, stop his appointment of right-wing judges to the Supreme Court, stop him from withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords, nor prevent him from so mismanaging the response to Covid that thousands of people died unnecessarily.  Worse, his election opened the door to the rise of the alt-right, to an upsurge of lies and violence directed at targeted groups from Muslims to Asians to Jews and immigrants of all sorts, and to the normalization of hatred and corruption.  A Trump victory in November would embolden every racist in the country, possibly in the world. The nasty, lying attacks and awful rhetoric we've seen directed against the Haitian community in the past weeks are a foretaste of what we will all be subjected to over and over again, for the next four years or perhaps the rest of our lives.  If we stand against racism and all forms of prejudice, we cannot let that happen. 

Trump and Vance have demonized immigrants and promised massive deportations of undocumented and even legal immigrants, which would require a colossal police assault on our towns and cities, disrupting the lives of thousands, possibly perhaps even millions, incarcerating enormous numbers of people in concentration camps, separating children and families, and creating a level of human misery that staggers the imagination.  If we stand for human rights and care about the lives and safety of immigrants, asylum seekers and all targeted groups, we cannot let that happen.

Consider climate change. The Democrats, against the concerted opposition of all the Republicans and a couple of key members of their own party, have actually passed meaningful legislation with the Inflation Reduction Act and numerous executive orders to begin addressing the problem.  Those victories also reflect the power and organizing of the climate movement, and we should claim them, even if they are partial.  If we don’t claim our victories because they are incomplete, we risk demoralizing our own activism. People are empowered by success, not failure, and unless we can recognize even a partial success when we have one, we risk discouragement and apathy. 

Much, much more needs to be done. Trump would send us backwards, undoing all the progress of the last four years, taking us out of the Paris climate accords once again, and fulfilling his promise to oil executives to give them free reign to drill, baby, drill.  We do not have four years to spend increasing the carbon burden on the planet. We need to be doing more than we are to reduce carbon emissions, to mitigate their impact and to further regenerative systems for land, soil and water. The Democrats are headed in the right direction, and we need to build an even stronger movement to push them further and faster.  Trump would seal the doom of the planet, and we cannot let that happen.

Let us not forget the rights, of women, queer, trans, nonbinary and LGBTQ folks, and the rights of every person of whatever gender to reproductive freedom, to control our own bodies and make our own choices about whom we love, how we love, whether and when and how to form a family.  A Trump/Vance victory, especially if accompanied by Republicans winning back the Senate and holding the House, would result in a national abortion ban, restrictions on contraception, in vitro fertilization, banning of gender affirming care, and who knows what else.  Abortion bans are already costing lives, and violence against gender nonconforming folks is high and will escalate with a Trump victory.  We cannot let that happen.

I just returned from a trip to Ukraine where I was teaching a course in social permaculture at an ecovillage, fortunately far from the fighting, at a place that has offered a refuge to those forced to flee the Russian invasion and provided support, healing and hope to victims of Putin’s aggression.  Many of my students were displaced from their homes in eastern Ukraine. All of them had friends, family or loved ones at risk or already victims of the war.  None of them want to live under Russian occupation or to let Putin's land grab succeed. A Trump victory would give carte blanche to Putin and every other right wing dictator to increase their aggression. We cannot let that happen.

I know many of you are anguished as I am about the genocide in Palestine. While Biden is working for a cease fire, he seems strangely reluctant to bring the full force of American pressure to bear on Netanyahu to actually get the war to stop, and to prevent the Israeli military from expanding into Lebanon and beyond. He continues to send arms and weapons, even as the Israeli military blocks aid to Gaza and bombs Lebanon. Harris will potentially be better than Biden on this issue, yet not nearly where we would want her to be. I do understand those who feel they cannot bring themselves to vote for a party who is actively funding the genocide. I have friends who anguish, “Am I betraying the Palestinians if I vote for Harris?” 

If Trump were actually better on the question of Palestine, if he were likely to rein in Netanyahu, stop funding weapons, get the hostages home, end the war and assure peace and security for the region, that might be a painful dilemma. But Trump would be the ultimate disaster, for Gaza, for the Palestinians, for Lebanon and for the world.  He has said quite clearly that he would give Netanyahu license to ‘finish the job’ in Gaza and elsewhere.  He would not intervene to prevent Netanyahu from annexing Gaza and the West Bank outright, ending any hope of a solution that could provide self-determination and dignity for the Palestinian people.  And this would ultimately be a disaster for Israel, as well. The only real security for both Israelis and Palestinians lies in justice for Palestine.  Anything less will foster new cycles of rage and resistance.  We cannot let that happen.

Finally, I would not let an angry five-year-old drive even my old ranch truck out onto the freeway.  Disaster and death would surely result.  Giving a mean, aggrieved, vengeful, emotional five-year-old who cannot tell the difference between lies and truth  the immense power that the U.S. Presidency represents, including the capacity to unleash a nuclear war, is simply too dangerous to contemplate.  We cannot let that happen!

Swastika-wielding Nazis march in Springfield, Ohio.  Fascism—not the metaphoric kind but the old-fashioned, 1930’s blitzkrieg and death camp real thing—is on the rise globally.  My father and his brother were communists back in the ‘30s and had no great love for American capitalism and certainly no great urge to go to war to defend it. Yet they joined the U.S. military in World War Two, because they saw it as the way in that moment they could best fight fascism.

Today we are called to fight fascism with ballots, so that hopefully we will not have to fight it with bullets. If we refuse to see the dangers we face, we risk a disaster that neither the US nor the world may recover from.  American democracy is imperfect, but it is, if not perfectible at least improvable. We have a lot more work to do. But let's do it with our eyes open, acknowledging the real differences and strategic choices that lie before us. We haven't yet transformed the world, but we have made progress. We can defend that progress, and continue to make more. Today, tens of thousands of people are mobilizing, knocking on doors, writing postcards, making phone calls, filled with enthusiasm and hope. If the Democrats win in November, it will be our job as activists to channel that energy into a broad, powerful movement for deeper change, to create a more just, equitable, peaceful and vibrant world.