Moderating: This is not the thread to debate the war. Stick to the OP as much as possible, there are many threads for posts like yours.
Are there any "good" options for pro-Palestine voters (as opposed to "choose between bad vs. worse")
I bet that’s the sticking point for a lot of the more angry/less experienced pro-Palestine voters. And I fear a lot of them are going to do something fundamentally stupid like vote for a third candidate out of spite, and divide the Democratic voter base, and give Trump an unwarranted leg up.
The part I don’t get is how these clowns are rationally thinking about this and coming to the conclusion that making a pointless point about Palestine is more important than keeping Trump out/keeping our system of government intact and stable. It’s like the 2016-2020 time frame somehow didn’t register to them about how threatening it was to our way of governance.
And maybe it’s just me, but that seems FAR more important than whatever is going on in Palestine… again, for the what, fourth time in about 40 years?
Realistically, one shouldn’t be pro-Palestine any more than they should be pro-Israel. Like, if you have two heroin addicts, wrestling over which of them gets to break into that house and rape that woman, you don’t need to choose one of the two that you want to see come out victorious. They’re both bad and you don’t gain anything in your life, nor aid the world in any way by deciding that at least one of them needs to be supported.
There isn’t always a good guy.
This isn’t to say that the war isn’t affecting innocents. But the innocents aren’t winning, regardless of who comes out top on this. If you want to be on their side, don’t be for Palestine nor for Israel. Be for intervention.
Thanks for the reply!
No problem. I didn’t think of the logistical issues myself at first , so it seemed like a great idea when he first described it.
Same here! OK, the mods are watching this thread pretty closely, so let’s drop this side conversation.
One-issue protest votes for President are a perfectly viable option if you live in a heavily blue or red state where there are no possible detrimental consequences.
Or if you care about that issue more than all the other issues combined.
Agreed.
Not in this case.
A pro-Palestine voter who believes Biden is royally screwing things up here should STILL vote for Biden, unless they believe Trump will screw things up less. If they believe that, then what the everloving fuck? If they don’t believe that–if they believe the obvious truth that Trump would make things much worse–then their protest vote is a terrible idea.
There’s the famous Blazing Saddles scene where, faced with lethal threat, the sherriff holds himself hostage. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he’s ready to kill himself–and since his opponents don’t want him dead (well, they do, but for jokey purposes they suddenly don’t), they back down.
This Blazing Saddles negotiation strategy --BS negotation for short–shows up a lot in politics. Nobody wants a government shutdown, but Republicans figure that Democrats want it even less than they do, so they hold the government hostage in hopes that the Democrats will back down first. It’s a form of political terrorism, and it doesn’t work.
A protest vote that’s purely symbolic–like a Californian or an Alabaman voting for Cornel West–is fine. A single-issue voter who thinks that Trump will be better for the Middle East than Biden has a terrible premise but a valid reason for voting for Trump.
But for someone who’s pro-Palestinian, a protest vote is holding a gun to your own head. It’s the Blazing Saddles scene, except Mel Brooks isn’t directing, and the anti-Palestinian people will be only too happy to help you pull the trigger.
But that would be pretty short-sighted in a swing state. Long term, Trump would be worse for the Palestinians.
I guess it depends on the issue. If you’re very dedicated to Pro-Life but can’t stomach voting for someone like Trump, a 3rd party candidate might make sense.
In terms of what he did for the US, Trump was pretty blah. In terms of what he did for Israel, he may as well been the President of Israel, during his time in office.
Granted, I think that was mostly down to Kushner and Pompeo, with Trump really not caring one way or the other about it. But I’d assume that Kushner would return, under a second Trump presidency. I could see him being appointed Secretary of State. He’d probably be one of the more effective ones that we’d ever had.
(Note: “effective” means “able to get things done”. It does not mean, “does things that I like or approve of”.)
You’re serious?
He was pretty effective last time. Mostly not in ways i like, but he did get stuff done.
In February, Kushner said he wouldn’t take part in a future trump administration. More recently, he seems to be full of ideas of how Israel could develop Gaza. He’s a crap shoot. If he’s back, that’s bad for Palestinians, but he might not be. And if Trump bows to Putin, trump might be good (or, let’s be serious, less bad) for Palestinians than our current course.
There are a lot of factual questions and guesses about the future involved in predicting just how bad Trump would be for Palestine. I can see deciding to punish Biden and hoping Trump won’t be as bad.
I mean, i won’t be voting for Trump. But also, Palestine is not my only issue.
Saying “worse” is only meaningful to voters if the difference between “worse” and the current situation is considerably great and very noticeable. At a certain point of misery, bad vs. more-bad gets to a level where the difference doesn’t mean all that much to some voters. For Palestine, the current ongoing situation would be like if I told you you have two options: You can get whipped by a lash 410 strokes, or you can get whipped 450 strokes. Sure, there’s technically a difference, and one is mathematically worse than the other, but at that level of pain and suffering, it’s not a meaningful one. Either way, you’re in for a world of hurt. (Not the best of analogies, but there are no good analogies.)
This is just wrong. Biden is trying to provide aid to Palestinians using that floating thing – don’t know if it will be effective, but there aren’t too many options. Trump would definitely not try and provide aid to Palestinians.
Biden is pressuring Bibi to go easier, trying to negotiate ceasefires, etc. Trump would do none of those things.
Biden is as good as he can be to Palestinians, given the political realities at home. Trump would be actively hostile.
The idea that one is terrible and the other is almost as bad is just false.
What, you don’t think “two junkies trying to rape a woman” is a thoughtful and deep and accurate analogy for this generational war?
Not so far.
I disagree with the first sentence, but set that aside: the folks described as “pro-Palestinian voters” almost certainly disagree. I don’t think you’ll persuade them otherwise.
But the point that Trump is worse is extremely important. And in a little more than six months, we’re gonna choose whether to hand the reins over to Trump. The idea that Trump’ll be worse only on the edges, or in ways that don’t matter, is ridiculous. Because:
this is 100% true. Even if Biden isn’t doing nearly enough, even if he should be doing so much more and applying so much more pressure, Trump will actively encourage the horrors and will prop up Netanyahu’s atrocity-committing (in the eyes of Pro-Palestinian voters) war cabinet.
Trump gets along with all of the right-wing extremists. Why should Israel be any different?
As a pro-Palestinian voter, there are a few good options to pick from out there. I personally voted for Cornel West in the Peace and Freedom Party primary, although I also like Claudia De La Cruz as well. Jill Stein is another option and is someone I’ve supported in the past.
Biden would need to do a hell of a lot more when it comes to Israel to get my vote. Not only cutting off Israel’s aid and arms shipments, but also possibly taking tougher measures like sanctions if they still don’t end their genocide. He will never do that because he has always been a self-admitted Zionist and so his allegiance will always be with Israel, along with all the other politicians on both sides of the aisle who have been bought out by AIPAC and similar organizations.
Unlike some other people on the left, I still think it’s important to vote, but at this point I’m pretty much done with Democrats unless they actually prove they are worth it for once.
Which makes it a nearly perfect analogy for the main topic of the thread. Yes the floating platform is an inefficient way to deliver aid and what is really needed is for Israel to allow more aid on the ground. But that isn’t going to happen. So the floating platform is the best we are probably going to get, and will at least help some Palistians. What is not going to help the Palestinians is obstructing its operation because its not trucks.
For the Peace and Freedom primary? Absolutely. I’m unclear on what the substantive difference is between voting for Cornel West in the general election, and voting for Mikhail Bakunin is in the general election: they have the same chance of becoming president and affecting US policy.
Stipulating that Biden is as bad as you say, do you think that his policies re: Gaza are indistinguishable from Trump’s? A vote doesn’t signify approval of the candidate’s policies: it’s an attempt to move things away from the bad direction as much as can be done by a single vote.
If the two candidates were literally Stalin (“Kill all my political enemies”) and literally Satan (“Send all humanity to hell for eternal torment”), I’d vote for Stalin in a heartbeat–not because I like Stalin, but because maybe I can keep Satan from enacting his even worse plans.