When The Lesser Of Two Evils Is Still Intolerably Evil
Joe Biden should not have run for a second term. He is doubling down on that mistake with terrible decisions that make a Trump victory distressingly more likely.
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When 2023 dawned, it was already distressingly apparent that the Democrats did not intend to brook any serious challenge to Joe Biden, one of the weakest incumbents they’ve ever run.
As I’ve pointed out in the past, Joe Biden’s low polling numbers are a serious danger, and they’re not the result, as arrogant Democratic pundits like to suggest, of bad messaging, much less the condescending theory that voters just don’t realize what has been accomplished. Rather, they are the result of the fact that, despite a strong economic rebound from the pandemic and supply chain crises (which Biden had as little to do with as he did the high inflation rates that dogged his first two years), most American’s lives are still a greater struggle than ever.
Biden restored a sense of normalcy to Washington, albeit the dysfunctional normalcy that we had all been struggling with for so many years before Donald Trump. He removed the insanity of Trump’s four years and made it possible, even if still difficult, to pass legislation. Anyone with some degree of basic, mainstream rationality and enough experience in politics to know how things work could have done the same, but Biden was the one who did it, and he must be credited with that. For centrist and moderate political pundits and political scientists, Biden was a relief after the madness of four years of Donald Trump. Things again worked in the way politics were “supposed to.”
This was exactly what Biden said he would do. His infamous 2019 promise to Democratic donors was that "nothing would fundamentally change" if he was elected. By this he did not mean that he would continue all of Trump’s policies (although he did continue some of the worst of them in Palestine, Iran, and at the US’ southern border), but that the status quo ante would largely be restored, save for a few tidbits he needed to grant to Bernie Sanders in order to shore up the support of progressives that Hillary Clinton had so foolishly tossed aside in 2016.
As much as people who are not inclined toward the madness of MAGA are relieved to be rid of Trump’s constant megalomania, reckless actions, and hateful, bigoted ideas, the lives of most Americans—particularly those living paycheck to paycheck or with even less, which is the vast majority of Americans— continue to be a struggle, with housing, food, and commodities prices having gone up over the past decade and a half much faster than wages.
The major negative talking point about Biden—his age—is a red herring, and if people’s lives were not still in decline as they have been since the 2007 financial crisis, it wouldn’t be so important. Indeed, the furor about it in the media is more of a distraction than anything else. Biden’s infirmity and lack of mental acuity are clear, and they would be issues if Biden were still in his forties, but that’s not why the job isn’t getting done.
Undermining democracy for Democrats and bringing back Trump
Yet despite these deficiencies, Biden insisted on running for reelection and the party, rather than trying to find a candidate more likely to defeat Donald Trump in 2024, made sure no one could challenge him. This is somewhat understandable if the party really wants Biden to be the nominee. He is obviously not well equipped to handle debates, and the more he has to campaign, the more embarrassing incidents (such as confusing Mexico and Egypt) are going to happen.
Some are concerned by past incumbents such as George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, who lost general elections after rough primaries. But those primaries exposed the weaknesses of the two candidates (in both cases, I would argue, creating false perceptions about them based on distorted narratives, but that’s politics).
We actually have more recent proof that primaries, even hard ones, don’t bury candidates. Biden himself had to come from behind in 2020 to secure the nomination, an experience that actually underscored the importance of the primary process.
Because Bernie Sanders had waged such a tough campaign, and because Biden’s team had learned from the incredible stupidity of Hillary Clinton bashing Sanders (despite his own unwavering support of her after she defeated him in the primaries) and continuing to alienate progressive voters right up until the election, Biden gave some pretty hefty concessions to Sanders to secure progressive support, including putting strongly pro-labor people back on the National Labor Relations Board and securing Sanders the chair of the Senate Budget Committee. These have been HUGE boons to labor in the United States. That is how party politics—especially with large parties like the Democrats that encompass a broad range of policy priorities and ideological views—are supposed to work.
What Democrats fail to understand is that, while the tactic of scaring people with the Trump specter might convince some who are not so thrilled with Biden to hold their noses and vote for him anyway, the larger effect is to cast a pall of despair on voting in general. The better strategy is something more akin to what Democrats were forced to settle on in 2008 after their preferred candidate, Clinton, was defeated: run a moderate candidate as an agent of change, such as Barack Obama. That gets voters motivated, even if the end result is not the broad progressive change some hoped for. But that’s not the course Democrats chose.
So, in 2023, I decided to try to use what voice I had to convince people to push for primaries in the hope that a stronger Democrat would emerge. Since Biden is among the more conservative Democrats, I could expect that a stronger candidate would be at least a little to his left, but likely would not be to his right. But they would at least be better positioned to defeat Trump.
During that time, I would, and did, spare no effort to demonstrate that Biden is a poor candidate, and that the elimination of primaries is as undemocratic as the voter suppression Republicans love so much. Many others, too, tried to raise the issues with Biden’s candidacy as well as the mind-numbing hypocrisy of Democrats shutting down the democratic process and anointing Biden as the 2024 candidate while campaigning on “defending democracy” from the very real threat of a right wing takeover by Trump.
But this all failed. To be honest, I never held out much hope for success, and I expected that I, and others like me, would, in early 2024, resign ourselves to another year of choosing between the lesser of two pretty lousy evils.
But….
Then Came Gaza
When contemplating the lesser of two evils, two conditions are necessary. One, there has to be an appreciable difference between the greater and lesser evil. As horrendous as I find Biden, I believe that difference does exist between him and Trump.
Two, and most important for this discussion, the lesser evil has to at least pass the exceptionally low bar of not being so horrific as to be intolerable even when we consider the alternative to be much worse. An engineer and enabler of the worst genocide in at least three decades, including the mass slaughter of innocents on a scale and at a rate that few atrocities in history can match, does not, indeed cannot, pass that standard.
Joe Biden has done many inhuman and monstrous things in his career, from his racist mass incarceration bill and embrace of segregationists to his cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to the blind eye he turned last year to US ally Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh. I remembered Biden’s record, and that was why I was so opposed to him in the 2020 primaries, though I did vote for him in November.
But even I have been shocked at his blatant disdain for the lives of Palestinians, even Palestinian babies. Israel has slaughtered over 12,000 children. Every war crime you can name—from attacking protected sites like schools, hospitals and mosques, to Israeli snipers shooting children, to directing women and children to supposedly safe zones and shooting at or bombing both the routes to those places and those sites themselves, to the destruction of ancient, historical sites, and much more—has been committed by Israel.
Biden has denied or minimized Israeli crimes, has repeated false claims intended to enflame already racist Americans to support these atrocities, has refused to lift a finger to stop it, and has even encouraged, by implication every single one of those atrocities. Calling them “over the top” while defending these actions as “Israel’s right to self-defense,” pouring arms into Israel, and mobilizing the American military to stop anyone else from taking action to stop Israel from doing all of this is as green as a light can get.
Is Trump so horrifying that Biden is still the lesser of two evils? I’d still have to say yes. Trump would likely not have acted much differently in the wake of October 7. He certainly would not have been inclined to restrain Israel, though perhaps he wouldn’t have gotten as deeply involved as Biden has. He surely would have kept the arms flowing, along with the massive tax dollars going to his and Biden’s mutual friends in the arms industry.
I know the arguments, and despite the arrogant and often subtly racist statements of many pseudo-liberal Biden supporters so do Rashida Tlaib, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, Listen to Michigan Campaign Manager Layla Elabed, and so many others who are urging people to vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries.
We all know Trump will be no better on Palestine, will actively promote Islamophobia and every other form of hate in the US, and is going to do all he can to criminalize dissent and to undermine what little democracy we have left.
Many of us are trying to warn Biden to change course on Palestine before he ushers in the next Trump presidency. For myself, I have higher ambitions.
It’s not just about Biden changing course on Palestine, though that is necessary, for political but more importantly, for basic moral reasons. But when our system foists a choice between a broker of genocide and an outright fascist, that is not democracy, and it is what keeps voters at home on election day. And that brings us back to Trump in any case.
Again, realism has to play a role. I don’t insist that a president or a member of Congress press a radical agenda that would redistribute wealth and power in a just manner, would fully and immediately redress the crimes committed against Indigenous people, descendants of slaves, and vast numbers of other Americans who have been and continue to be horribly wronged by our system.
But one who presents a real alternative, one who would fight for measures that are overwhelmingly popular with Americans like raising the minimum wage to $15 or even $20 per hour, both of which enjoy broad, bipartisan support; or who would not just talk about reproductive rights and the safety of LGBTQIA people but would take active steps to make policy on those issues is not so much to ask. At the very least, we need candidates for whom participation in genocide is a disqualifying action. That would seem a generously low bar.
I live in Maryland, so I don’t have to vote for Biden either in the primaries or the general, and I won’t. He’ll win my state anyway. While there’s still time for Biden to do the right thing and step aside, if there was any chance of that level of common decency in him he would done it by now. And at this point, any alternative candidate would be hopelessly hobbled, much like Huibert Humphrey was in 1968 when LBJ pulled out in the spring.
Right now, Trump has a sickeningly strong chance to win again. If by some miracle Biden does defeat him, and if Americans really do want to live in a democracy, we had better make sure we force the Democrats to produce better options next time, and, most of all that they respect the democracy that they have trodden on this time.
People should not have to choose between fascism and genocide.
News Roundup
How the ADL’s Anti-Palestinian Advocacy Helped Shape US Terror Laws
By Alice Speri, The Intercept, February 21, 2024
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/21/adl-palestine-terrorism-legislation/
Anti-Palestinian at the Core: The Origins and Growing Dangers of U.S. Antiterrorism Law
By Daryl Li, Center for Constitutional Law, February 20, 2024
https://ccrjustice.org/anti-palestinian-core-origins-and-growing-dangers-us-antiterrorism-law
Aid Entering Gaza Reduced by Half this Month – UNRWA
Palestine Chronicle, February 27, 2024
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/aid-entering-gaza-reduced-by-half-this-month-unrwa/
Netanyahu's Messianic Coalition Partners Want an All-out Regional War. Gaza Is Just a First Step
By Ehud Olmert, Haaretz, February 22, 2024
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-02-22/ty-article-opinion/.premium/netanyahus-messianic-coalition-partners-want-an-all-out-regional-war/0000018d-d237-d06c-abbd-daf733870000
Hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel - reported impact | Day 143
UN OCHA, February 27, 2024
https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-143
New reports confirm months of Israeli torture, abuse, and sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners
By Yumna Patel, Mondoweiss, February 27, 2024
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/new-reports-confirm-months-of-israeli-torture-abuse-and-sexual-violence-against-palestinian-prisoners/
In Jenin, brazen Israeli raids fuel fiercer Palestinian resistance
By Mariam Barghouti, +972 Magazine, February 27, 2024
https://www.972mag.com/jenin-refugee-camp-israeli-raids-palestinian-resistance/
My Latest Articles
Interview: Parallax Views: The Islamophobia Network and the Israel-Palestine Discourse
Sahar Aziz and I sat down recently with J.G. Michael of Parallax Views to discuss our paper, “Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine-Israel Discourse.” It was wide ranging conversation, covering antisemitism, Islamophobia, Gaza, Orientalism, and much more.
https://parallaxviews.podbean.com/e/azizplitnick/
Interview: CounterPunch Radio on “Presumptively Antisemitic”
Sahar Aziz and I were on CounterPunch Radio talking about our report, Gaza, and Palestine and Israel more generally.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/26/sahar-aziz-and-mitchell-plitnick/
A reformed PLO that includes Hamas is the only hope
Not exactly the only hope, but…Qatar and Saudi Arabia are working on a specific piece of Biden’s delusional regional peace talks–a reformed PLO that would include Hamas and other Palestinian factions that are currently outside that body–that could hold real promise for the future of Palestinian politics.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/a-reformed-plo-that-includes-hamas-is-the-only-hope/
Interview: Background Briefing on the latest diplomacy in Gaza
I spoke with Ian Masters of Background Briefing about the latest attempts at reaching a ceasefire agreement.
Biden won’t let Israel’s rejection of a Palestinian state interfere with his delusions
While Joe Biden tries to save the illusion of a two-state solution, Israeli leaders reaffirm that there is no hope for a two-state solution. Some say never, some say not any time soon, but they are all agreed on opposing any serious settlement with the Palestinians. But does that stop Biden? Nope.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/biden-wont-let-israels-rejection-of-a-palestinian-state-interfere-with-his-delusions/
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