Activists from around the country told The Intercept that they will advocate for an anti-war agenda at the convention in August and withhold their vote in November unless an adequate candidate steps up, listing policy priorities such as support for a permanent ceasefire and standing up to the pro-Israel lobby as it intervenes in Democratic primaries. Even as the Biden campaign insists that he will not step aside, many Democrats appear to be lining up behind Vice President Kamala Harris as an alternative candidate, with some Democratic governors being floated as well.
“My number one criteria for any candidate is opposing the genocide in Gaza,” said Saad Farooq, an uncommitted voter in Massachusetts. Farooq said it was unlikely that the Democratic National Committee would select any candidate who took a stance against Israel’s ongoing war, and that he would support Green Party candidate Jill Stein if she were to appear on the ballot in Massachusetts.
Will Dawson, an uncommitted voter in Washington, D.C., named several factors that could get him to switch his vote from the Green Party’s Stein to another politician. First on his list is a promise to call for an immediate ceasefire and fighting the influence of the pro-Israel lobby and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Congress.
“This candidate would also ideally work toward pulling further away from the Israeli colonial project over time, with the goal being repealing our absurd financial support, ending the foreign interest agency of AIPAC, and pushing for a nation-wide boycott a la [South Africa] during their apartheid,” Dawson wrote.
The candidate would also have to push to reform the Supreme Court, he added. “The candidate would have to promise to both push for justice impeachment, and expand the courts,” Dawson said.“If a replacement candidate met both of these requirements, I would absolutely consider switching my vote from Jill Stein. Hell, I might even knock doors/canvass for them!”
And they continue to assume that they can only pick up more votes by moving to the right.
Party leadership interprets all sensory input as an indicator that they get to move to the right.
Parties don’t decide where the country moves politically, citizens do. If you want people to move left, you have to put in the work to change minds. You don’t sway people at the ballot box. All voting is, is a poll of what people already think and parties try to match their candidates to that poll. The reason our politicians are terrible, is because our people are.
What I’m saying is, if you only show up on voting day and just complain all other days don’t be surprised when the country moves right. Political change happens every single day of the year, voting is just the political act that reflects that work. We get wet farts like Biden because little of the work is done by the left the make substantive change to our culture. Much of the left views whining as a political act and no more.
