Left Support for Biden Replacement Must Be Conditioned on Ending Gaza Genocide
Thus far, progressive electeds and organizations have treated Gaza as an afterthought. This moral abdication must end.
Note: A version of piece was scheduled to run in a national publication on Monday July 22, but since it’s looking increasingly like the primary won’t be contested—and progressives will likely continue to rally around Harris—the basic premise is no longer relevant. I wanted to publish it anyway, because I think, even with the coronation of Harris, progressives should still not fall in line without any pushback. The situation in Gaza is that desperate, and I think many of the central arguments are worth airing.
It’s looking increasingly likely that Biden will be off the ticket and, as this inevitability plays out, there’s a parallel battle emerging for who replaces him. The most likely alternative, Vice President Kamala Harris, will be difficult to influence given her quasi-incumbency status and big donors' historic preference for her moderate mode of politics. But, in the event there’s a legitimate challenge—and perhaps even a convention fight one month from now—this puts Congressional progressives, unions, and left-adjacent organizations in a unique position to leverage their influence for the most urgent cause: the U.S.-backed, very-much-still-ongoing genocide in Gaza. That one of the potential challengers will try to own the “progressive lane” in such a contest is possible. That the arbiters of who is and isn’t “progressive” will have some leverage over this designation is also possible. The likelihood of this course of events playing out is not high, but it is real, and not just giving away this designation without centering Gaza would be a continued moral failure of the U.S. electoral Left.
Prior to this moment, congressional progressives, many major unions—including those pushing for a ceasefire—and some prominent progressive organizations did not condition their support for President Biden’s reelection on him ending the genocide in Gaza. They released the right statements, said the right nonprofit words, and checked the “ceasefire” box—but they did not condition their limited power to an actual ceasefire that exists in reality. This moral abdication was even more apparent after Biden needed progressive support for a second time to prop up his dying campaign, as efforts to replace him had gathered new momentum, with explicit or implicit backing for Biden’s ouster from major players like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama. Once again, Bernie Sanders and most of the so-called squad (minus Rep. Rashida Talib, but more on this later) ran to Biden’s defense. In exchange? Reportedly they got Biden to make First 100 day commitments to “expanding Social Security benefits and eliminating medical debt.”
But there was, from all publicly available reporting, no mention of concessions on the Gaza genocide. Which is a fairly conspicuous item left off the list, given that, unlike expanding Social Security benefits and eliminating medical debt, Biden acting on ending support for Israel does not potentially require a far-off, idealized Congress or the Supreme Court upholding a presidential decision. He can do it now, today, as he chooses.
There are many popular, go-to excuses for why progressives, both in Congress and on its nonprofit or Labor periphery, never condition their support for an end to the genocide in Gaza: Biden supports the abstract idea of a ceasefire, Trump would be just as bad if not worse on Gaza, other issues are more important, we can better impact the nominee’s decision from the inside than agitating from the outside, it’s electorally fraught. Let’s address these feeble excuses one-by-one:
Biden supports the abstract idea of a ceasefire. As I’ve written about elsewhere many times, the Biden White House has successfully tricked a lot of otherwise smart people into thinking that he is, in fact, pushing for a ceasefire. Nothing could be further from the truth. Biden has simply redefined the term “ceasefire” to mean a combination of a temporary pause for hostage exchanges and a demand for total Hamas surrender. His administration continues to send weapons to Israel, back them militarily and diplomatically, and whitewash their myriad crimes. Let’s look at the horrific human toll from just the past few days. According to Gaza health officials, 81 were killed and 198 wounded on July 17, 49 killed and 69 wounded on July 16, 80 killed and 216 wounded on July 15, 141 killed and 400 wounded on July 14, 90 killed and 300 wounded on July 13.
Biden’s feigned helplessness in “securing a ceasefire” is theater. He can achieve one whenever he wants, by cutting off Israel or credibly threatening to cut off Israel. This is why simply extracting “ceasefire” box-checking is not sufficient and hasn’t been for sometime. Democrats, and thus our media, have successfully redefined this term away from its original meaning—the U.S. demanding its dependent client state end its military campaign on pain of withdrawn support—into abstract, bad faith “negotiations” that continue indefinitely as Israel continues killing, displacing, and unleashing starvation and disease on Palestinians en masse.
Trump would be just as bad if not worse on Gaza. This one never carried much water, for the basic reason that progressives can influence Democrats, not Trump, so it’s a non sequitur, but now it’s a complete logical sieve in the event there’s a contested primary. The choice is no longer binary, it’s open season: Will progressives back a candidate who agrees to an actual ceasefire, compelled by cutting off, or threatening to cut off Israel, or will they continue to simply ignore the fact of U.S.-backed genocide?
Other issues are more important to the working class. No doubt much of what Sanders and most of the House progressives got from Biden in exchange for their support, if implemented, would materially improve the lives of working Americans. But progress for poor Americans cannot be made over the tens of thousands of dead Palestinians killed by American bombs. We are taught at a young age that genocide—which Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier now says, in no uncertain terms, is what Biden is backing in Gaza—is the crime of crimes, the worst possible thing your government can do. To treat it as just another lefty wishlist item to be sorted among many is an obscene trivialization of what is going on in Gaza, the urgent human toll, and Democrats’ direct and ongoing complicity in it.
We can better impact the nominee’s decision from the inside than agitating from the outside. Meaningless blather. The only thing any of these top Democratic prospects wants is support and progressive sheen, and once they have it all the after-the-fact backslapping in the world will amount to nothing. Support which has no conditions is support that can be taken for granted, and support that can be taken for granted has no influence or real power.
It’s noteworthy that the sole Democratic Palestinian-American in Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, has refused to support Biden over his backing of genocide. Why should she be made to bear all the risk, all the isolation? To make the point that desperately needs making? Where is the solidarity for her position? Why is it less important than far-off promises to expand medicare?
It’s electorally fraught. Morality aside—electorally, pragmatically, ending genocide is broadly popular. It would bring back many disaffected voters into the fold, especially with a new candidate rather than more empty “ceasefire” theater from Biden. According to a July 2024 Century Foundation/Morning Consult poll, “Nearly 4 in 10 voters (38%) say they are less likely to vote for President Biden because of his handling of the war in Gaza.” There is little downside to forcefully, credibly committing to ending Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Poll after poll shows Israel’s actions in Gaza are deeply unpopular in the United States. As I laid out last week, a fresh campaign re-launch for whoever ends up being the Democratic presidential contender must make a clean break from the “Genocide Joe” brand that has demoralized young voters and voters of color.
It’s way past time to make ending the Gaza genocide a necessary condition for progressive political support, doubly so now that all the excuses entailed in Biden’s inevitability are now a thing of the past. An open primary provides a rare third chance to do the right thing, to stop horse trading for domestic benefit, but use one’s leverage—albeit, admittedly minor—to add to the urgent, moral pressure to once-and-for-all end U.S. backing of mass killing, displacement, and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Such a strategy would be a long shot, but it would at least send a signal that lockstep partisan support has its limits, that Democratic presidents cannot commit the crime of crimes and progressive electeds will just shrug and write it off as a cost of doing business. A contested primary could provide urgency to an issue put on the back burner months ago once the general election began to ramp up and everyone, predictably, fell in line.