The 2024 US Election: A No-Win Scenario

Tuesday (Wednesday in NZ) is election day in the United States of America, the land of democracy — where billionaires buy elections, where the President is not elected by popular vote, and where the nominee of the Republican Party attempted to overturn the results after he was voted out of office four years ago. Somehow, despite every crime Donald Trump has been tried and convicted for, the former President is a coin-toss away from taking back the White House.

Polls across the seven swing states indicate that there is virtually nothing separating the two candidates, making this the closest election since 2000. The future of the world may well be decided by a few hundred votes in Pennsylvania, where Trump currently holds an agonisingly thin polling lead of just 0.1%.

Two main perspectives dominate progressive discourse on the 2024 presidential race, dividing the left in America and around the world. On the one hand, there is fury and disgust at Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for their complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. To many, this is a single-issue election, and no candidate complicit in genocide deserves a shred of support. On the other hand, there is huge fear of what the consequences of a second Trump presidency would look like. Many warn that however despicable the actions of the Biden-Harris administration have been over the past year, things can always get worse.

Both perspectives are entirely correct. The Democrats have blood on their hands, and will have nobody to blame but themselves if they lose this election. By rights, President Biden should be imprisoned at the Hague, standing trial for war crimes alongside Benjamin Netanyahu as we speak. Even so, the world will be in even deeper trouble if Trump is elected.

One camp advocates boycotting the election or protest-voting for Cornel West or Jill Stein, left-wing third party candidates whose chances of victory are zero. The other camp will vote Democrat to stop Trump no matter what. Most of this debate is hypothetical — left-wing activists around the world act as if we have a say in America’s election when we do not. Perhaps the rest of us deserve a vote, given the outcome of elections in the heart of the US empire affects everybody on the planet, including in Aotearoa.

In the US itself, heated debates between these two camps come from a place of anger, frustration and powerlessness. Anger at the gross inadequacies of the Democratic Party existed before Israel’s genocidal war began last year; this feeling has only intensified since. Frustration is reaching boiling point. And the feeling of powerlessness is very real.

Since the defeat of the Bernie Sanders campaign in early 2020, the momentum of the burgeoning democratic socialist movement in America has been frustrated at every turn. There was never a chance during this election cycle for a left-wing candidate to emerge who would put a stop to the genocide and take real action on climate change and inequality. What looked to be a rematch of Biden vs. Trump took a surprise turn when Biden was replaced with Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket; and still, nothing changed. From the start, the only options on the table were the continuation of the neoliberal Biden-Harris administration, or a return to Trump and the increasingly fascistic Republican Party. Both sides are committed to upholding US imperialism and Israeli impunity; ending the genocide is not on the ballot. Yet again, it is a contest of the lesser evil against the cartoonish villain.

The feeling of powerlessness on the left may be real; but those who wish to see a better world have never been powerless. The people have always held the power to change the world — in America, around the world, and here in Aotearoa. People know the system is rigged in the favour of the wealthy few — anger about this is what led to the rise of Trump in the first place. Faith in the existing system to deliver real change is at an all-time low.

The obstacle is not inadequate levels of anger and discontent; it is that people do not know what to do about it. Only when ordinary people are organised and ready to fight for an alternative can real change come. Feelings of powerlessness must be overcome, and replaced with hope and determination. Then, and only then, can the rotten system and its insulting offering of corporate Democrats vs. fascist Republicans come crashing down.

The Most Dangerous Organisation in Human History?

Noam Chomsky has labelled the modern-day Republican Party “the most dangerous organisation in human history.” He asked in 2017: “Has there ever been an organisation in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organised human life on Earth?” Professor Chomsky is referring, of course, to the Republicans’ outright denial of the scientific consensus that the climate is changing as a result of human activity.

With every passing year, the existential threat that the climate crisis poses to human civilisation grows in severity. Neoliberal governments across the world, including the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations, have failed utterly to act with urgency to bring down carbon emissions in the US, and to set an example as the most powerful country in the world for others to follow. The Harris campaign in turn has failed to issue a bold plan to tackle the greatest crisis our species has ever faced within the necessary timeframe, in spite of the horrific storms ravaging the country with increasing frequency. A vote for the Democrats is a vote for further inaction when everyone should be panicking.

Yet the Republican Party is committed to radically increasing emissions. Backed by an unrepentant fossil fuel industry, the Republicans want to “drill, baby, drill!” Trump’s first term was a climate disaster, and his second term will be worse — the former president’s underlings plan to completely defund the Environmental Protection Agency. Not only that, but Trump’s team wants civil servants at the EPA to be “traumatically affected” by their policies, and viewed as “the villains” by the public and the state.

The Democrats’ climate policies may be dangerously inadequate, but every tonne of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere matters, and every fraction of a degree of global warming adds up — 4 degrees of warming is orders of magnitude worse than 3 degrees. The complete withdrawal of the US from international efforts to combat climate change could be the final nail in the coffin for our species.

Netanyahu Backs Trump

One imagines Joe Biden must view Benjamin Netanyahu and the state of Israel as tremendously ungrateful. Israel has spent the last year committing the worst genocide of the 21st Century, and is now attempting to provoke a wider war by invading Lebanon and attacking Iran. Every step of the way, the Biden administration has unconditionally provided weapons, funding, political and diplomatic support, despite colossal backlash among Democratic voters — backlash which contributed to Biden’s decision to step aside in July, and which may still cost Harris the White House. And even still, Netanyahu and an overwhelming majority of the Israeli public want Trump to win.

There will be no reprieve for the people of Gaza and Lebanon if Trump wins. Trump’s first-term legacy means he is celebrated by Zionists as “the most pro-Israel president in history” — a label Biden is surely envious of. Trump may have a history of antisemitic comments, and his supporter base may include prominent neo-Nazis, but that doesn’t matter to Zionists — he hates the Palestinians more. Trump has on many occasions used the word “Palestinian” as a slur.

Trump’s ultra-Zionist donors will urge him towards the most extreme pro-Israeli position possible, as they did last time. In 2019, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson successfully lobbied for the Trump administration to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and to recognise Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights.

At the beginning of 2020, Trump assassinated Major General Qasem Soleimani, the second most powerful person in Iran, in a major provocation which could have led to war. Whilst Biden has at times called for Netanyahu to show “restraint” in his bloodthirsty rampage — empty rhetoric given he has declined to withdraw US support — Trump never favours restraint. Trump is unpredictable, and may even be inclined to give the green light to an all-out war with Iran this time around.

Is Donald Trump a Fascist?

Trump and his MAGA movement have always had far-right undertones. During Trump’s first term, activist Heather Heyer was killed and 35 people were injured in Charlottesville when a neo-Nazi deliberately drove his car into a crowd which was counter-protesting the fascist ‘Unite the Right’ rally, during which white supremacists marched through the streets with tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Trump famously drew a false equivalence between the fascists and the counter-protesters, condemning the actions of both, and stating that there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Trump and the MAGA movement have only grown more extreme since the last election. Last Sunday’s rally in Madison Square Garden — which echoed the 1939 America First Nazi rally in a potentially deliberate parallel — was chilling proof. Trump’s allies are spending the last week of the campaign insisting that he is not a Nazi after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe warmed up rally attendees by mocking Latinos, black people, Jews and Palestinians, and calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.” Trump has denied claims by his former chief of staff and a retired Marine General that he privately made admiring comments about Hitler.

Trump did not originally expect to win in 2016. His inner circle at the time did not enter office with a coherent plan of action. Likewise, all attempts to invalidate the results of the 2020 election were botched, and the attempted coup on January 6th 2021 failed. The Trump team does not intend to fail the second time around.

Project 2025 is a 900-page document outlining the right’s ominous plan for the next four years if Trump wins. The extremists who will take over the US government if the Republicans reclaim the White House plan to dismantle the administrative state and mount a full-scale attack on the country’s democratic structures. Trump has claimed he will govern “like a dictator,” told Christian supporters that this is “the last election” they need to vote in, and stated intent to use the military against his political opponents, whom he has labelled “the enemy within.” The former President had to be dragged out of office kicking and screaming last time; Trump himself may be 78-years old, but the MAGA movement does not plan to give away power again.

Trump is headlining his campaign with the promise to pursue the largest deportation campaign in US history. In the case of the Haitian migrants living in Ohio who he scapegoated in his debate with Harris, he is promising to deport legal migrants, not just undocumented migrants. Not that documented status should matter — this is a campaign based on xenophobic hatred.

One of the most undemocratic features of the US government is the vast powers granted to the unelected Supreme Court. The Court has become an increasingly partisan institution, dropping all pretence of being “above politics.” Its nine members, once nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate — itself an undemocratic institution, where each state, regardless of vast differences in population, is granted two Senators — serve for life. This means that if the right people die at the right time — as happened during the first Trump presidency — it can entrench power in the hands of partisan judges for decades, resulting in rulings that override democratic institutions with wanton disregard for the wishes of the people. The Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, and have won the unrepresentative electoral college in five of the last eight; yet there is a 6-3 right-wing majority on today’s Supreme Court.

The most infamous consequence of the current 6-3 Court was the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, which ended 49 years of federally-protected reproductive rights for American women. Republican-controlled states across the country moved swiftly to ban abortion; and if the Republicans control the White House, Congress and the Senate next year, then a federal abortion ban will likely be imposed across all 50 states.

Another sinister recent decision was the Court’s ruling earlier this year that granted sweeping immunity to the president in all “official acts.” This decree serves both to protect Trump from prosecution for his past crimes, and to enable him to go off the rails even further if he is reelected. This is another indication that a second Trump presidency will not be like the first — Trump’s coalition, from the base to the courts to the inner circle, is actively laying the groundwork for a right-wing dictatorship.

A Billionaire Dictatorship

Extreme inequality has been tearing America apart at the seams for decades, fuelling the anger and discontent which led to the rise of Trump a decade ago. The former president, a billionaire faux-populist who poses as a man of the people, worsened already-obscene levels of inequality with his 2018 tax cuts. If he is not dissuaded from his unhinged plan to abolish income tax and replace it entirely with tariffs on foreign goods, America will truly return to the Gilded Age — though it is likely on this issue that cooler heads will prevail and prevent him from implementing this policy, given it would cause a global economic meltdown.

Billionaires buying elections is the norm in the US. Trump’s rise in 2016 represented billionaires taking centre stage in presidential politics. Even in that context, this election season has been unusually dominated by billionaires throwing around money and influence. The Washington Post has lost a staggering number of subscribers since Jeff Bezos vetoed the publication’s planned endorsement of Harris. Elon Musk, currently the second-richest man in the world, has spent the past few years flirting with the online far-right; since buying Twitter, his extremist views have been amplified further. Musk has given $130 million to the Trump campaign this year, and is now breaking federal election laws in an attempt to bribe voters in swing states. He is now a regular speaker at rallies, and has been promised a role in a victorious Trump administration.

Peter Thiel, meanwhile, has been a leading figure on the American right for decades. He has bankrolled extremist writers and pseudointellectuals such as self-described “neo-monarchist” Curtis Yarvin, a man who believes that democracy is a “failed experiment.” One man who used to work directly for Thiel is none other than JD Vance — the former venture capitalist who is now Trump’s running mate. The Republican Vice Presidential nomination is literally up for sale — and if 78-year-old Trump wins, Thiel’s protegee will be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Vance has attracted criticism for his views on childless women; in advancing the “pro-natalism” championed by the likes of Thiel and Musk, Vance has revealed himself to be similarly misogynistic. The idea that the “white race” needs to reverse declining birth rates is taken directly from neo-Nazi conspiracy theories about the “Great Replacement.”

The reality is simple: the first Trump presidency had disastrous consequences for the American working class and for the climate. A second Trump presidency will be so much worse. The authors of Project 2025 are poised, ready to unleash their anti-democratic, white supremacist, theocratic fantasies like never before.

If taken at his word, Trump intends to govern as a far-right dictator. The movement behind him includes strong fascist elements. Many of them, including Trump, would deny that label; but if their agenda is successfully implemented, it will amount to a fascist takeover of the US government.

There is no doubt that the global far-right will be emboldened by a Trump victory, including here in Aotearoa. Netanyahu and the far-right Israeli government will grin ear-to-ear. The fossil fuel industry will crack open the champagne. The rest of the world will tremble.

The Pathetic Alternative

Even the most furious critics of the Democratic Party must surely breathe a sigh of relief if Kamala Harris is elected the first female President of the United States on Tuesday. But amidst the constant bombardment of Gaza, with tens of thousands of children dead or missing under the rubble, there can be no celebration. This contest is a no-win scenario for Palestine, for the left, and for all those who care about peace and justice. Yet a Harris win will represent a much less devastating blow to humanity than a Trump victory.

It is hard to pin down exactly where Harris stands politically. She was the first candidate to drop out of the 2020 Democratic primary, after a weak campaign in which she vacillated between moving slightly left in an attempt to win over Sanders supporters, then moving back to the neoliberal centre again under instructions from corporate lobbyists. Her flip-flopping on the policy of Medicare for All, a key demand of Sanders and his movement, was a prime example of this.

After Biden withdrew from the race in July, Harris enjoyed a honeymoon period in which each wing of the Democratic base projected their competing hopes and expectations onto the empty vessel her campaign represented. Hopes on the liberal-left were encouraged early on when she rejected neoliberal Zionist Josh Shapiro as her prospective running mate, and instead picked Tim Walz, the most progressive of the contenders to be her Vice Presidential nominee. Walz is part of the centre-left, relatively pro-labour wing of the Democratic Party; his proudest achievement as Governor of his home state was granting free school meals to the children of Minnesota.

Since the Democratic Convention however, Harris has dashed all hopes that she might run a progressive campaign, one which might appeal to left-behind working class voters in the Rust Belt swing states with a concrete agenda to improve their lives and rein in corporate greed. Harris has instead made a big deal out of being “tough on the border,” caving in to the xenophobic Republican narrative about the so-called border crisis, and has proclaimed that the main difference between her hypothetical presidency and the Biden administration is that she will have a Republican in her Cabinet. Remarkably light on policy detail, the Harris campaign’s initial momentum has faltered; the polling leads she enjoyed in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in September have been largely squandered.

Harris has welcomed the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney and toured the country with his daughter, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, in an attempt to sway “moderate Republican” voters. The Cheney family has broken with their party to support Harris, apparently because of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results — the rich irony being that Dick Cheney and George W. Bush succeeded where Trump later failed when they stole the 2000 election from Al Gore. It is sickening to see Harris brag that she has the support of the chief architect of the Iraq War. But working with war criminals must be all-too-familiar for her, given the Biden-Harris administration’s complicity in the Gaza genocide.

Harris could have emulated the actions of 1968 Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey was Vice President to Lyndon B. Johnson, who prior to Biden was the last President to unwillingly drop out of a reelection campaign. A month before the 1968 election, Humphrey broke ranks from the Johnson administration, and gave a speech calling for a ceasefire in Vietnam. He promised to end the US bombing campaign if elected. In contrast, Harris has remained in lockstep with the administration she is part of, echoing Biden’s empty rhetoric about a Gaza ceasefire, all the while refusing to acknowledge that the President could end the genocide in a single phone call if he wanted to. She has continued to uphold Israel’s narrative as the Zionist regime drowns itself in yet more Palestinian and Lebanese blood.

Harris was a weak candidate who ran a weak campaign in 2020, and is proving to be the same in 2024. For many Americans, the shine wore off Trump years ago, especially in the wake of January 6th; the Democrats should have been able to ride a wave of anger about Roe v. Wade towards a landslide victory this year. If they lose, Biden and Harris will only have themselves to blame.

The Democrats deserve to lose. This is a deeply held sentiment for many on the left. It is a fair assessment, through and through. At the same time, the world does not deserve to experience the terrifying consequences of a Trump victory. Therefore it will be a relief, and nothing more, if Trump loses; there can be no celebration about the prospect of a Harris presidency.

Lesser Evilism and the Junior Partner

Socialists have long decried “lesser evilism” — the logic which compels the left to vote for liberal candidates in elections, no matter how awful their policies are, due to fear of an even worse alternative. This election is the ultimate test of that logic on both sides. One side asks: are liberals still the lesser evil when they are complicit in genocide? The other replies: how evil does the right-wing threat have to be for this logic to no longer apply? Is Trump’s fascist agenda not evil enough for you?

There are no satisfying answers to any of these questions. Voting or hoping for the victory of a candidate complicit in genocide is galling; the consequences of a second Trump term for migrants, women, the climate, et cetera are unimaginable. Israel wins regardless.

All of this avoids the real question: what is the American left going to do about it?

These tiresome “lesser evil” debates are a distraction. The answer to the two-party duopoly is neither to “vote blue no matter who,” nor to recklessly allow Trump to win reelection in a context where the Democrats are the only alternative. The only way forward is to build a socialist movement that can overcome both the greater and lesser forms of evil.

The US left has been in a state of depression since Sanders was defeated in 2020. This depression is valid, the defeat was devastating — but a sense of perspective is needed. The huge support for the Sanders campaigns in both 2016 and 2020 represented an historic resurgence of democratic socialism in America.

Left-wing UK Labour MP Tony Benn had a reminder for activists: “Every generation must fight the same battles again and again. There is no final victory, and there is no final defeat. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.”

Sanders himself is partially to blame for the widespread despondency in the wake of his defeat. Instead of leading the movement he inspired towards building a lasting alternative to neoliberal politics, he has instead pursued the “junior partner” strategy. The Vermont Senator has thrown his support behind Biden and Harris in exchange for piecemeal progressive policies and appointments.

It is true that by some metrics the Biden administration has been the most left-wing, pro-labour administration in decades — not difficult given that the standard is for US presidents to be viciously anti-worker. It is true that some limited progress has been made on infrastructure spending, green investment, and checking the power of corporate monopolies. It is true that Sanders’ horse-trading has played a role in this mild progress.

Yet all of this pales in comparison to the main legacy of the Biden-Harris administration, which is aiding and abetting genocide. The excuses Sanders has made for his “good friend Joe,” coupled with his mealy-mouthed rhetoric on Gaza — refusing to use the word ceasefire for weeks, and refusing even now to call this a genocide — represents a betrayal of the movement he spearheaded.

Even the progress Sanders was able to negotiate on economic policy is under threat. The billionaires backing Harris are aggressively lobbying for her to abandon the centre-left elements of Biden’s agenda, calling on her to sack the trust-busting Federal Trade Commissioner Lina Khan.

Cause for Hope

The Democratic Party was always going to use every trick in the book to stop a self-identified democratic socialist from becoming its presidential nominee in 2016 and 2020. Had Sanders won either primary, his campaign would have faced the ferocious opposition of the entire US political, business and media establishment. It was always going to be an uphill battle — and the left should take hope from what happened, not despair.

For the first time in generations, millions of Americans voted for a candidate who sought to rein in the greed of the billionaire class and tackle extreme inequality. The surprise isn’t that Sanders lost; the surprise is that his agenda was enormously popular. The surprise is that he could have won.

Growing support for socialism in the US is not the only cause for some level of optimism. Further hope can be drawn from the Palestine movement, in America and around the world. Millions have marched on a weekly basis, fighting for a ceasefire and demanding lasting freedom for Palestine. More than 700,000 people voted Uncommitted in protest against President Biden during the barely-contested 2024 primary. Protesters haunted Biden’s every step until he was forced to withdraw from the race; Harris continues to face demonstrations across the country. Campuses have been occupied as students openly revolt against the genocide. Polls show that a majority of Americans support a ceasefire, and believe that Israel is committing war crimes. This, despite the relentless Zionist propaganda in the US media, and despite the almost-total lack of opposition to Israel within the political system.

The anti-war movement represents hope. The huge Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 represented hope. The return of socialist politics in America of all places represents hope. There is a rising tide of opposition to inequality, racism, war and climate catastrophe in the heart of the US empire, the belly of the beast.

This movement needs to grow. The Democratic Party is not a workers’ party — to its core, it is a party representing capitalist interests. A new socialist party must be created in the US. All signs indicate that with popular demands and the right leadership, such a party could build and grow to become a real force in American politics, unlike anything the country has seen in generations. If Sanders and his fellow progressive Democrats are unwilling to take a lead, and are committed to their role as junior partners to neoliberal imperialism, so be it.

There are parallels between the situation in the US and the situation here in Aotearoa. The same crises — climate change, inequality, racism and imperialism — exist here too, if mostly in less extreme forms at this point in time. The current Coalition is the most right-wing government we have had in a generation, with the ACT Party a dangerously prominent element. ACT’s plans to roll back the state, slash workers’ rights, indigenous rights and environmental protections and relax our gun laws, would well and truly make our country look like the 51st American state. David Seymour and others in the Coalition would be at home inside the US Republican Party; and even John Key, who led a significantly more moderate centre-right government than Luxon does, has endorsed Donald Trump.

Kiwis have long prided ourselves on having an independent foreign policy — but that policy is under threat. We are already part of the US-led Five Eyes surveillance network; and now the Coalition is taking steps towards bringing us into the AUKUS agreement, a “defence” pact between the US, UK and Australia which exists to rally the Pacific against China. Any war between the US and China would likely turn into a nuclear conflict that could end life on earth; the US and its imperialist antagonisation in the region must be resisted at all costs.

Our government is complicit in the Gaza genocide, as is any government which refuses to place diplomatic and economic sanctions on the state of Israel. But here too, a majority of people do not believe the propaganda, and want to see a ceasefire and the recognition of the state of Palestine. The anti-war movement will continue fighting until the genocide is ended and Palestine is free.

We too face a situation where each election is a contest of lesser evils — though the crisis of democracy is not quite as acute here. The Labour Party, despite all its flaws, continues to retain institutional ties to the workers’ movement, and our political institutions are significantly more representative than the grossly undemocratic US electoral system, which was designed by slave-owners to facilitate minority rule. Aotearoa has a multi-party democracy — this represents an opening. The barriers to entry for a socialist party here are far less extreme.

In this country as in America, the left desperately needs to build support for an alternative to the ailing system. We too need to organise against capitalism and imperialism, understanding the scale of the challenge we face, and acknowledging the speed with which this challenge must be confronted.

So we should stop tearing each other apart over questions of lesser evil vs. greater evil — questions which leave us feeling powerless and despairing. Instead, we must organise against evil in all its forms, and fight for a better world. We are not powerless. To echo the strongest message of the Bernie Sanders campaign: “when we stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.”

Elliot Crossan is an ecosocialist writer and activist from Auckland. He is the Chair of System Change Aotearoa.