Grinding into the abyss

Harris, Gaza, and pushing through dark futures.

In the aftermath of the DNC I wrote that Kamala Harris had signaled that she was hewing to the status quo on US policy toward Israel and Gaza. While some political observers such as The New York Times’ Ezra Klein speculated that Harris sounded more emotionally even-handed than Joe Biden, she did not announce a single policy break from Biden on the issue. “Gaza is going the way of the liberal land acknowledgement — ritualistic virtue-signaling atop a kind of resignation toward the annihilation of a civilization,” I wrote. 

Since then, Harris has more decisively telegraphed a hawkish position on Israel. As I explained in another recent piece, it can be seen most vividly in her Michigan strategy. She sent Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York as a surrogate to persuade voters that Harris was a stalwart on Israel. Torres is one of the most pugilistic advocates in Congress in support of Israel’s operation in Gaza. He is extremely online and enjoys spending his spare time running defense for an operation which human rights observers and scholars of genocide — a number of them Israeli — have characterized as perpetrating genocide. (In an Orwellian masterstroke, he accuses the pro-cease-fire Uncommitted movement of seeking “war.”) Harris had the option to send somebody more progressive, but chose not to.

Harris has also featured Liz Cheney in a recent rally in Michigan and two other battleground states. Cheney is an unrepentant Iraq War hawk, torture apologist, Birther conspiracy theorist waffler, and critic of Biden’s one paltry attempt to hold Israel accountable for its genocidal operation. (Former Vice President Dick Cheney also endorsed Harris earlier in the race, and, disturbingly, Harris praised him for “what he has done to serve our country.”) Yes, Liz Cheney is among the foremost icons of the Never Trump Republican set. But there were many other ways for Harris to signal that she’s the choice of Never Trump Republicans, and she did not choose them.

Lest anyone need the meaning of Harris’ surrogate choices to be spelled out more clearly, a recent New York Times report indicates that the Harris campaign’s embrace of war hawks is aligned not just with her electoral strategy but also her policy views. Citing interviews with U.S. officials and campaign advisers, the Times reports that “the empathy she has expressed as vice president should not be confused with willingness to break from American foreign policy toward Israel as a presidential candidate.” The Times’ report notes that Democrats are concerned about voters defecting to Green Party candidate Jill Stein in battleground states, but thatHarris campaign operatives believe the “damage … has been done” with those voters, and that they’re angling to win Michigan by winning over Republicans — including “a slice of the more than 296,000 voters who supported Nikki Haley.”

Is it possible that Harris would not be as hawkish on Israel — or other foreign policy issues — as her rhetoric, surrogates and electoral strategy for the White House suggests? Yes. Her outlook is particularly difficult to discern due to her unusually truncated emergency candidacy, relative inexperience with foreign affairs, and her use of ambiguity to defer key governing questions during a tight race. But there is no reason to assume or have faith that Harris will not be an agent of the status quo on this issue, and parsing emotional vibes is not serious analysis. Campaigns reveal instincts. And while it is commonly held that politicians will say whatever they need to say to get elected and then do what they want, casual observation and loads of political science reveal politicians generally try to follow through on their campaign rhetoric. Lastly, while a politician’s supporting coalitions can change over time, they are organically socialized to see their winning coalition is a vital part of their constituency and political survival.

That all being said, I think Harris is clearly preferable over Trump even for people who see themselves as single issue voters on Gaza, as I’ve written in yet another recent piece. There’s more in the piece but the basic facts are that despite hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths (when factoring in starvation and disease) there are still around two million people in Gaza, their fate remains up in the air, and things can get worse; Trump is no dove and has promised to make things worse, saying that Biden is “trying to hold [Netanyahu] back, and he probably should be doing the opposite”; and Harris will be easier to organize against given Trump’s promises of brutal, potentially society-transforming repression. These are grisly, nightmarish distinctions, but they matter, and voting is a strategic action, not a moral endorsement. The real solution here lies in escalating movement energy and building left-wing institutions that influence foreign policy.

It is a dark time for the Democratic Party: The party’s claims to standing for “joy” and “the little guy” ring not just hollow but dystopian in their simultaneous participation in and obscuring of genocide. It is a dark time for America: The only viable opposition calls for acceleration of genocide and an experiment in kleptocratic proto-fascism at home. There is no approaching respite or relief. There is only work to be done.

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My main pieces I drew from for this post: Democrats accept the unacceptable at the DNC; What Kamala Harris' troubling embrace of war hawks means; Pro-Palestinian efforts to rally behind Jill Stein will backfire; The U.S. is no longer just backing the devastation of Gaza. It’s a participant in it.