There is a lot of speculation among pundits about how the Israel-Hamas War will affect the 2024 presidential election. I can’t speak for others, but nothing that President Joe Biden does regarding the conflict will change the vote I plan to cast for him in November.
To be clear, I mean absolutely nothing. If Biden cuts off all military aid to Israel, I’ll still vote for him. If he orders American bombers over Gaza, I’ll still vote for him. If he sticks his fingers in his ears and pretends the whole thing is not happening, I’ll still vote for him.
This position has nothing to do with the specifics of the conflict. I can recognize the atrocity of the October 7 attack, the ongoing oppression of Gaza by the Israeli government, and the United States’ continued negative impact on all of it. It’s our weapons that are largely killing tens of thousands of people in Gaza, even if we aren’t pulling the trigger, and it’s our meddling in the region that put Hamas in a position to attack Israel in the first place.
And that’s sort of the problem. Support of Israel and a willingness to kill Arab Muslims has been a bipartisan American policy for generations now. Biden may have sent a huge amount of military aid to Israel recently, but it’s just one more pile on top of a mountain we have built over decades. Getting rid of Biden will not change that. The great ship of state can’t corner for shit. We’re talking a complete overhaul of longstanding American foreign policy, with little proof the majority of Americans would even support it.
I’ve got friends on the left who are convinced the only path forward is to deny Biden a second term, and I think that is madness. None of them can explain to me how this will save a single person from this war. His ouster will not make the situation any better.
Unless one of them dies, the presidential election is going to come down to Biden and Donald Trump. Third party candidates are the electoral equivalent of thoughts and prayers. The two-party system is essentially written into the current version of the constitution. When some Libertarian or Green Party yokel comes along in a few months and promises they will end the conflict, you can be assured they will not. They cannot win, and they don’t have a plan that would work even if they could. It is a grift.
“But what about a primary challenger for Biden?” they ask, and it feels like Berniemania all over again. It is December, and Biden is the incumbent president. Not a single president has lost the nomination of their party since the birth of the modern primary system in 1972.
For the fantasy of a challenger to be viable, there would have to be a Democratic politician with enough personal popularity to challenge a sitting president, who was different enough from Biden policywise to make it worth a change, that had a mandate from the public to overturn long-term foreign policy, and who was literally ready to go right now to make it on the ballot for the primary.
That politician does not exist. There is literally no one who has those qualifications. As such, there is no reason to think Biden will not be on the ballot next year.
When January 2025 rolls around, either Biden or Trump is going to be president. There is no other option. Any fantasy of another person is just that, a delusion or wishful thinking.
So, since those are the two possibilities, and neither candidate is going to significantly change the way American treats Israel or Hamas, there is no reason to base a vote on the conflict. Grim and awful as the whole matter is, our vote for president is simply not likely to improve the situation either way.
What it can do is keep Trump from destroying the American democracy. He is literally under indictment for trying to illegally stay in power despite a fair election that went against him. It would be silly to think that if he re-takes the White House he won’t use every available trick to try and stay there forever. The security of free elections in the Republic is under grave and imminent danger.
There is no scenario where America becoming a nuclear superpowered dictatorship will improve the situation in the Middle East. The country losing its checks and balances to support a far-right strongman or “punish” Biden will not save Palestinian lives. It will be of no comfort to me here in Texas to lose even more rights and live under state threat because angry, grieving people thought throwing out Biden would improve things despite all evidence to the contrary.
The president is not a celebrity you can cancel on Twitter. It’s a role of massive power that will be filled by some ambitious person. We can’t opt out of that system. All we can do is make the choice for the least amount of pain and the most amount of good.
In that regard, my vote for Biden leaves my conscience clear. Awful and heartbreaking as the war is, that die was cast decades ago and the game is being controlled by two governments that seem to have zero interest in peace. Refusing to vote for Biden simply will not change that. It will only put Trump back in control, possibly for the rest of his life.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
