US Election 2024: On ‘Lesser Evilism’

For those who proclaim to live by hallowed political principles, the American election season is a nightmare. Every four years, American progressives and leftists face a prisoner’s dilemma of whether they should vote for the ‘lesser evil’. Should you hold your nose and vote for a Democrat you don’t believe in just because they aren’t a Republican? Or do you endorse a third party out of self-respect? Or stay home to angrily protest your alienation with the choices on offer?

They agonise over these options, make a big drama out of it, only to quietly vote for the Democratic candidate anyway. ‘Lesser-evilism’ in American politics means, and always has meant, voting Democrat every time and no matter what. That’s been the story for decades.

It’s no different in this election, ubiquitously billed as the most important election in American history. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will duke it out to see who will be at the helm of America. We can be fairly sure that the election will be close, decided by thousands of votes in a number of counties in a small number of swing states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.  

Substantial elements of the American Left, including those Alexander Cockburn once sardonically branded as the ‘pwogwessives’, have quarrelled amongst each other over the ‘lesser evil’ of Harris. They see this as the Gaza election. Many of them passionately want to punish the Democrats out of a rightful disgust for the Biden administration’s sponsorship of the Israeli democide in Gaza by not voting for Kamala Harris. It is well known that the Democrats are struggling with Muslim and Arab voters because of Gaza, which might risk them losing Michigan.

The trouble is, many of them have also drummed the narrative that Donald Trump is a fascist who will terminate American democracy if he gets back into the White House. That he is the manifestation of an ingrained white supremacy that is stitched into the DNA of America. Thus, they’ve created an awful bind for themselves. 

If they vote for Harris as the ‘lesser evil’ then they look like cowards and hypocrites. Why on earth would you vote for a party that is assisting a genocide? If they sit it out and Trump gets in by a whisker, they will look silly and be blamed for allowing Trump his victory. Moreover, it’s not like Trump will be any more dovish on Palestine, or more likely to impose an arms embargo on Israel, than Harris. Under Trump, by their terms, you will get genocide and fascism. You can’t say that Trump is a fascist and then credibly withhold your support from the Democrats as a pressure tactic, especially when the reality is that you are more dependent on them than they are on you. 

The truth is that the American political landscape is a depressing wasteland. As always, both sides have their culture war issues they demagogue on to rile up their ‘base’: Republicans on immigration and wokeness; Democrats on abortions and guns. This election campaign has been a hollow spectacle based on ‘vibes’ and ‘joy’. While Harris is definitely an improvement on Biden for the Democrats, she is an airhead in an empty suit. When she was asked on Stephen Colbert’s talk show to state what major changes her administration would make, the best she could come up with was that she wasn’t Donald Trump, all the while stumbling over herself to find the words to say absolutely nothing. That is literally her campaign. For some, this is enough, because anything, absolutely anything, is better than Trump. Thus, any criticism of Harris and the maleficence of the Biden administration’s policy towards Gaza is imagined as ‘objectively’ aiding Trump (just as pointing out Biden’s demented mental state once was).  

In an incisive 1945 essay, penned in a period when the pressure to suppress one’s own misgivings in the service of ‘the cause’ was more palpable than in our own, George Orwell took to task this shady sleight of hand:  

Whenever A and B are in opposition to each other, anyone who attacks or criticizes A is accused of aiding and abetting B. And it is often true, objectively and on a short-term analysis, that he is making things easier for B. Therefore, say the supporters of A, shut up and don’t criticise: or at least criticize “constructively”, which in practice always means favourably. And from this it is only a short step to arguing that the suppression and distortion of known facts is the highest duty of a journalist.

Neither could progressives have thrown their hat in with any of the third-party options and retain a sense of integrity when the Green party under Jill Stein is full of cranks and RFK Jr. (who has continued the Kennedy family tradition of exploiting unstable broads) is just a disenchanted Democrat indulging in his favoured conspiracy theories. (Besides, he is now on the Trump bandwagon.) All of this is simply to recognise that for a genuine leftist, the bar is truly under the ground. The sooner that is understood and accepted, the better. 

Now, I could easily take refuge behind the fact that, as an Englishman, I have had no prerogative to comment on the internal affairs of the American people ever since 1776. But America truly is the empire of the world. What happens there has a great effect on all of us. Thus, in a sense, its internal affairs are our concern too. I also approach this as a friend and defender of the American Revolution and its legacy. I hold to Hegel’s observation in believing that America is still ‘the land of the future’. America is not a country that had a revolution, but a revolution that formed a country. And it is this revolution that deserves to be preserved and built upon, not just in America, but for the peoples of the world. In order to stay true to this spirit, one must oppose both the Republicans and the Democrats. 

I can unashamedly claim myself to be associated—albeit peripherally—with a small, extremely idiosyncratic internationalist leftist tendency (exhibited by the likes of New Politics) that combines Ukraine and Palestine solidarity. We are for aiding Ukraine’s self-defence and for ceasing the insane Janus-faced policy of arming Israel to the hilt as it commits democide, sociocide, and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and sets Lebanon ablaze while applying faux ‘pressure’ for a ceasefire that isn’t going to happen. We believe these are the best positions to help bolster the democratic rights of the Ukrainians and Palestinians against their national oppression. Put a gun to my head and I would have to lean on Harris as the ‘lesser evil’ for both these causes. Trump would only offer the worst of both worlds. But even then, I wouldn’t rest on a Harris administration to alter the status quo of cautiously arming Ukraine just enough to keep it from collapsing against Russian aggression, but not enough to give it a decisive advantage lest it antagonises the nuclear-armed power too much, all the while giving no holds barred support to Israel. 

After Joe Biden fully displayed his senility in that car crash of a debate against Trump and Trump dodged the bullet fired from Thomas Matthew Crooks’s AR-15 while defiantly punching the air and shouting ‘Fight! Fight!’, I was utterly certain that Trump had already won the election. In pivoting towards Kamala Harris, the Democrats have given themselves a much better chance, though it might not be enough. Harris is in the awkward position of being a continuity candidate running a ‘change’ campaign. Her embarrassing attempts to consolidate the black male vote lest it migrates to Trump by announcing that she will legalise marijuana and make access to the crypto scam easier for black men demonstrate just how much she is struggling. 

For what it’s worth, and in the full knowledge that I could look silly after 5 November, I think this election will be an ironic reversal of 2016. Trump will win the popular vote, but Harris will edge the electoral college. Trump will likely protest with his usual shenanigans and cause a political crisis. What happens after that, I dare not speculate. But it must be noted that for Trump—having survived Russiagate, multiple impeachment attempts, and multiple prosecutions, not to mention two assassination attempts—to still have a coin flip’s chance of becoming president again is, truthfully, extraordinary. For his fanboys, it seems almost providential. It is, however, not a sign of the good health of the American republic.

Trump, when considered historically, represents something more than himself. Part of the reason many within mainstream political commentary still struggle with Trump’s significance since 2016 is because he was a manifestation of a political crisis within American democracy, and of the discontent with the domestic and foreign policy consensus that has largely defined America in this century—especially under Bush and Obama. He articulated this discontent in the ‘America First’ grammar: nationalist, populist, and odiously anti-immigrant.

When he was president the first time around, there were supposedly ‘moderate’ Republicans to keep him on a leash. Now, the Republican party is truly ‘Trumpified’. It is his party. Trumpism will live on long after Trump has left the scene—among the serpentine J.D Vance, oligarchs like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, and the now-Trumpified Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Some aspects of Trumpism—protectionism and containment of China—were even carried on by the Biden administration. Trump has no doubt reshaped American politics for a generation as it enters the post-neoliberal moment. 

For all my criticism of the dead end of lesser evilism, it doesn’t mean that there is no place for compromises and tactical thinking on the Left. That necessarily comes with doing politics. ‘[W]here it is a struggle against the existing government’, Karl Marx wrote in 1849, ‘we ally ourselves even with our enemies. … Now, after the election, we again affirm our old relentless standpoint not only as against the government but also as against the official opposition.’ Lenin, the epitome of the principled tactician, also deeply contemplated the question of expedient alliances. Acknowledging the Bolsheviks’ reputation for stubbornness, he wrote in On Compromises (1917) that ‘The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose…’

One does not have to be a Marxist or a socialist to recognise the merit of these arguments. The difference between Marx and Lenin and the current Left is that the former operated in a context where there was a real mass political movement of the working class within civil society whose north star was struggling for a socialism that could exert itself politically. Potential compromises could be judged and taken advantage of depending on whether they furthered the struggle for socialism or not. Only by coming to grips with how irrelevant the existing Left actually is on the political stage today can there be the possibility of a reconstitution of something resembling a new Left. 

Whether Trump or Harris wins, this task remains. Perhaps, then, the Left can go beyond tailing the Democrats—whether as admonishing spectators polishing their halos or picking their noses in splendid isolation—and become an actual political force capable of properly confronting the crisis of American democracy and transforming society towards a better end—and thus finally fulfil the original promise of the American Revolution. 

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