In the wake of the recent rout of the far right in France — with all the deserved attention to the ways in which leftists and centrists put aside their infighting to defeat a common foe — I thought I’d write a short post on a bizarre idea that keeps cropping up this campaign season in the U.S.
On social media, I keep encountering a small set of (alleged)* leftists who have asserted that they are unable to vote for Joe Biden (or any Democrat) this year because of the Democratic Party’s support for Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Given the ongoing atrocities there, that attitude is certainly understandable; but given the public promises of Biden’s opponent (who uses “Palestinian” as a slur) that he would encourage additional atrocities in Gaza and “crush” protests at home, it’s also quite troubling.
Wish as we might for a different political system, one of these two men** will be president next year. Those are the only choices.
Some on the left have argued that sitting the presidential election out is, in effect, a real third choice and a better, more principled one. Not only would they not have to cast a vote for what they see as the only slightly lesser of two evils on Gaza, but, they claim, withholding their votes would actually force the Democrats to abandon the unpopular war by showing them that they really need the left to win. According to this theory, the Democrats will assess their loss this winter, change their policy on the war, and all will be well.
Let’s be clear: This is a deranged delusion.
First of all, if Trump does win, the short-term impact will doubtlessly be a ramp-up in the death and destruction in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu has made it perfectly clear that he’s been upset with the limitations Biden has placed on American support and that he would prefer a Republican administration to take over again, as he feels it would ramp up military support and give them a freer hand to do whatever they want in Gaza. Oddly, the people who profess to care about the suffering of Palestinians seem more focused on Biden and establishment Democrats suffering an election loss than to the increased death and destruction that would take place if Trump was in charge again.
But, if we can, let’s leave aside the deepening genocide in Gaza and focus on the next step in this odd theory — the idea that the Democrats would react to a leftist boycott and a loss in 2024 by moving left.
This belief stems from an apparent misunderstanding of a voter’s role in an election, one that sees a voter like a consumer. Much as consumers can band together to deny their support for a business and thereby persuade the business to change its policies to secure their support, these people believe that voters can band together to deny their support for a political party and thereby persuade the party to change its policies to secure their support.
But it doesn’t work that way.
Businesses have a profit motive to chase down every possible customer, because, uh, the more customers they have, the more money they make.
Politics works on an entirely different set of incentives. A candidate isn’t looking to win over every single possible voter; they just want to edge out their competition for the voters who did show up. The goal of any race*** is to get 50% of the vote, plus one more vote. That’s it.
So boycotting an election merely shrinks the total pool of voters these politicians are fighting over. Playing hard to get actually makes it easier on the politicians you’re hoping to persuade. It makes it easier because they can all just ignore the voters who are sitting it out and ignore their cause as well, and fight over the ones who remain.
And after the election, sure, there will be some calls to “expand the base” by reaching out to the boycotters. But those calls will be drowned out by the arguments from veteran campaigners who know all too well that it’s much easier to persuade people who regularly vote to switch to your side than it is to persuade people who might agree with you but never vote to finally get into the game.
And because of that assumption, any Democratic post-mortem of the 2024 election would surely see the party do what it always does when it suffers a loss — it would lurch awkwardly to the center, targeting actual voters it might be able to persuade, instead of moving left, seeking to win over possible voters who have insisted they can’t be persuaded.
Boycotting the election, then, would result not just in a victory of the right in 2024 and a deepening of the war in Gaza, but also a win for centrist Democrats as they head into 2026 and beyond. (It’s reminiscent, in a way, of what played out in the early 2000s. Nader convinced some on the left there was no difference between the parties in 2000, ushering in George W. Bush. After 9/11, the Democrats lurched right in a “me too” parroting of the War on Terror and offered virtually no resistance on the road to the War in Iraq, with disastrous results for them and the nation.)
So, no, boycotting an election doesn’t work. At all.
Instead, the left should borrow a page from their enemies of the far right, who successfully used the exact opposite strategy — becoming a regular and reliable component of the Republican coalition — to bend the GOP to their will and ultimately get what they wanted.
Take abortion. Much like the antiwar left, the Religious Right entered politics in the late 1970s, motivated by what they claimed were moral principles on which they could never compromise. And yet they were willing to work in a diverse political coalition to get what they wanted.
They patiently played the long game, making themselves into a key constituency whose issues had to be addressed in primary races and whose concerns had to be written into the party’s platform. They worked their way into the party’s ranks, running for GOP roles and public office as well, first at the local level and then for higher office. They did all this in hopes of harnessing the party for their own ends, to curtail abortion rights wherever possible and, ultimately, to get sympathetic justices on the Supreme Court to get Roe overturned.
They did this for decades. They complained endlessly about the party’s leaders ignoring their demands and betraying their cause with half-measures and hesitations, but they kept at it.
And they never boycotted an election. After a half-century of hard work, they won.
It’s easy to tell yourself that not voting will somehow work magic, that literally doing nothing is not just a principled protest but even an effective strategy for getting what you want. But it’s a delusion.
The better path has been modeled by leftists like Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have staked out important positions inside the party, becoming rallying points for political allies and effective champions for their policies. They’ve established a beachhead for leftists within the Democratic Party’s ranks and one that can be expanded if like-minded leftists would only follow their lead.
I know, it’s harder to play the game of politics than it is to sit on the sidelines. But it’s also a lot more effective.
* I say “alleged” because there’s no way to know if they’re sincere leftists or someone trolling to misrepresent them. But either way, the argument is out there and needs addressing.
** Or, fine, whoever their party replaces them with in case of death and/or disarray
*** Leaving aside the travishamockery of the Electoral College for a second
I'm an independent centrist. I'm voting for whomever the Democratic party nominates. My life depends on it. I'm a Black woman in America. Need I say more? I mean, I can, but this is *your* substack! LOL!!
Excellent take.
If a citizen doesn't like what the two parties have on offer, that's your signal to work on building something different from the ground up. All those magical, unicorn non-dem/gop presidential candidates would still have to work with a dem/gop Congress (since they're usually only focused on their own candidacy, not building a true political party).
Voting, to me, is the price of admission - and it's free (for me - not so much for people that can't afford time off work to register or vote or pay for legal ID). Only the Dems want more people to be able to vote.
I've voted in every election since I turned 18 - that includes primaries and all numbers of local elections for mayors, city councils, the proverbial dog-catcher. Living in the blue dot in the middle of the sea of red, lately it's very rare that my vote goes to the winning candidate. I still vote. My kids vote. I even convinced my husband to start voting over 34 years ago.