My friend Will Lawrence—co-founder of the Sunrise Movement and host of the Hegemonicon podcast—lives in the battleground state of Michigan and voted early. As he says,
I voted for Kamala Harris for president, Elissa Slotkin for Senate, and Curtis Hurtel for US representative. Warmongers, every single one of them. This was without a doubt the hardest vote I’ve ever cast…it’s very important that Donald Trump not become president again…I cast for the candidate who stands a chance of blocking Trump from the presidency.
Will’s thinking on this question—and mine—echoes that of Convergence Magazine, which has promoted a political strategy they call Block and Build. Voting for Democrats—even if they’re empty suits or corporate mouthpieces or genocidaires—is a blocking tactic in a block-and-build strategy to make America a more egalitarian and inclusive society.
From another angle, the folks at the Know Your Enemy podcast were joined by the brilliant minds Astra Taylor, Olufemi Taiwo, and Malcolm Harris. They explore this question of voting and reach largely the same conclusions as Convergence and Will (and me), but walk you through a more philosophical and wide-ranging discussion to get there.
Our common judgment is this: It’s one thing if you live in a solid blue state and can’t bring yourself to vote for Kamala—if her policies violate your conscience, then she has not earned your vote. But it’s a more dangerous calculation entirely to vote for a third-party candidate or to cast a protest vote for Trump. And if you live in a swing state, Kamala is the only choice.
I want to leave you with an extended quote from something I wrote in the midst of the chaotic transition from Biden to Kamala a few months ago, every word of which presaged what we’re all talking about now:
Don’t hero worship. Expect a degree of betrayal from your elected leaders. And attribute what your elected leaders do manage to accomplish to the pressure groups forcing them to do it—a lesson about the Biden years that most Democrats have not yet learned.
Does this mean abandon electoral politics? Of course not, just right-size what you expect it to accomplish.
World-systems guru Immanuel Wallerstein urged us to see elections as defensive tactics. Thinking about how to strategize for a more peaceful, democratic, egalitarian world, Wallerstein counselled:
Electoral victories cannot transform the world, but they do accomplish something. They are an essential mechanism of protecting the immediate needs of the world’s population against efforts by the Global Right to reduce or terminate benefits that the Global Left had obtained and on which large numbers of people depend to survive. Elections therefore must be fought to minimise the damage that can be inflicted by the Global Right via control of various governments throughout the world. In that sense, winning elections is a defensive tactic.
Elections are defensive tactics.
It feels good to avoid a body blow during a fight. But you don’t win because you blocked a crippling punch to your liver. You win because you combine a solid defense with some kind of offense—a strategy that integrates tactics into a coordinated purpose. And that means most of the work of fighting for peace and democracy will happen outside of the electoral show…if we’re willing to do the work.
So if you live in a swing state, go in that voting booth, punch that ticket, and keep grinding with no expectation that our president will save us. Considering the constraints of our historical conjuncture, it’s the only strategic electoral move. ✌️