We warned you that Gaza would define the US elections

The results are in, Trump will be the next American president, and the surprise is not so much his victory, as much as it is the margin by which he defeated Kamala Harris. We had been told it was a very tight race. So those of us who voted Third Party were on the defensive, earnestly trying to explain why, even though we were terrified of a Trump presidency, we still could not get ourselves to vote for Harris. We had formulated some solid arguments.

To anyone who tried to pressure us into voting for Harris because “what if Trump wins,” we responded that this question should more correctly be directed at Harris, and before her, when he was still running, at Biden himself. If either truly believed Trump would be catastrophic for American democracy, they should have listened to what the people were telling them: “End the genocide. We are your constituency, and we will not vote for you so long as you are funding it.”

But Biden and Harris continued to cheer on Israel as it annihilated entire lineages in Palestine, bombing hospitals, schools, shelters, ambulances, and aid convoys. Biden and Harris called Israel’s flouting of international law a “measure of justice,” knowing they were completely alienating Arab American and Muslim voters. They supported Israel’s savagery more than they feared the consequences of a Trump victory not just globally, but here in the US.

We argued that we are not the ones throwing marginalised communities under the bus, they are our allies, our co-strugglers, and that it was the Biden-Harris campaign that was threatening their lives, by alienating voters as it ignored what most Americans want: a permanent ceasefire, an end to the genocide.

We argued that the genocide in Palestine is not a single issue, it is the manifestation of the USA’s hypermilitarised empire, which needs wars to grow its economy. And some of us argued that even if the genocide in Palestine were a single issue, it is important enough for us to not vote for either of the parties that would continue to support it.

I, for one, argued that if our only choice to “save American democracy,” is to vote for a candidate who supports genocide, then we are saving American “culture,” but not American “democracy.” Because since the majority of the American people want an end to this genocide, it would be democratic to end it. However, culture is different, it is on full display now as the millions of “good Americans” go on with their lives as if they didn’t know, as if finding the right costume for Halloween, and making sure they get “deals” throughout the extended shopping frenzy days, mattered more than the lives of Palestinians. Or of less privileged Americans, for that matter. Because for every bomb Israel drops on Gaza, paid for by American taxpayers, a school closes in a poor urban neighbourhood, children go hungry, and sick unhoused people freeze to death in Chicago, New York, Seattle.

But on the “morning after,” the numbers told a different story, that does not blame Third Party voters. Trump received 74,223,975 votes in 2020, and 71,353,267 votes in 2024. That is, he received fewer votes in 2024 than in 2020. In 2020, Biden received 81,283,501 votes as the Democratic nominee. In 2024, Harris received 66,415,656.

In other words, Trump did not gain any votes in 2024, but the Democratic Party lost close to 15 million votes. Not to Trump, not to Jill Stein or Cornel West, but to people who sat out the elections. These people knew how much was at stake but chose this option, rather than voting either Trump or Harris.

Kamala did not lose because some of us voted for a Third Party candidate. The highest percentage of votes that Jill Stein secured was in Maine, where she received 1.7% of the vote. In my home state of Washington, she received 0.7% of the vote. These figures did not make a difference. In some states, she was not even on the ballot, and in many states, she scored less than 0.5%.

Kamala did not lose because of Jill Stein, Kamala lost because of Kamala.

It is because Kamala shifted to the right as a campaign strategy that she lost to Trump. In addition to her repeated assertions of unconditional support for Israel, Harris aligned herself with Dick Cheney, one of the most hawkish rightwing politicians this country has produced. As Bush’s vice-president, he oversaw Operation Desert Storm, which devastated Iraq, and while out of office, he was chairman and CEO of Halliburton, a multinational corporation responsible for most of the world’s fracking. Progressives took note of that.

Kamala, and not third-party voters, threw the marginalised vulnerable communities under the bus. I have read enough of Trump’s “Project 2025” to know that the Latinx communities in this country, even US-born children of undocumented parents, are not safe.

I know my trans friends will be not just impacted, but actually targeted. I know vigilantes will have a field day, four years of murdering anyone they feel “threatened” by, like Steve Zimmerman felt threatened by Trayvon Martin, and “stood his ground.” I know that as Trump tries to ban abortion, he can only ban safe abortions, and teenaged girls will die from unsafe attempts at ridding their body of the consequences of rape, incest, or simply, not being ready for motherhood.

I also know that Arab Americans will fare worse under Trump. I know that it is Trump who implemented the Muslim ban, I know he believes Netanyahu should “finish the job,” and I know Trump is the one who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem- which Biden did not reverse, even though he could have.

But here’s where we must learn our lessons. We keep saying the Democrats don’t learn. That’s correct. We are the ones who must learn. We are the ones who must grasp what it means to not expect change to come from presidential elections every four years, but from the sustained effort we make, day after day, year after year. We have no choice but to persevere, keep educating our potential allies, keep sustaining our local and transnational communities through mutual aid, care, transformative justice, and basic humanity, knowing we cannot rely on presidents to save us.

Nada Elia is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at Western Washington University, and author of Greater than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine.

Follow her on X: @nadaelia48

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.