Common Dreams

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It is widely believed, including by experts, that this presidential election could be one of the most important in US history. And polling data still marks it as too close to call. Various groups of voters who might normally vote, but decide to sit this one out, could decide the outcome.

On the Democratic side that includes a significant number of people who will not vote for the party’s nominee, Vice-President Kamala Harris, because of the support that the Biden administration has given to Israel’s current military campaign. This support includes about $18 billion in weapons shipments from the United States to Israel.

More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military operations in the Gaza Strip on October 7, following a Hamas attack from there that killed about 1,200 people, mostly Israeli citizens. Public health experts have stated that the Palestinian death toll is likely considerably higher. 

The majority of Palestinians killed have been women and children, often in Israeli bombings of civilian areas which include hospitals, schools, aid distribution points, emergency services, residential buildings and tents. American surgeons working in Gaza have documented multiple cases of pre-teen children killed with a single bullet to the head. The World Food Programme warns that just 20 percent of the required basic food aid is being let in by Israel. The food situation is so bad that the Biden administration issued a complaint to Israel over the issue; Israel responded by banning UNRWA, the main source of humanitarian aid in the strip.

“Gaza: Israel’s Imposed Starvation Deadly for Children” is the headline for a report from Human Rights Watch, one the most prominent human rights organizations in the United States.

Israel has banned foreign media from entering Gaza and has killed so many local reporters that the Committee to Protect Journalists has called it the “deadliest period ever for journalists.” 

One place where there is a large number of voters who feel strongly about this is Michigan. It has more than 300,000 people of Middle Eastern or North African descent. It is one of the three swing states (along with Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) that together would provide Harris with the most likely path to winning the electoral vote and therefore the presidency. 

Current polling shows Michigan too close to call right now, so the Arab-American vote could make the difference; NBC news notes that recent polls show this vote “breaking roughly evenly between Harris and Trump, while they have typically broken closer to 2-to-1 for Democrats in recent elections.” And more than 100,000 voters in Michigan last year voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary, protesting Biden’s support for Israel’s military in Gaza.

It is not only Michigan where Democratic voters are horrified by the mass killing they see in Gaza and now Lebanon, where at least 1,800 people have been killed by Israeli forces in the past five weeks. There are millions of people throughout the United States who feel the same moral revulsion. And it could cost a close election in another swing state.

But Trump would be worse. Most importantly he has a congressional and powerful funding base — including a billionaire who has contributed hundreds of millions to him and the Republican party — that would continue to push him to support violent extremism. His political base would put much less, if any, pressure on him to end the war; or even to stop it from expanding. And his likely cabinet choices would also be less willing to bring about a negotiated solution to the conflict.

Trump’s return to the presidency would also consolidate and allow for the expansion of minority rule in the United States. Under this system, Democrats need more than 40 million more votes to get the same 50 seats as Republicans in the Senate. And then the filibuster means they need 10 more for most legislation. 

Our system of minority rule has also allowed two presidents since 2000 (George W. Bush and Trump) to take office after losing the popular vote. The election of 2000 brought us the Iraq War, which was found to be based on lies, took the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and led to further avoidable violence in the region.

Trump and his Senators abused their power to get a 6-3, hard right-wing majority on the Supreme Court. A Court with unprecedented corruption. And a court that took from women their right to control their own bodies. 

Trump will not last forever, but his party’s system of minority rule could be here for decades, as the Republicans continue to use their control of the Supreme Court and much of the judiciary, state legislatures, and the executive branch to tilt the electoral playing field further — through voting restrictions, gerrymandering, and attacks on organized labor, with a focus on swing states. 

All this does not diminish this urgent moral imperative of putting an end to the mass killing of innocent civilians in the Middle East, and our own government’s support for the attacks. But our ability to stop this and other crimes in which US foreign policy is involved, is being eroded every day as the United States becomes less of a democracy.

So, for those who believe in the sanctity of human life and our shared humanity with people of different nationalities, religions, and ethnicity, it is clear that we have a big stake in tomorrow’s election. We have a dire need for a new foreign policy that shares these basic human values. This election may well determine how much we can make progress towards this goal — immediately as needed in the Middle East — and in the foreseeable future.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is the author of “Failed: What the ‘Experts’ Got Wrong About the Global Economy (Oxford University Press).

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.