The Uncommitted Movement mobilized people to vote for “uncommitted” delegates to the Democratic National Convention during the Democratic Party primary elections last summer. They presented this as a way to protest Genocide Joe Biden backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of people voted for uncommitted delegates in Michigan, Hawaii, Washington and elsewhere.

But here we are, now. The “good people” are being bombarded with BEB—bourgeois electoral bullshit. They are being told the only options are Kamala Harris—who has been and remains all-in on backing Israel’s genocide—or Trump, who tells Israel to “finish the job” even more crudely and brutally.

The “Uncommitted Movement” put themselves forward as the “most realistic” way to change the Democrats’ support for genocide, calling for people to vote for an “Uncommitted” slate in the Democratic primary elections, as opposed to lining up with Biden. And these “Uncommitted” slates actually did get more than 700,000 votes including more than 100,000 in Michigan, which has the largest population of Palestinians in the U.S. Twenty-nine “uncommitted” delegates were elected to go to the Democratic National Convention.

So, what happened when these delegates went to the Convention?

They were “granted” a private meeting with Party officials, but banned from speaking from the stage. In fact, no Palestinian was allowed anywhere near the stage, while the parents of an American being held hostage by Hamas were given a prime time speaking slot. When they tried to raise a protest at the convention, they were drowned out in a sea of “USA” signs and deafening, Nazi-like chants. In fact, they got nothing from the leaders of the Democratic Party but a pat on the head for channeling outrage into the quicksand that is the Democratic Party.

The slap-in-the-face response to the uncommitted delegates from the leadership of the Democratic Party should have settled the question of whether the Democrats are part of the solution, or an essential part of the problem. Beyond that, the convention featured an endless parade of warmonger speakers—none more rabid than Kamala Harris. 

Then on September 19, the leaders of the Uncommitted Movement seemed to issue a statement refusing to back Kamala Harris for president. At least that’s what some of the headlines implied.

The Three-Card-Monte Hustle

Revolutionary leader Bob Avakian has compared elections to three-card-monte. Three-card-monte is a street hustle where you lay down money to pick a card from a set of three, only to find out that the hustler has done sleight of hand to fool you into picking the wrong card and losing your money. If you buy the argument that the Democrats are a “lesser evil,” you are getting played into thinking you're voting for things you believe in, but you have gotten played into supporting war criminals. 

In a similar way, the leadership of the Uncommitted Movement is trying to pull a three-card-monte on people with their position on voting for Harris. You think that you are rejecting the war-criminal Democrats, when you are really being played into voting for, thinking like, and even becoming like them.

When you looked at the fine print, “Uncommitted” actually issued a statement calling on people—at least in states where the vote will be close—to vote for Kamala Harris. The statement opens by saying that because of “Vice President Harris’s unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign in support of existing U.S. and international human rights law,” it is “impossible for us to endorse her.”¹

And yet, it turns out it was not “impossible” for the leaders of the Uncommitted Movement to endorse Harris. The leaders of the movement went on in their statement to call for people to "vote against" Trump and "avoid" third-party candidates, “especially as third party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency.” If you follow the tortured logic, and the shamefaced sleight of hand, that obviously means supporting Harris, at least anywhere it matters (states where the election will be close).

The leaders of the Uncommitted Movement are sending a message to people who care about stopping Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide that it is OK to “hold their nose” and vote for the “lesser evil” Harris. And telling people to do that in spite of the fact that everything in her history and her latest statements tells anyone who will listen to her that Harris is all-in on Israel’s genocide (see Kamala Harris Is and Can Only Be an Enabler of Israel’s Genocide Against the Palestinian People and other articles on the revcom.us Palestine Resources Page).

“If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not and never will be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are.”—Bob Avakian, BAsics 3:12

Biden, Harris, and the Democratic Party have funded, armed, and whitewashed Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza, which is rapidly escalating in the West Bank region of Palestine now as well. The Uncommitted Movement leaders’ call for people to vote for Harris is unconscionable.

Biden and Harris may have more concerns than Trump over how Israel carries out the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestine to enforce an apartheid state. Trump calls on Israel to “finish the job.” He declared that pro-Palestinian campus protesters are “radical-left lunatics, and they’ve got to be stopped now.”

Harris’s mantra is different in style and tone. Her stock line is “Israel has the right to defend itself, but how it does so matters.” 

More three-card-monte. This supposedly even-handed and “better-than-Biden” position of Harris basically comes down to this: “Yes, Israel has the right to slaughter, maim, starve and sadistically torture Palestinians, and to not only murder Palestinian children wholesale, but also to deprive those who survive of an education (something Biden and Harris did by defunding the UN agency that administers Gaza’s schools). But how it does so matters.”

Harris doesn’t say that all protests have to be crushed, like Trump does. She says she “support[s] the right to peacefully protest.” But when school authorities ban protests against Israel’s genocide, slander them as “antisemitism,” and unleash police to brutalize them, Harris piles on. She slandered and denounced a nonviolent protest of thousands outside the U.S. Capitol when Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu (Netan-nazi) spoke to the U.S. Congress. Harris responded, “Let’s be clear: Antisemitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation.” And “let’s be clear,” she was not talking about the violence of the police who attacked the protest. Or the rabid hate for the Palestinian people Netan-nazi was spewing, and the obscene adulation he got from the U.S. Congress. 

The reality is that for nearly six decades,² there literally has not been a single crime committed by Israel against the Palestinians, ever, that any U.S. administration has taken meaningful action to stop, including Biden-Harris.

Harris Could Not Stop Backing Israel Even If She Wanted To

Even if she wanted to, Kamala Harris could not challenge or in any fundamental way change the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. 

Why? Because for nearly 60 years, Israel has been an irreplaceable nuclear-armed militarized state defending the interests of the U.S. empire in dominating the oil-rich and geographically strategic Middle East. Beyond that, Israel has been a global thug, a brutal enforcer, providing a unique service to U.S. capitalism-imperialism dominating a world of exploitation, degradation, oppression, and environmental devastation. Israel has armed and trained death squads from South Africa to Guatemala when the interests of the U.S. required that.

Israel’s role is all the more “valuable” at a time when U.S. domination of the Middle East is being challenged by Iran, with global rivals Russia and China in the background. That is why every politician who “achieves” a high office in this country stands by Israel.

If you care about stopping the genocide in Gaza, the pathway is not getting sucked and suckered into supporting the “lesser of two evils.” It is in going up against the system responsible for that genocide, stepping up and spreading mass resistance.

This Is Not a “Normal” Election, It Comes at a Time When There Is a Chance for Revolution

The biggest, and worst problem with the Uncommitted Movement backing Harris is that we are not heading into a “normal” election. And these are not normal times. These are rare times when an actual revolution is more possible.

If you think that the only option right now is to get behind the “lesser of two evils,” that a real, emancipating revolution is impossible, you’re wrong. It could happen in the crazy and rare times we are living in when the rulers of this country are clashing on a level not seen since the first U.S. Civil War. You can get an essential short course on why this is true, and how to seize this time from Bob Avakian (BA), revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, through his social media messages @BobAvakianOfficial, The Increasing Craziness, The Intensifying Situation and the Possibility of Revolution.

And if you are questioning and losing sleep over WTF is going on—from Gaza to the destruction of the environment, to the danger of nuclear war, to the right to abortion, to police terror, to demonization of immigrants, to the suppression of the right to vote, you need follow BA’s social media messaging. Tune in, and spread the word.