Voting: What Is it Good For? (w/ Astra Taylor, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, & Malcolm Harris)

Hey how has this conversation aged as tonight Trump says the U.S. should take over Gaza and expel all Palestinians?

David

get fukd bitch we don't need you here

Adam Cassidy

You mean: so long democracy and the ecosystem. Hope is was worth it.

Antony Mills

@Senpai_Eeyore: Thank you so much for your kind words and meaningful thoughts. I appreciate your sentiments and fully agree. I wish you and yours (and the rest of us) the best of luck with all of this. <3

marshall beckrich

Analysis: our purity remains pure. Gaza? Totally effed! Did I mention we retained our purity? We did it! Congratulations to everyone, especially every Muslim in Dearborn Michigan who voted for Jill Stein!

Antony Mills

So long to genocide apologists.

Axel Herrera

As much as I really enjoyed listening to KYE over the last few years, the lack of real push back on the "Hillary was no better than Trump" BS is something I cannot support financially. I will cancel my subscription after posting this. The Palestinians elected Hamas in the promise of rape and murder. Texans overwhelmingly voted to let women bleed out in a hospital parking lot. They can have what they want and now I only hope to see that those close to me, in my nice Blue State, are kept safe.

Antony Mills

I admire you for your way of meaningfully articulating and humanizing your points. I find that you have encapsulated much if not all of my own feelings on the matter. I could not finish this episode. It made me upset the entire day after I listened to it. I have always thought that the actual left leads with empathy. Listens to others and does not motivate through shame. Voting has always been a complex, nuanced and very personal topic. Part of solidarity, at least in my understanding, is meeting and respecting others where they are at and trying to build them up as well as yourself. Recognizing the flaws and the humanity in yourself while trying to meaningfully make others lives better in the collective. EDIT: These are my fundamental differences between me and those on the authoritarian left, whose beliefs, in my opinion, feel much closer to the right than my own. The only seeming difference being the proposed reasons for seizing power. I do not believe that my ideas are any better than anyone else’s, but that our combined work and compromise can provide for a better world for us all. Maybe this makes me naive, but I would rather work to build a better safer world for us all and not losing the already threatened rights we already had was a part of my decision calculus. I was under no illusions that the Democrats stood for my beliefs, but I knew the stakes and treated them seriously in my own estimation. I can only speak for myself and hope that others shared that. As the result Tuesday showed, a majority of the voting populace did not agree with my conclusions and now we must survive in this world as best as we can.

Senpai_Eeyore

The question of the episode was answered on Tuesday. Seems very clear what it, well, used to be good for. Now Christian fascism can harass non-white non-believers and purge more voters, and also shift many legal voters by whatever algorithm Elon drums up to the illegal column.

mark o'hare

Only got to this after the big day. Finding it a good listen in many ways in spite of the question no longer being an open one — maybe more so. A fitting last word sort of episode, I think, retrospectively.

Paul Bowman

I went into this in good faith, per the instructions at the top and having bought Malcolm's book for my mom a while back based on a previous interview he gave, a couple nights before the election. Normally, KYE is a nice calm down show before bed, but I found myself filled with dread listening to this episode, and frustrated beyond words by the end. Similar to Sam's experience with his friends and father in labor law, I am sensitive to what goes on in niche branches of government—my wife and I are chronically ill and would like the FDA and medicine-related parts of government to be run by a relatively sane person so that research on autoimmune drugs can proceed sort of apace. I wouldn't mind being able to still acquire drugs for my mental health that allow me to function and help the people around me. We also depend on medications that cost thousands of dollars a month without the protections of the ACA and current (relatively) stable insurance system that we have. My wife, who has lupus, cannot safely be pregnant and give birth, but there was almost no talk about abortion in this episode save for Astra's brief comments. This isn't a callout about the episode largely ignoring a "woman's issue" (I saw a screenshot of Sam's very sweet post about his mom from Twitter, so I know it's something he cares about), but it is ridiculous that we are doing silly thought exercises like, "Hm, can we really outright say that it would be better if Hillary had won in 2016?" Listening to this episode felt like a debate over whether it was "worth it" to sacrifice my wife and I so that some as-yet-unknown left can appear and save the day. Or so that Malcolm, taking him at his word and not reading more into things like brash machismo or a savior complex than maybe I have a right to, can feel solidarity with a Palestinian woman whose life would be worse if Trump won (and now will be worse, because he has). (When we are suffering and feeling immense grief, we often don't have the capacity to make rational, if unsatisfying, decisions. Abstaining from voting because of the suffering related to the ongoing genocide, when Trump is the one who benefits most from that, is essentially co-signing a fragment of a suicide pact. It is not solidarity.) Honestly, I can extend all the good faith in the world to Malcolm as a person, but the actual reality of what he argued for is one that is far, far worse for me and many people I know and love. I don't want to come across as a psycho podcast listener mad at a guest on a show I like, but I found this conversation so dispiriting in the moment and especially now in hindsight. Malcolm's opinions map onto those I have heard from people in my own life—a lot of too clever by half 5D chess that both minimizes the importance of and blows way out of proportion the moral significance of our votes. I have no faith in a future left if it is led by people like this.

marshall beckrich

Dying to hear analysis on the day after

Colin Slaby

Glad to have cleared that up for you, comrade!

bizanthymum

Yes, better to bend the arc of the moral universe *toward* justice than to make a futile gesture. Think how the world would have been different if Gore had won instead of the liars who took us to war! Gore was not perfect but unquestionably better than the alternatives (including egotist Nader).

Reuel

At about the same 5 minute mark I thought, the house is burning and they are quibbling about the moral convictions of the fire department.

Reuel

Came here to ask to unpaywall so I can send to friends, but yall were way ahead of me! Great episode, and one that I think will produce more fruitful conversations on the Left IRL.

Daniel D.

Oh! And here I thought it was just the campus radicals commandeering the mic

Timothy Hall

I am still hoping to hear a strong defense of the Popular front/Alliance against authoritarianism Message of come together, stop Maga, vote for Democrats. I'm pretty sure that is how your great leftist ancestors would advise you when faced with this kind of blatant right wing dictatorship. Clearly it is popular front time. Vote for Democrats!

Thomas Holz

No. This is incorrect. The first past the post systems that almost all states have is exactly the reason Voting for third parties is risky. Yes the electoral college is a problem. But even if we maintain the electoral college, getting rid of first past the post elections through either runoff elections Where there is no majority or right choice voting would make Voting for third parties a reasonable option.

Thomas Holz

Hoo boy. If I wanted to show someone an example of why the left will never gain power in America I would just share this episode of KYE. Hoping no one takes Malcolm's advice and ruins their lives for an ineffectual strategy while he podcasts.

Preston Crawford

I love this podcast in general, but it has not prepared us in the least for the eventuality of Trump II. Sabotage Weapons Manufacturers?? Are you F-ing kidding me? What planet does Malcolm live on? Protests of any nature are going to be utterly crushed. We should have been creating mechanisms for protection of the most vulnerable to Trump II, organizing around the principle of effective and collective protest and real means of defending ourselves. Lots of blissful naiveté out there right now. It will prove to be catastrophic.

Sam Schindler

A fucking refreshing conversation that some of us have been looking for, for months?

bizanthymum

How is his direct action take at all discrediting? Maybe if you thought that he made good points, you ought to consider that his point on direct action might be a salient one, too. He also clearly stated that he was *not* advocating that folks should abstain from voting.

bizanthymum

This is precisely my point, so where is the misinformation? Of course one can point out to multiple reasons if Harris loses, including her basically unconditional support for Israel, which is awful. Yet this does not mean that third party candidates can’t play a role in her possible defeat. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if Stein gets 30 000 votes in 4 swing states, and Trump wins these states by getting 10 000 votes more than Harris, then it is completely reasonable to say that Stein played a role? Also, for the kind of manipulation I’m talking about, see Andrew Wilson’s books ”Political technology: The globalisation of political manipulation” and ”Virtual Politics: Faking democracy in the Post-Soviet world”. This manipulation goes far, far beyond ”Russian psyops on social media”. (Indeed the latter book I mentioned was already published in 2005.) The grievances and concrete demands of leftists and particularly those who are of Palestinian origin or have friends and family there are entirely legitimate. But these grievances and legitimate demands are in Stein’s case exploited in Trump’s favor. What is absurd is to claim that Stein, who is only selectively anti-genocide and, as far as I’m aware, still has or recently had investments in both the fossil fuel and arms industry, is anti-war or indeed anti-genocide. Of course, she frames her effective advocacy in favor of the Assad and Putin regimes in Syria and Ukraine in pseudopacifist ”anti-war” terms that are tailored to appeal to leftists, as do so many other self described leftist influencers in the US like Jimmy Dore and Tulsi Gabbard (oh wait she is now explicitly pro-Trump). However, when one systematically propagates narratives that advance imperialist war aims and mass killing, one is not in fact ”anti-war”.

Empty Signifier

Never thought I listen for 5 min if you excellent talk and scroll end it. The Wehrmacht is approaching Leningrad and the only moral choice is fight and die or surrender and die.

edward ripple

These people are morons! But so are the knee-jerk objections to Palestine Action tactics

Patrick Jones-O'Brien

Let's look at the two case studies of "third party" interference: In the case of 2000. First, let us observe obvious truth that the election was given to GWB by a divided court. It was them, and not Nader who intervened from the outside of the electoral process to throw the election. Second, no one made Gore appoint Lieberman, a much reviled Republican in everything but name, who likely would have played the exact same role as Cheney re Iraq, as VP Candidate. Yet, it was indicative of the Gore campaign in that it took every opportunity to stick it to the left. This is to say that Gore could have earned left-leaning votes at any point, but refused to do so. He ran the most conservative Democratic campaign for president since the 1920s. 2016 is easier: HRC should have visited Wisconsin. This too is indicative of the centrist dream of winning elections without promises to workers. Going to Wisconsin would have been symbolic of echoing the populist energy of Obama, who won Indiana in 2008. She preferred the suburbs northern Virginia and Charlotte, and lost.

Michael

Extreme agree here. The complete takeover of the supreme court had monumental impact and you have to really turn off your memory to say otherwise. Also pulling out of the Paris Agreement, come on… this stuff is absolutely consequential.

Mike Seay

I should say that it is possible that folks who would have otherwise voted for Harris will vote for 3rd parties this year. That still would not mean that it was the fault of those parties if Trump wins. That would be the fault of Harris and the Dems for funding and supporting an ongoing occupation & genocide. It's absurd to suggest that people who refuse to vote for genocide (and instead vote for anti-genocide parties like Green or PSL) are merely naive and voting thoughtlessly based on Russian psyop posts on social media, rather than that they have legitimate grievances and concrete demands which the Dems refuse to act upon

purr

The US is responsible for 70% of all military funding in Israel. By any definition that makes us a primary shareholder in Israel's occupation & war of aggression

purr

There is no evidence to suggest that left third parties increase the chances of right parties winning, in the US. This is specifically because of a thing that is pretty unique to the US (though not exclusively), which is a first past the finish line election system and a little antidemocratic thing we call the electoral college. (Also the fact that we only have 2 parties to begin with.) If we were electing presidents based on the popular vote of all citizens voting, Trump would have never won in 2016. If you look at a chart of popular votes you'll also see that there has never been a presidential election where left third parties got significant numbers of votes without the dems still winning the overall popular vote (if someone more schooled in poli sci knows of one that I missed, please do correct me). In other words, the only reason Trump won in 2016, and the only way he'll win in 2024, is because of the way thousands of votes in every state are invalidated by the electoral college. Unless your country also has a system like the electoral college, and an executive branch which doesn't have to work in coalition with any other parties, then we are in fact quite different from you and all you're doing right now is spreading misinformation about the impact of third parties on US elections. I'll do you the respect of not claiming that you might be spreading that misinfo to deliberately sway our election

purr

The US has deployed troops to Israel, is part of the discussion when it comes to every major escalation Israel has undertaken, and is the main source of weaponry and funding for the genocide. It seems a bit over the top to stop listening because no one got pedantic about it in a group podcast format. Especially when it's arguably true: the definition of prosecute is to carry something through until it's conclusion.

Giovanni Anello

The CLR quote was pretty dumb. Is the analogy of the US today to San Domingue 1790? Further, CLR James, a man featured in my dissertation, is erudite but was wrong for four decades about the capacity of the working class starting in the 1930s, and he remains wrong today, almost 90 years later. His commitment to dialectical reasoning led him to put strange glosses to empirical trends. Further, this magical thinking that Toussaint's 500 insurgents who sparked a revolution in a highly unequal slave society is akin to this highly divided society that talks of a civil war, is just insane/inane. James, because of his erudition, cosmopolitan biography, and attentiveness to marxian interpretations of the anti imperial revolt of mid century has been improperly haloed, encouraging thoughtless, out of context quotes that get imbued with authority. Also, Black Jacobins was published in 1938, and is Leninist-Trotskyist in character through and through. A couple decades later, CLR James would evolve his ideology significantly.

his eyes just tell him lies

The excuses and the lengths to which some will go to account for why the anti-genocide perspective makes them squirm. 🙄 It truly is a sight to behold.

Axel Herrera

As a long time listener (and first time commenter) from Eastern Europe, I have to say that it is horrifying to hear that the mass violence enabler Jill Stein is being taken seriously by someone on this otherwise great podcast. I see no reason why domestic or foreign oligarchs, including pro-Israel and fossil fuel oligarchs, wouldn’t put some money into promoting her in order to increase Trump’s chances of winning. It’s ridiculous to think that the techniques that are being used to manipulate politics elsewhere in the world are not being used in the US. Of course they are, since your electoral system is particularly vulnerable to them. Please, look at the rest of the world and stop thinking that you are so special.

Empty Signifier

I tried to scroll through all the comments, but failed, so I apologize if anyone has brought this up already. I couldn't finish listening to the episode for one reason: early on one of the guests said, in passing, that the US was 'prosecuting' the war/genocide now going on. NO. The US isn't prosecuting the war. It may be assisting Israel in prosecuting the war (to be clear, it is). It may be acting as accomplice to genocide (it is). It may be morally bankrupt in the way it's approached the Israel/Gaza/Lebanon situation (it is). But it's not prosecuting the war. And once you start misusing terms like that, you lose me. For personal reasons, I've spent a fair amount of time studying the Weathermen/SDS faction from the 60s. And one of the things I've concluded is that in the political arena, reckless language often leads to reckless behaviors. Does anyone think the Weather Underground brought about a more just and equal society society? What it brought about was the death of some of its members, and an attempted bombing at a NCO club in New Jersey. No real change was effected. And we only have to look at the recent past in which reckless BS, almost all from Republicans, has threatened trans folk, protestors, election workers, and other people Trump has designated as his enemies. Give me a fucking break.

pixlaw

Does Kamala oppose it? Sending everyone we have in custody back is also mass deportation.

Michael

Not pearl clutching, I just don’t respect political activists who call for other people to do something they aren’t willing to do themselves. I believe Resist Libs are willing to vote and I believe union organizers are willing to go on strike. I don’t believe Malcolm is actually willing to bomb a factory, so he should stop polluting the discourse with his LARPing. You’re right that we can’t know for sure, but the ratio of calls for property destruction online vs how much it actually happens suggests that 99% of it is bluster. Calla Walsh from Twitter is the 1% I can respect.

Matthew

“(Per many of your requests, we’ve unpaywalled this conversation so everyone can listen.)” Power cedes nothing etc etc Good on ya lads for taking this out from the behind the paywall.

Kevin Grego

Intrepid producer or chopped liver?

Zachary Orchard

I was under the impression that mass deportation was Trump’s position

Josh Geyer

Conditions are getting worse because "liberal" Democrats now support mass deportation and genocide. They also seem OK with war against both China and Iran. If the Gaza movement is a pillar of the left at the moment, then it is bad that Democrats have been at the forefront of attacking it. Normalizing genocide and then cracking the skulls of kids who oppose it is bad for the left.

Michael

Thank you. For all those attacking Malcolm, advocating for violence (against property) is itself a career risk of the kind the yard sign set would never imagine for themselves. Also, people "with microphones," as he put it, need to put these ideas out into the open in order to build support for them.

Michael

I agree! I'm just responding to the criticism that he's advocating for other people to do something dangerous while he sits at home or whatever. Unless he's got the worst opsec instincts in the world we're not gonna know either way!

Ranger Rick

I mean the person making the public statements to normalize a thing doesn't have to do it themselves. In fact, if they did they would risk their ability to keep encouraging others and to talk to the pearl-clutchers on their behalf. Aboveground representation is critical to the success of underground campaigns

purr

Lord knows he's annoying on Twitter sometimes but massive respect to Malcolm for making a good 50 percent of kye listenership clutch pearls about property crimes. I have no idea if he's practicing what he's preaching but if he is he's not going to admit to it on a podcast!

Ranger Rick

100%

janananana

Also,nom thinking the 'small' matters of government that impacts thousands. Like child tax credit. The boys are high on their own supply.

heater dunbat

It’s 10000% because of the practical difficulties of making it happen. Congress and/or the states would have to be behind that kind of change and there is no incentive for people who have benefited from the current electoral system to change it. The Republicans know full well (and say outright) that if we get rid of the electoral college, for instance (the most popular of the ideas for electoral reform), they would never win the presidency again.

Lauren Bickel

Malcolm made two assertions on which his position is based that weren’t really explained. One, that conditions are rapidly getting worse, and two, that a Harris administration is a distinct risk that is comparable enough to Trump to be worth considering. I understand that these things have to be true in order to justify his position but he didn’t bother backing them up which you need to do if you’re advancing a position as extreme as his.

Josh Geyer

It’s a pity Malcolm discredited himself with the crazy “direct action” take because he made some decent points before. Like I kinda do think some left-wing groups should be armed and prepared to defend people from fascist militia violence. Still think everyone should vote tho

Kimmy

I’d say that 90% of the time, the episodes that I most want to share with the public - are the ones that are paywalled. It’s let me to wonder (beyond the ratio for which you’re aiming) criteria you use to slot any given episode into one category or the other…

JimJim5122

Yes, I completely agree.

JimJim5122

Thank you. It’s amazing how short people’s memories can be.

Senpai_Eeyore

Deciding between these three was hard for this reason. Was really hoping that West would run a powerful campaign, but neither he nor Stein really did. For that reason I went with De la Cruz.

Giovanni Anello

Great discussion. Only thing I wish would have been discussed more is how the Third Party calculus could change outside of swing states in an electoral college system. If there is a strong consolidation behind an anti-genocide candidate outside of a swing state, isn't there practical worth to running up the national numbers on that candidate in red and blue states in order to both use the opportunity to organize and to create a national narrative (as the uncommitted movement did?).

Giovanni Anello

An apparently dangerous opinion in this chat: I think Malcolm is totally right here. Thank you for having him included in this discussion, I feel like it helped flesh out the nuance of everyone's opinions.

DC

"when has the democratic party moved left from losing elections?" well, are Biden's more to the left economic policies (moderate in the big picture but radical compared to Obama) a result of Dem losing in 2016 and acknowledging the impact Bernie had on the party, or not? I believe they are.

Austin English

Holy Shit what has happened to my favorite podcast???

Timothy Hall

Yes, absolutely. The Floyd protests caught them off guard and they had to give ground. It took them decades, trough the eighties, to fully contain the civil right movement. My hope is that, as in King's late gospel, we can combine unionism with anti-imperialism and the fight for civil rights. Democrats love when we measure these things against each other, rather than treating them as interrelated.

Michael

The bare fact of it, I've become convinced, is that our political system does not digest even calculated disengagement as dissent. I'm not sure that any form of electoral democracy does, except perhaps those in which voting is mandatory, and abstention is therefore a mild form of civil disobedience. In a country where the majority of the population, as a rule, ALREADY doesn't vote in most elections in which they are eligible to vote, how can we credibly say that THIS time they well get the message? Unless you believe deeply in a form of civic religion, I think the case for voting as a purely pragmatic act of harm reduction is a strong one. If you want absolution, look for it at church, not the ballot box. Nauseating but necessary decisions are everywhere in human existence, and the better decision is rarely an unambiguously good one. As a basic principle of politics, I really struggle to seriously entertain the argument that a public that is being squeezed on all sides will spring to its senses once things get just a LITTLE worse. Where are the conditions for solidarity? Where are the organizational processes to hash out the contradictions we will inevitably run up against? Where is, in the Gramscian sense, the PARTY? If the people who are ostensibly filling out our organization ranks were prepared to just go to brunch when a Democrat won, then maybe we need to face the uncomfortable truth that the despair we feel in the political moment isn't as all-consuming as we make it out to be. If we believe that it is real and warranted, then the failure to adequately communicate it and organize around it is ours. I also just don't really hold with Malcolm's view that a Harris administration is as grave an organizational threat as a Trump administration. First, there is the opportunity, albeit a scant one, for actual results--I heard Astra raise that point--particularly on issues like labor and debt. Second, I really do think there is still a simmering discontent with the Democratic Party even among people who will unhesitatingly vote for Harris. This is where it seems like the "online blinders" start to show, because this debate is happening among a small minority of potential Harris voters. It is utterly detached from the reality of our political moment to characterize every enthusiastic Harris voter as a mushy ex-Republican who doesn't have goals that are substantively aligned with the left. There are people who are pissed as hell with Harris and the Democratic Party who also do not have a SINGLE QUALM about voting for her over Trump. If we fail to organize those people under a Harris administration, it will not be because they cannot be convinced to join us. (Adding this as a P.S) Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I do think there's a real possibility that Harris is just bluffing, Arendt style, according to flawed political math. Republicans do it all the time.

Ciaran Hedderman

Thank you for this very thoughtful episode that held a space for a lot of different leftist views at once in a way that you kind of just don’t experience much these days 🙏🏼

Maurice Marion

Malcolm has lost all vision for a leftist movement. He is not an ally in the leftist movement and anyone thinking Trump is a better real concrete outcome than Harris is not an ally to the leftist movement. Speculating about 2nd and 3rd order affects from punishing Harris isn’t a strategy: it’s nihilism.

Patrick

The gentlemen seem to be ok losing some rights to push progress. Astra is arguing that there is danger in giving ground. It seems that the difference is Roe. Astra HAS lost rights; the gentlemen are talking about the potential to lose rights. It is different when you have lost so much and I wonder if they would be singing another tune if it was Obergefell or Griswold.

janananana

I went from something that boarded marginal enthusiasm for Harris after Biden stepped down to absolute anguish as the months rolled on. I live in Maine, which means I have rank choice voting. I ultimately gave Jill Stein (still problems, still begrudging) the top spot and Gave Harris #2, knowing she’ll handily win Maine D2–ME D1 is a giant toss up right now and we’re one of two states that splits their EC votes, so I can’t do a damn thing about that. I know RCV isn’t bullet proof and many of the left have serious critiques of it, which are all valid. But in such a harsh, undemocratic system I think it has its advantages and allows a lot of people to vote with their conscious first while also still not fucking anyone over 🤷🏻‍♀️

mireille cecil

"oh no what if they increase the genocide" c'mon man they're increasing it now!

Ranger Rick

The point about Dems being unable to co-opt the pro-Palestinian movement as they co-opted the energy for addressing police brutality after George Floyd's death is a good one, and if anything I strongly suspect that the next time there are large-scale protests against police violence under a Dem administration, the response will be much closer to the response to pro-Palestinian protests on campuses - much less willingness to entertain criticism of law enforcement, much more willingness to openly crack down and use the language of counter-insurgency against left-alligned movements. And yes, of course it would be worse under a GOP administration, but only by degrees.

Peter Aidan Byrne

That’s a great point. It’s also good evidence for why anti-imperialism is the last thing the left should throw under the bus.

Michael

Agreed on all points. The only reason the pro-Palestinian movement hasn’t ended up in the Dem party graveyard is because they couldn’t co-opt that movement on account of their “ironclad” support for Israeli genocide. Hence their violent opposition to the student protests. Dems can say they support police and immigration reform and quell the BLM and anti-ICE movements. But they can’t waver on their support for Israel. This one issue does stand out apart from others and it deserves extra attention. I understand why many here are uncomfortable with the single-issue anti-genocide leftist voter. We are not a majority, but I appreciate that this perspective was in the episode.

Axel Herrera

No, I think you and I would pretty much agree on how much good that would do. Like, I don’t see the Weathermen as having been particularly successful in their actions against the Vietnam War. I feel like Malcom got a decent amount of push back on it from others in the conversation. I mean, the actual “blowing up trucks or whatever” quote comes from Taiwo somewhat facetiously/exasperatedly critiquing Malcom’s premise.

Lisa M

Yes! Thank you.

Lisa M

I will grant that going around "blowing up some trucks", as I believe they framed it, will indeed effect radical political change. But probably not the kind you're thinking.

August Slagle

thank you, r debris.

Deborah Quick

I’m not saying I agree with Malcom Harris’s stance, but I also don’t think talking about extra-legal action (domestic terrorism, civil disobedience, direct action, non-peaceful protest, however you want to frame it) is out of place in a discussion of how to effect radical political change on a history podcast.

Lisa M

Yes, for all of the discourse on this issue here and elsewhere online, I am surprised that more people haven't asked: why did the Dems not codify Roe during Obama's first term? Why did Dems not limit the filibuster to codify Roe under Biden? I too fear two more Trump appointees, but the pervasive, American historical amnesia is jarring as always.

Michael

Yes, genocide is unimportant. As a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I can say: now I know how it must have felt for Jews in the United States during the 1930s and '40s. The only difference, I suppose, is that we did not directly fund the Holocaust.

Michael

Professor Taiwo’s line about “getting too clever for your own good” is excellent and Malcom Harris’s total lack of response to it seemed kind of telling

J. Haskin

I personally think everyone opposed to Trump should vote for Harris so that she wins the electoral college, the popular vote, >50% of popular vote, and helps democrats in down ballot races. I think that would do the most to quash Trump and MAGA.

Ted H

You hit the nail on the head of why I still see third-party protest votes as an act of privilege. "It's not my bodily autonomy on the line, it's not my kids locked in cages, the differences between the two candidates does not impact me personally, so I'm going to disengage." There's a huge population who would be rendered less safe under a Trump presidency than a Harris one. To turn away is to state that making known your displeasure with the Democratic establishment is more important than their well being.

Keith Morse

Oh no, it's not just you. I'm really glad to have a good faith conversation about disaffected leftists, which I think this was. I'm just hoping the philosophy of "I see Harris and Trump close enough to equal, so let's give up on the electoral project and do some violence instead" has a very small constituency.

Keith Morse

Agree. The idea that we can’t say we are worse off now, as the result of a Trump presidency was bafflingly out of touch. Women are literally dying from being denied abortion care, thanks to Dobbs, not to mention delayed action on climate, increasingly militarized police forces, instigating a violent insurrection, the list goes on. Saying it’s somehow “better” (which I took to mean “more convenient”) to organize against a more potent foe is also patently ridiculous because it ignores the real material, financial, physical, psychological, etc. damage that people have and will be experiencing as a result of a Trump presidency. I found that position too depressing and cynical for words. Overall, I thought Malcolm’s single-issue focus dominated the conversation too much, and would have liked to hear a more expansive exploration on other policy positions which could be challenging for some voters’ decision-making. There’s so much focus on Harris as “not Trump” that we’re not looking at her campaign positions on their own merit.

Margot Conover

Harris may well win the Arab American vote, the Muslim vote, the Palestinian American and Lebanese American vote. She may not. Either way, many thousands of people in these constituencies will cast votes for her, for myriad reasons, up to and including Israel’s monstrous assault on Palestine and Lebanon. When you choose solidarity with those that cannot morally justify a vote for Harris, you are choosing sides with one segment of the Arab electorate over another that factors in the Muslim ban, the embassy move, the recognition of the Golan Heights, the end run around the Palestinians that was the Abraham Accords, Jason Greenblatt’s ‘peace plan’ (all of which set the stage for October 7th and its aftermath) and Jared Kushner’s salivating over Gazan beachfront real estate, as well as a whole litany of dehumanizing language and action from Trump, a man who very clearly fears and detests people of Middle Eastern descent. Arab Americans are not a monolith. If anything is unifying the electorate right now, it’s the horrific genocide in Gaza, and many, many of these voters will cast votes for Harris. Ignoring this fact says everything about Malcolm and nothing about this electorate he claims to defer to. As far as direct action goes, the idea that sabotage will make a dent in the US arms manufacturing machine is just pure fantasy, as well as being terrible strategy. To be clear, I see such action as totally morally justified. And I’m sure it would be cathartic. But if you want to see protesters jailed en masse, if you want the FBI in every single meeting and mosque, if you want the media to shed whatever minuscule vestiges of sympathy they have for Palestinian freedom, this is the way to do it. You may say all of these things are happening now, and you’d be right; but they will all get so, so, so much worse. The Weatherman didn’t end the Vietnam war any more than the hippies did. Baader Meinhof didn’t turn the west against the Shah or bring about a socialist revolution in Western Europe. What these groups did do is feed a backlash that still resonates to this day. Unfortunately, as always, the only solutions that will actually help the people we advocate for are politics and nonviolent civil action. The idea that these goals can be better achieved from the position of opposition to a Trump presidency is an argument for never gaining real power ever, a bullshit accelerationism that basically says the worse candidate is always a better choice because of the ground level activism their reign will engender. And if we’re arguing for a future well beyond this political moment, judicial appointments have to be taken into account. Four more years of Trump means hundreds more lunatics will be making policy from the judiciary for the next several decades. I haven’t even mentioned climate policy, labor policy, trans rights, abortion rights… I mean for fucks sake

Reggie Debris

Tho I think the guest in question did occasionally over shade the lines in service (disservice?) to his arguments overall

Where there’s a Wills there’s a Way

Or: it’s only kind of important to dem party establishment

Where there’s a Wills there’s a Way

always enjoy and appreciate a good faith, thoughtful conversation featuring folks who broadly share a political commitment while also holding positions on particular issues that differ in distinct and meaningful ways from each other (hard to do on the left sometimes!). Kudos to the team, and the guests. We need more of this, everywhere, yesterday! (PS: an enthusiastic, disinterested plug for Hammer and Hope — if any political project these days deserves your support, it’s H&H!!! So good and so necessary!!)

Where there’s a Wills there’s a Way

Blackford Oakes

Domestic freedom fighting, thank you

Kenichi Serino

Great conversation, I think there’s a bottom line here that without a primary it was never going to be a good year for the Left

Kenichi Serino

Great conversation that is also incredibly depressing. No matter who wins, the only way out is through.

Tim Combes

this conversation is crucial. please unpaywall!

Zac Chapman

This excellent conversation reminded me of an article published a couple years ago in a backwater lefty mag that I would recommend everybody read: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/should-we-disrupt-the-democratic-party-or-take-it-over/

VeggieDog420

If Malcolm Harris genuinely believes that sabotaging arms manufacturing is more effective than voting, then he should either do that sabotage himself or be involved in concrete efforts to make that happen. For all I know, he’s already doing that off air. Otherwise he should shut up and stop advocating for other people to endanger themselves so that he can adopt a radical aesthetic.

Matthew

This is one of the more important conversations about the election I’ve heard and it would be great if it was shareable 💕

Patrick Conway

I'm perusing the comments here and am a little surprised to apparently be the only subscriber whose response to this episode was, "hold on, are they really debating the merits of domestic terrorism here?"

August Slagle

I agree with everyone else who has said this episode should be un-paywalled, but I would suggest maybe not sharing it with the current image showing what I assume is one of the KYE boys' address on it. Don't want you getting doxxed, especially in an ep that mentions sabotaging US weapons manufacturing lol 😅

John Willis

Yes. I haven’t finished the episode yet but that was the only line halfway through that made me hit pause while listening to it on my daily mental health walk and wondering if I, as a late thirties woman walking around in a neighborhood full of a third houses openly broadcasting their fascism with Trump signs and two-thirds indicating that maybe they wouldn’t be turning the knife in my back if shit hits the fan with their Harris signs, am living in the same reality as Malcolm Harris. I don’t know, sometimes I just feel like I live in a very different universe from the commentariat. Thanks to Astra who made me feel like I haven’t totally lost my mind, or my leftist bona fides.

Eira Tansey

It was Malcolm and yes I agree that statement was bizarre

Ethan Stern

The most robust way to ensure government supports the people and not the minority is to make voting actually result in election results that actually represent the most people possible. That means adopting the Alaskan election system, with a single ballot primary for all candidates and the top 4 primary winners get into a general election with rank choice votes.

Chad Bailey

Yes. Hillary. Lock yourself in your room and don’t say anything for several hours after you lost because you were too upset. Yes, Hillary who called poor people in the country deplorable after rural America’s hollowing out under Obama.

Chad Bailey

Astra is right. Being loud, insistent, and having allies makes the federal government pay attention. I know. I am a federal bureaucrat.

Chad Bailey

Astra is right. Don’t wait for the Dems to act better. Take the Democratic party over.

Chad Bailey

This conversation reminded me of the Paris Commune debating rules of procedure while the Austrian army was breaching the city and imposing the Concert of Europe’s totalitarian state until around WW1. For leftists, this conversation was woefully full of idealistic wistfulness about how sending a message to the Dems about Gaza and Lebanon would make any difference whatsoever to a party in the minority. Leftists need to embrace full-scale materialism in our politics or we are just liberals. What so much of this conversation overlooks, or mentions as an aside, is that organizing is not the point of voting. Government on the side of the people is the point of voting. Trump delayed climate action by at least a decade in the U.S. He dominated the Supreme Court, which gutted affirmative action, EPA regulations, and Roe v. Wade. He shut down the government just to get money to build his border wall, while millions of feds had hard times feeding their families during the shutdown. He played footsie with dictators and turned his back on the democracies of the world. He moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. If Trump wins, Putin takes Kiev. If Trump wins, Gaza and the West Bank are unconditionally owned by Israel. The federal judiciary becomes the province of reactionary ideologues and many social and economic policies that lefties love will be demolished. Grow the fuck up. Jill Stein is getting backing from the Kremlin. Kamala Harris is VP, with no power to change policy of her boss Biden. We don’t know what she will do in power. It’s fantasy to claim she is just more of the same. Vote Harris or welcome Trump as the 47th president. And maybe the last president.

Chad Bailey

The radical Republicans only got to the point of shooting Confederates by destroying the Whig Party.

Michael

I don’t know if it was Femi Taiwo or Malcolm Harris, but one of the the men who wasn’t Sam, said that it was good that Hillary lost in 2016. I’m no HRC fan, but unwittingly patriarchal comments like this are why I have a problem with the hard left. Trump’s election enabled 3 more reactionary Justices to be appointed to the Supreme Court, which led to the Dobbs decision. Because of Dobbs, last year, approximately 26,000 unplanned babies were born in Texas, as a result of rape. I’m only an ADHD female attorney, not a learned male academic. Maybe these men can take a refresher high school course in civics to refresh their knowledge as to how the federal courts work and who nominates the federal judges.

Barbara Rice

As always, I want to praise the high level of conversation here. Part of the reason why I don't take "vote blue no matter who" people seriously is because they never articulate a plan for the day after the election. I'm glad to see a bit more imagination in this discussion. Nevertheless, I am always surprised that few people make the case that the Democratic Party itself is the greatest impediment to leftist organizing. It is excellent at creating alibis for people who should know better. Structurally, the Democratic party has served as a graveyard for social and political movements, whether it be the arc that leads from King to the CBC, Occupy to Bernie, or the IWW to Janus. It is also true, as your guests note, that it is Democrats who are on the front line of combating the anti-genocide movement on college campuses. Here in Charlottesville, it was a leading scholar of the Atlantic trade in enslaved people and good liberal who, as provost, ordered that students be gassed, beaten, and arrested. Again, the power structure of the Democratic party gives people license to do anything to support the status quo and to defend their careers. What I would love to hear from leftists for Harris is: Vote for Harris today to save democracy, or to protect our communities, and tomorrow we will join you in creating a political movement that can contest power on our own terms. Third parties have had an enormous impact on out politics. On the left: the Republicans and abolition or Debs and the New Deal. On the Right: Thurmond, Wallace, and the southern strategy or Perot and the national deficit discourse.

Michael

Please anti paywall this so I can send to lefty friends. This is the most compelling articulation of the post-election activism work to be done that I’ve heard

Jonathan Hung

Taiwo in general hit it out of the park this episode, both him and sams peice on voting as a totem and as an identity marker were spot on

Ethan Stern

I'm joining the chorus of unpaywalling this episode. But also I think that this election is just further proving the anarchist thesis about liberal democracy (and the US political ssystem especially) being purpose made to resist any social democratic, let alone socialist, movements from having any real chances. Whether its third party or taking over the Dems, both are futile endeavors that distract from the non-electoral organizing needed to oppose fascism or neoliberalism. Electoral minded social democrats aren't going to risk organizing militant resistance to an actual fascist threat until its too late. Asking how we as individuals should vote is trying to find answers to all the wrong questions.

Byron Lopez

Also had a thought re: favorable terrain. My experience organizing in GA (around public edu funding primarily, but also other edu things like college tuition etc) leads me to believe that it is just hard to have an executive or legislative branch for whom constituent pressure isn't an option. Vouchers being an exception, even if we had the pastor the mayor the school superintendent and half a million constituents, we could NOT get most R state lawmakers to shift votes. Wholly divorced from that pressure because of a combination of gerrymandering, genuinely safe red district, and corporate $$ threatening to primary them from the right. IDK if this is a coherent argument but it just felt like the tactics & efficacy we had were/are so limited by our lack of leverage with those lawmakers + our R Governor. Similarly I just don't see what leverage we would have in a Trump admin II. I tend to like Waleed Shahid's perspective on Uncommitted movement: it wasn't that the strategy was fundamentally wrong. we just needed more of it https://substack.com/home/post/p-150485892 "I thought that if we could just score a few big wins, we’d shift the landscape permanently. But politics is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. It’s an ocean without a shore. We won a few rounds but were unprepared for the long haul. It felt like trying to hold water in my hands; no matter how tight I closed my grip, the power slipped away."

Alex Ames

Appreciated the framing that inside strategy should be genuinely coordinated towards capturing and wielding governance while outside strategy should be genuinely disruptive. I train students to embed into state legislatures to disrupt authoritarian and corporate power. We discuss much of what was discussed here - we can/should do both inside and outside strategy but not if both are benign, performative, and reactive. Students often are so taken aback by how theprimary activist activities they've taken part in lack any deeper strategy than "we like this bill so we should have a lobby day about it and post on social media with photos of the lobby day." Or, on the outside strategy side, protest as expression without the necessary structure and position to move votes. We call what we do bringing militancy to inside-outside strategy. It's been a fruitful experiment at the state legislature level. Wins us a lot more than we used to win, but we're still far from where we want to be in size, strength, and outcomes. Chambers of Commerce always have a lot more money :) Anyways, I'm a swing state voter too - in GA. Voted for Harris for the kind of terrain I'd prefer to organize upon. Felt worthwhile to spend one fraction of one day of a larger year in which every other day was spent on many other tactics. I'm not "online" enough to know of these debates, but nonetheless thank you KYE for another wonderful episode.

Alex Ames

“Shooting the confederates is a step we cannot skip” beautifully said, and imo the most clear and irrifutable argument

Ethan Stern

great episode, sam. would love to hear more know-your-friends style episodes about left strategy from you guys!

Jordan Mart

Yes, and I don’t agree with his argument. I think Sam and the others did a great job arguing for a Do It All strategy. Direct action and organizing, AND strategic voting. We have to do it all. Full court press these assholes. What frustrates me about Malcom Harris’s stance is this idea that somehow the left can’t sabotage a factories AND strategically vote.

Lisa M

Yeah this should not be behind the paywall. Great episode. Would love to share it.

C-Dub

🙏 Sooner rather than later please 🙏

Lisa M

That's not what Harris was arguing.

Jacob Hollnagel

Hi! It would be great if you could make this available publicly, what a rich convo that as many people as possible should hear 🙏🏻 tysm

Sarah Slichter

I just don’t think sabotaging/obstructing factories and voting for Kamala in a swing state have to be mutually exclusive! DO BOTH!

Lisa M

I am by nature dismissive of white, well-heeled Marxist literary types advising other people to commit serious crimes as an alternative to voting.

Jacob Hollnagel

As a trans woman, watching and hearing people make the argument that it would be better to elect a government that would erase my legal existence so folks can bolster their membership rolls a little more under a Trump presidency very, very much turns me off from Left politics. I know that’s not a universal position, but hearing it from some folks makes me really wonder what they mean by “solidarity”.

Maxine

This is my extremely uneducated non-American POV showing, but is there a particular reason why large scale electoral reform is seldom brought up in these conversations? Is it just because it would be practically difficult to implement? I know Femi has talked about aspects of this here and elsewhere, but it seems to me that if you think Trump is an existential threat to democracy, or if you think both/all available options for voting are bad, you'd want to do something about how you ended up in that situation, and how it seems to keep happening. (What I'm thinking of specifically is a move to something like proportional representation or STV in federal elections, which might make third party votes actually meaningful instead of just protest votes, or might at least make results more representative of public opinion.)

André Alessi

I'm with Aimee Haase, please make this public

Matthew Weinstein

Yeah it’s tough because i guess there is a sort of tension between maintaining good (or at least decent) living conditions and cultivating a desire to organize. I do get a little impatient with people who say that republicans are good for organizing because even if it’s true, climate change is real and there is a non trivial difference in the carbon emissions generated by this country when a Republican leads it vs a democrat. I’m a socialist but I’m also trying to slow down the burning of the planet and once you elect a climate denier you can’t really put the toothpaste back in the tube even if the person you elect later is a progressive. I think our only option is learning how to break out of complacency to organize against Democratic leaders . Also I think what Malcolm said about rising carbon emissions is true globally due to rising living standards but false for the US, I think Joe Biden actually did measurable good for the climate albeit not as much as we like and it’s annoying when the left plays it fast and loose with facts

Brinda Gurumoorthy

You have to make this a mainstream episode. I know people who need to hear this.

Aimee Haase

I'm confident that a Clinton presidency would be better than a Trump presidency for left wing political aims for one reason, the Supreme Court. We must unwind the disastrous series of cases that equate money with speech and corporations with people, and ensure that everyone lives in a state with a representative democracy. Oligarchs can drown out your message with money, and electoral organizing doesn't work well if all your voters are efficiently packed in districts.

Garrett Lindsey

This is such a good note. I get what he’s was trying to explore with that hypothetical. The evocation of Germany and Merkel was really thought provoking for me. I can imagine the kind of horrible Neo Lib world of a Clinton administration. I don’t love it. Maybe we wouldn’t be reckoning with the authoritarianism and extremism in our society in as intense of a way. Maybe we would all be more politically “complacent”. BUT we would still have the fucking right to a fucking abortion! Real reality check. At the end of the day I just can’t be more scarred of a hypothetical Hillary Government then the ACTUAL Trump government we all experienced.

Lisa M

I actually came to ask if you’d consider making this un-paywalled. This is a discussion that I think my college students would love listening to; especially as they are trying to figure out what to do regarding voting in what is for many of them their first presidential election. I think this episode does a great job debating strategy and also just really validates many people’s feelings of “how tf are these my choices”. And most of my students are flat broke so even though I often rec this podcast, I don’t often rec anything behind the paywall.

Camille Tinnin

Also, please unpaywall!!!!

Lisa M

I don’t think Trump being president affects the Right’s ability to hold on to their ‘anti-establishment’ positioning at all. That doesn’t hold water for me. If we’ve learned anything since 2015 it has to be that the Right has an UNBELIEVABLE ability to think of themselves as the victim of the establishment. No matter the reality. I’m more compelled by Astra’s argument that Dems being in charge is actually BETTER on that front. Because then they ARE the shitty establishment, and we can use that to pull people Left. If Trump is president again, then Democrats get to reap the rewards of Not Being the Party Of Trump again. Which is basically Biden’s entire existence. If Trump wins, smug Lib Dems will only become more entrenched in their bitter I'm-the-only-sensible-one centrism. Every time he does something crazy and horrible (which will be all the time) it will be an opportunity for a Lib to think badly about leftists. The Left WILL be blamed for Trump winning, no matter what. Specifically, the pro-Palestinian movement will be blamed. Alternatively, it can be Kamala doing bad stuff and we keep using it against her to shift Dems Left. Maybe. If we try hard and organize. I just can’t see how the alternative is better.

Lisa M

Also this podcast might end up in an indictment especially if Trump wins. Not joking!

mrakobesiye

Does no one care about individuals in the US, Gaza, the West Bank, Ukraine and other countries who will suffer from a Trump presidency? The Left is always less concerned about individuals than the promulgation of their theories.

Philip Schaeffer

was the image above a mistake? looks like a statement from the workers comp board??

Tyler Paziuk

If Trump wins, don’t you think the reaction of Netanyahu and his followers will increase the genocide and also complete the Nakba in Gaza and the West Bank? The participants also make no comment about the abolition of women’s rights and the adoption of theocracy that is the goal of Vance and Ackman. The discussion is superficial

Philip Schaeffer

Direct action sabotage is not a meme. It is a tactic as old as resistance. And it can be a very successful tactic when there is a clear target (in this case literally the place that the bombs are being made), when sabotage can make an impact (in this case it can interrupt the production and distribution of bombs), and when it can be enacted on a large scale (the scalability of this form of action is always tenuous, but in this case there are production & distribution centers within a day's drive of most people in the US, and we're talking the places the bombs are actually being made and stored, not symbolic marks). There is no comparing that to random vigilante vandalism of your local Walmart; which I agree cannot possibly make any meaningful impact on the world.

purr

It's too funny, I say this same thing about folks like me in deep blue states (I also happen to be in a deep red county), but I hadn't thought about the fact that it applies to the opposite too. (It's not a direct 1:1 because I believe that leftist third parties could actually get established in deep blue states, but still)

purr

I found the discussion deeply informative on the topic of the organizing terrain under a future Harris or trump administration, but characterizing non-voting/third party voting as merely symbolic elides engaging with important arguments for those choices. If you don’t have money, a credible threat of vote withholding is one of the few strategies you can use to influence politics through electoral means. Contrary to the episode’s discussion, vote withholding I think is the more strategic option and better utilizes leverage points. The vote blue no matter who strategy has coincided with the democratic party’s steady drift to Dick Cheney under the influence of big money and, at least nominally, in pursuit of the withheld votes of centrists. Arguably, the main exception to this drift was a result of the threat of vote withholding. The Bernie movement shifted Biden left far more than Hillary because Hillary’s failure made the democrats believe they needed to make sure Bernie voters didn’t withhold their votes. With that context, continuing to vote democratic no matter what is rather unstrategic if the goal is to employ a voting strategy that will shift the party left. There was at least indirect discussion of electoral strategy, Astra pushed for engaging with democrats at leverage points like primaries, yet advocated for not using the most materially impactful tool people have in the highest leverage electoral arena, votes in general elections because there was limited analysis of how electoral strategies have worked. Acknowledging this strategy changes the analysis—voters will need to consider whether this strategy has worked and will work over multiple elections in relationship to how this changes the electoral chances of Harris. I would have like to have heard discussion of historical precedents to these considerations, what does it mean that during the rise of fascism democrats adopted the new deal when the communist and socialist parties were relatively strong third parties?

Jack

Four thoughts on the conversation. (1) Taylor is right that given the structure of the US government, a leftist take over of the Democratic Party seems like a more viable path to power than attempting to create a third-party. Taking over the Democratic Party is not easy. But creating a movement that could sustain a third-party with sufficient power to defeat the existing parties seems even more difficult. And we have an example that a take over may be possible: the long-term strategy of right-wing capture of the Republican Party. (2) Taiwo is right that you have to stop the Confederates. Standing on principle is meaningless if the Confederates take control. Put another way, whatever dangers a Harris administration presents, and those dangers are real, they are not the same as the dangers a (fascist) Trump administration presents. (3) The left must participate in government at all levels. What can be accomplished may be limited from a left perspective. But what governments do have real world impacts on people's daily lives in ways both obvious and hidden and good things can be done. Other people will use the power of government for their own bad ends and those efforts must be contested. (4) Once again, I am frustrated by the conversation about immigration. Democrats should be criticized for their right tilt on immigration. Matt and his guests rightly condemn what amount to inhumane, racist, and xenophobic policies. They, like the left more broadly, are right. But being right is not good enough. I have heard the same script play out since I was in High School in the 1980s: the right, appealing to people's fears about change, demonize immigrants and the left, appealing to principle, (rightly) condemns that demonization. What I have yet to hear from the left is a narrative about immigrants and immigration that captures peoples imagination while addressing peoples concerns about change that inevitably arise.

Paul Smolinsky

Thank you for this conversation. I honestly believe that people who want a more just world can, in good faith, come to different conclusions on this topic. I think it’s important that we treat each other respect even when we have (sometimes anguished) strategic disagreements. I want to elaborate a bit on the argument that there is strategic value to voting third party. You all addressed this argument, but, in my view, not entirely adequately. I start from the following model: politicians are basically rational actors that attempt to improve their odds of being elected. They make decisions not based on compelling arguments from constituents or “prophetic awakenings” but because those decisions are in their interest. The task of an organizer is to create conditions where it is in the interest of politicians to do the right thing. By this logic, the reason almost all of Congress signs off on weapons shipments to Israel is that it is in their interest to do so: the cost of angering AIPAC is much greater than the cost of angering the pro-Palestinian left. In the context of this model, let’s answer the eponymous question: voting, what is it good for? I say it’s good for two things: first, it’s good for helping produce the outcome you want in the current election; second, it’s good for creating conditions where politicians have an incentive to do the right thing in the future. If a politician knows that they can count on losing some large number of votes if they fund a genocide, they have an incentive not to fund one. Voting for Democrats every presidential election maximizes your ability to affect the outcome of any given election but gives politicians no reason (pertaining to your vote, at least) to accede to your demands. Voting for a third party, at least in some elections, may produce an outcome you don’t want in a particular election, but at least gives you a chance of creating conditions where politicians are forced to accede to your demands in the future. It is strange to me that the logic of accepting short-term cost in exchange for possible long-term gain is so alien to so many people, since this is the logic of virtually all political struggle. Whether you’re talking about a labor union going out on strike or an anti-colonial guerrilla picking up a gun, giving something up in the short-run is the price of political struggle.

Nick

Good discussion, but I feel like there’s an element that shakes me out of the conversation. Specifically, I do not see any compelling evidence that the Democratic Party has anything but opportunistic scorn for the “left”- loyal or no. I’ve voted for Obama, Clinton and Biden. Each Democratic president I’ve voted for, under the guise of “moving them left,” the farther right they move on crucial issues. This has not created a stable for lasting space for an “institutional left” (since the left just becomes a scapegoat for any and all failures, AND it tars folks on the left by association- see AOC.) It feels like pushing off the problem of the Democratic Party to some future “reform” moment or series of moments is a way to settle for failure. So long as the party exists in its current form, it will do anything it can to make elections “existential”- and to this they will need to maintain the dysfunctional institutional status quo (filibusters, Super PACs, promoting far right candidates among the GOP, forming gross corrupt relationships with the press.) Without the “existential” framing, the Democratic Party apparatchiks, lobbyists and consultants would not make record profits every cycle. Their media symbiotes would not get views, and much of the business they’ve built up around political technology would collapse. Indeed, the party itself could very well collapse- since no one particularly likes the party leadership nor much of its elected rank and file. So, longstory short, this will not be the last “existential” election of our lifetimes. The Democrats need this framing to profit- which incentivizes them to do nothing but maintain the status quo. The Democrats will drive the US to the ground, in a slightly slower and more subtle way than the GOP. Moreover, the Democrats have every incentive to trade away he interests of subaltern groups to maintain power. Just look what happened on immigration. LGBTQIA folks, low income women, and union members will gradually become what undocumented and migrant folks are in 2024 (a bipartisan punching bag, abandoned by the last party that promised to champion them.)

Isaac Suárez

Writing from the heart of darkness in Israel/Palestine to join the clamoring class - please please please un-paywall this. With the US election a week away, this is a conversation that needs to be shared as widely as possible and as soon as possible. Thank you for all that you do!

Nimrod Ben Zeev

Going to second everyone clamoring to un-paywall this conversation; I want to share and discuss it with friends and family

Isaac Larkin

I really enjoyed this conversation, but every time I hear someone suggest reforming or pushing the Democrats it seems even more impossible. I have seen no evidence that that will ever happen.

Mark Harper

This framing is pretty dismissive. He was talking about sabotaging weapons manufacturing, not randomly blowing up a store. I'm not convinced that kind of direct action is the most effective choice either, but I don't blame anyone for considering it as a possibility.

Laura

Please unpaywall this episode - I found it very helpful and would love to share it!

rainen knecht

Was surprised nobody talked about the Supreme Court or Roe when Malcolm was saying “can we reallllly say the country would’ve been better off under a Hillary presidency?” It might come up later, still only halfway through. It’s a really good conversation though and one I think a lot of people should hear

Brinda Gurumoorthy

goddamn guest all star team!

Jack Wolfe

To me it’s only a tough decision if your activism ends at voting lol. The lefts inclination to not play smartly for the sake of bourgeois ideas of moral purity will never cease to astonish me. It’s an obvious choice we have in front of us as regards this electoral season. I think most leftists just don’t fully understand what Trump’s popumism is and why it is pretty much the death the spread of leftist ideology.

Montez

I was actually enjoying the episode until some guests literally did the "Firebomb a Walmart" meme.

Jacob Hollnagel

Thank you, I was disappointed that this angle was never brought up.

Gabriel Mathews

I live in California and ended up not voting for the top of the ballot for the first time. There were three leftwing choices for President, so it felt like choosing one of them wouldn't register much. Had De La Cruz, Stein, and West consolidated around a common ticket I might've voted for one of them.

DC

I’m so glad you found it useful! We tend to follow a “one for Patreon/one for everyone” pattern as a rule. But if enough people ask for this to be unpaywalled, we’ll do that in a few days. 🙏

Know Your Enemy

Deep blue California here. A vote for Jill Stein was all but guaranteed from me. Maybe in the next election, the Democrats can spend less of their time shifting right, courting the Cheneys, and vowing to be even more lethal than the Republicans. None of that appeals to a disaffected anti-genocide youth like me! And the overall messaging from the Dems of "to save democracy, you have no choice in who to vote for" will never not be hilarious in its irony. It's also just a fact that if every election is about "saving democracy", voting becomes a very "meta" act without much greater significance.

Axel Herrera

Seems to me that "democracy" has come to mean something extremely narrow in The Discourse-- electoral politics plus an independent (ie, unelected) judiciary, plus esteem for journalists. Protests are widely seen in the media as counterproductive, devisive, violent, even anti-democratic. This perspective has practically no horizon at all; all we can and should expect are our inherited institutions of first-past-the-post elections and money-as-speech, nevermind the role of those institutions in undermining popular representation and control. Alternatives like ranked choice, proportional representation, citizen lotteries, mandatory balloting, etc., are simply not on the radar, much less the table. (And don't think about discussing an agenda of economic democracy like cooperativism, unionization, participatory budgeting, or redistribution!)

DC

I've got the dubious luxury of living in a deep red state. Whether Trump is getting our electoral college votes isn't even a question. So for me, a vote for Harris would be symbolic. Given that reality, I'd rather plug in a symbolic vote for Jill Stein than a symbolic vote for Harris. It doesn't really matter either way, but at least I'll feel good about it for a minute. I genuinely don't know what I'd do if i lived in a swing state. I'm furious about Palestine and so many other failures and betrayals from the dems that voting for Harris would stick in my craw for sure. Godspeed to everyone out there making that decision.

Laura

Agh this is so good!!!! But why is it a bonus episode ? I wanna be able to share this with a lot of people … please consider lifting the pay wall on this one ?

Maria Mathioudakis

Lads please un-paywall this episode, people need to hear these words.

Joseph Markus

The ending conversation about the fetishisation of voting is key in my mind. Liberalism wants the extent of your political activism to be your vote - that is the “get back to brunch” mindset in action. So accepting that your vote is just one tool in your arsenal of political engagement to be used strategically when you have it makes sense to me. I live in the UK and prefer the Green Party over here to Labour (who are basically about as left wing as the Dems now). I have leafletted, door knocked, organised volunteers, campaigned on issues all to get other people to consider voting Green; and I have rarely voted Green myself at a General Election because I’ve typically lived somewhere that was a swing seat, and therefore lesser of two evilism did actively make more sense. In the General Elections I have voted Green it’s typically been with the understanding that in my seat the Greens have no hope in hell, because the seat is so safe for the party who holds it. I agree with the argument of getting people organised and out in the streets - whether that’s to an electoralist end or to a more radical activist end. Just don’t let the libs convince you that democratic engagement begins and ends with your ballot.

Matthew Maddock

I've been watching SAB Twitter meltdown. I'm glad to be wrong about this.

Julia

I really find it baffling that anyone would comment this before even listening to the episode.

John Balch

Thank you Professor Taiwo for the repeated references to American history—the Reconstruction, the Civil War. We are living the continuation of our own history. You do have to shoot the confederates!

Joseph Markus

Haven't we all rehearsed these arguments, and their associated grudges, feuds and high dudgeon, more than often enough? More acutely, are these distinguishable at their roots from the right-wing desire to conduct a ballistic plebiscite rather than hang by the thread of hoping that other people might agree with you?

Adam Lewis

Julia

One thing I didn't hear—and that I never hear—is that those of us in deep blue states have a unique opportunity to vote third party. And not just as a protest vote, and not just because it's safe to do so. I think one can argue we have a bit of a moral/civic duty to use our unique positioning to build third party power. If we are ever going to break the duopoly it will have to start in deep blue states (as far as I can tell). That will enable us to put our people into local & state & national positions of power to push on the Dems in real ways that demand they build coalition with us to get stuff done. Obviously that is unique to folks who live in places like I do, but I think it's very worthwhile to include that in this conversation. Now, of course there could be a future in which these places aren't sure things for the Dems and we would reevaluate then. Though, if a leftist third party movement was successful, the Dems would lose their stranglehold in a way that didn't throw those votes to the right or to parties that can't win but rather to established leftist parties. Whereas right now we're not movements making strategic decisions to vote for Dems in a coalition, we're isolated individuals and groups doing our best to reduce harm via the ballot box, and confusing those two things is dangerous. All of that said, none of this will ever matter or happen if we don't do away with the electoral college, implement ranked choice voting, and amend the federal system to one where a single party doesn't get control of a whole branch of government for 4+ years (and potentially all 3 branches even). You can say that the Dems are going to get us there, but all I have seen them do at all levels is undermine real election reform (and in deep blue states, use their power to shut down and even punish challenges from the left—even from fellow Dems). So the burden of proof is on them to make me trust that a vote for a Dem will get us there.

purr