On Anti Electoralism and Voting For Biden

In the online left, there is a worrying rise in anti-electoralism, especially with the Biden administration's handling of Israel-Palestine. Although there are legitimate grievances against Biden, when it comes down to Biden vs. Trump, our decision should be based on harm reduction, because we should want less overall human suffering in the world based on our decision. And between Biden and Trump, Biden is clearly the "lesser evil." Not only that, but much of the anti-electoral position isn't based on actually reducing the suffering of people, but on vague moralizing about how bad Biden is, but if we really care about reducing harm to people, we should still make the decision that causes less harm.

 

        Firstly, lets establish that by not voting for Biden, the statement is essentially that you think Biden and Trump are both bad, so you won't vote for either. Or you'll vote third party, which is indistinguishable from not voting as long as long as the United States uses first past the post voting. Or some people believe that engaging in the liberal bourgeois system is inherently unproductive, and we should instead focus on other methods for change. So, let's look at Biden vs. Trump on some specific issues.

 

    Oftentimes, if met with opposition to anti-electoralism, the common argument used is "I won't vote for someone who supports a genocide." Putting aside arguments about whether or not Israels conduct technically constitutes genocide, this isn't really a compelling argument for two big reasons. For one, Trump would certainly be just as supportive of Israel. He has criticized Biden for being too soft on Israel even! Stating that under his presidency, the October 7th attacks would never have occurred, apparently due to his tougher stance. His administration has even stated they would bar Gazan residents from coming to the United States. And besides the fact that Trump would be worse for Gaza (not that Biden is good by any means!), Trump would likely sign some kind of federal anti-trans laws, which could on its own constitute genocide, if the definition of genocide were expanded to include "gender identity and sexual orientation. Or at the very least, systemic attempts to eliminate a group of people, which any socialist should be able to agree is bad.

 

    On immigration, although Biden isn't nearly ideal on this front, since he's kept the border policy mostly in the same vein as Trump, Trump still uses extremely racist rhetoric, and wants to make the border policy socialists already agree is bad even more extreme! Trump has spread claims along the lines that Democrats are allowing illegal immigration to weaken the white vote and destroy democracy. Trump plans on establishing a massive deportation campaign, possibly deporting millions of people. He has said that migrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" and he has repeatedly stated he wants to involve the military in these mass deportations. He would likely put possibly upwards of 100 thousand people into camps while they wait to be deported. 

 

    Climate change is the greatest existential threat to humanity. Unrestricted climate change would mean huge suffering on an incomprehensible scale (the effects of climate change aren't a far off fairy tale either, in 2022 1/3 of Pakistan was flooded, massive wildfires, and there have been historically high temperatures in the North Atlantic ocean, and that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to climate change). And this one isn't a classic "Biden sucks but Trump worse" either. Biden has implemented extensive policy to try and combat climate change, including investing hundreds of billions into green energy with the Inflation Reduction Act, reducing "super pollutant" chemicals, the Methane Action plan, and more. Right now, the United States is on track to reducing carbon emissions by "by 50% to 52% from 2005 levels by 2030." Biden's done even more work on this area I haven't mentioned here, so let’s see what Trump thinks about climate change. Trump has called climate change a hoax in the past, and even now spreads disinformation about how severe climate change is and will be. He supports leaving the Paris Agreement and supports increasing fossil fuel usage.

 

    For those who believe that none of those reasons matter, and that engaging with the bourgeois democracy will never lead to large scale sociopolitical change needed to address fundamental problems with capitalism, I encourage you to still consider the real damage that Trump will do, and that taking extra electoral action to bring about the change you desire is not incompatible with voting still. And of course, insofar that we're talking about some kind of move towards real socialism or even social democracy in the United States, of course it's basically impossible/highly unlikely that any bourgeois candidate would do so. But for now, unless we have any real alternative, we need to reduce the harm to people on the national and global scale, along with other methods such as community/workplace organizing, strikes, protests, winning local elections, etc. 

 

    To lay out solidly why any socialist should still vote for Biden, I'll lay out our different options and the outcomes associated with them here. We vote for Biden, we don't vote, or we vote for Trump. Voting for Trump is clearly off the table for his extreme stances on Israel-Palestine, climate change, and immigration. Voting for Biden, although it isn't ideal, when given the option between Biden or Trump, since he takes either a more moderate stance or a much better stance period on most issues versus Trump. Overall, Biden will reduce net harm done, making him the preferable choice. And then not voting (or voting third party), which is ultimately staying neutral on the choice between Trump or Biden, saying "They're both the same to me!" This option should be ruled out by the clear differences in policy between Biden and Trump. Of course, adding in actions such as community organizing and the like of course adds positive utility to any of these options. But even in that case Biden should still come out ahead of not voting and participating in community organizing, because we will get the net harm reduction of Biden along with the positive utility of community organizing. While in the other, we would get the harm of Trump, which in almost every conceivable situation will do harm far outweighing even some mass community action.

 

    If someone reading this still isn't convinced, and still says they will refuse to vote for Biden, I would ask them to consider what the real alternative is in the short run. So, we don't vote for Biden and Trump wins. Climate change gets exponentially worse; Gaza is wiped out even more than it already is, Israel gets even more aid, more support, and the people in Gaza are even banned from coming to the United States; possibly millions of migrants rounded up by the military and deported; putting thousands of trans and other LGBT minorities at risk; and some topics I couldn't even begin to discuss, such as possibly losing Americans millions of jobs by escalating a trade war with China or risking war with them. We'd allow all of that, for what? Because of emotionally driven moralizing about how both sides are bad? We should prefer material benefit to people over vague moral stances.