Democracy is on the ballot this Tuesday.
The election is only one step in a protracted process.
Between the election, and the presidential inauguration on January 21, 2025, there is an almost three-month long period—what Barton Gellman has called “an interregnum”—that will furnish Trump and his team of MAGA attorneys with many opportunities to litigate, intimidate, obstruct, and even attempt to overturn a Harris-Walz electoral victory by legalistic if not legal means.
Democrats and democrats more generally have learned the lessons of 2020, and have organized an extensive legal effort, headed up by Marc Elias, to defeat election obstruction in the courts. The need to hold the line politically against such obstruction is well understood.
But this will only be necessary if Kamala Harriswins the election.
And this will only happen if she is able to obtain enough votes in the crucial swing states necessary to win 270 electoral votes. Winning the popular vote will not be enough. The Electoral College is where this election will ultimately be decided. This is why the Harris-Walz campaign has been campaigning so furiously in Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Wisconsin, and especially Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Tlaib is a brave and savvy political leader who has consistently spoken up against oppression and who, as the only Palestinian-American in Congress, has spoken bravely on behalf of Palestinians in the face of outright hostility expressed by Republicans but also by many Democrats.
And because the race is so tight, and every vote counts, and because so much of importance rides on the outcome, it is important, now, to think critically, in an intelligent way, about a very disappointing thing which happened this weekend: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s unfortunate refusal, at a UAW campaign rally in Detroit, to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket.
Tlaib’s rationale is both straightforward and legitimate: the Biden administration’s strong and unwavering support for Israel’s criminal campaign of murder and destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, and the Democratic Party’s refusal to allow even one Palestinian-American to give voice to Palestinian concerns at the party’s convention last summer, represent intolerable disregard for Palestinian lives. As she explained: “Our trauma and pain feel unseen and ignored by both parties. One party uses our identity as a slur, and the other refuses to hear from us. Where is the shared humanity? Ignoring us won’t stop the genocide.”
Tlaib is a brave and savvy political leader who has consistently spoken up against oppression and who, as the only Palestinian-American in Congress, has spoken bravely on behalf of Palestinians in the face of outright hostility expressed by Republicans but also by many Democrats.
When she was attacked last year for her criticisms of Israeli war crimes, I strongly defended her in two pieces, published in rapid succession, that received substantial attention: “To Censure Rashida Tlaib Would Be to Censure Democracy Itself,” “and ““The Attacks on Rashida Tlaib Are Attacks on the Ethos of Pluralist Democracy .” In a third piece, “Defending and Respecting Rashida Tlaib’s Standpoint Does Not Mean Abandoning My Own ,” I also offered a sympathetic criticism of some of her rhetoric, which I thought alienated many allies to her cause.
It is in this spirit that I am writing now. I am not one of those who believes that Palestinian and Arab-Americans are under a moral duty to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket, or that they are somehow morally blameworthy should they refuse to so vote on grounds of either conscience or simple identity. For all politics involves mobilizing identity, and the Harris campaign is going all out to mobilize women in support of reproductive freedom and women’s health--as it should do.
Tlaib is not only a Palestinian-American citizen. She is also a member of Congress and leader of the Democratic Party and the progressive left more generally.
As I stated last week, in “A Few Words to Those Currently 'Uncommitted' to Voting for Harris ,“ many Arab-Americans are clearly so disgusted by Biden administration policy that they cannot support Harris, and it would be both foolish and morally tone deaf to tell them that their sense of identity is less important than any other. Arab-American fellow citizens have a right to feel outraged and ignored and to act accordingly.
At the same time, I also observed that:
’Uncommitted’ voters in some swing states, especially Michigan and Arizona, can turn the election for Trump or against him, and thus for racist authoritarianism or against it. Such voters can have an outsized influence on the future of American politics and thus the future of the world. There is an enormous political responsibility in this, a point recognized in an open letter circulated this week by Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders, which emphasizes that ‘voting for Harris is not a personal endorsement of her or of the policy decisions of the administration in which she served. It’s an assessment of the best possible option to continue fighting for an end to the genocide, a free Palestine, and all else that we hold dear.’
The question I want to pose here regarding Tlaib’s decision is a question of political responsibility.
Tlaib is a Palestinian-American citizen, whose family is currently in danger in Israel-Palestine. As a citizen and as a conscientious moral individual, she has every right to refuse to support or to vote for Harris, by abstaining, or voting for Jill Stein, or whatever. It would be presumptuous for anyone to judge her as an individual, for only she knows what the current destruction of Palestine means to her and those whom she holds most dear.
But Tlaib is not only a Palestinian-American citizen. She is also a member of Congress and leader of the Democratic Party and the progressive left more generally.
And she has a distinct political responsibility that comes with this leadership. It requires that she be accountable to her constituents. But it also requires the she exercise the judgment necessary to truly lead, and to act publicly in ways that promote the interests of her constituents; the policies she cares about; and the survival of democracy itself. What she does publicly is by nature about much more than her. And her decisions carry more weight than ordinary citizen decisions.
A second Trump administration, especially linked to a buoyed MAGA Republican Congress, would be a simple disaster for everything that Rashida Tlaib has long bravely supported, from civil liberties to the dignified treatment of immigrants—including Arab immigrants—to justice for Palestinians. For Trump is an ally of Netanyahu and his Greater Israel agenda, and he will surely green-light even more aggression, dispossession, destruction and death for Palestinians than we have seen over the past year.
Rashida Tlaib is not morally wrong for refusing to support the Harris campaign. But her refusal, I submit, is politically mistaken, because it is likely to bring about results that are politically noxious for her supporters and their values, and for American democracy more generally.
A second Trump administration, especially linked to a buoyed MAGA Republican Congress, would be a simple disaster for everything that Rashida Tlaib has long bravely supported.
Back in early January 2019, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, then newly elected to her first Congressional term, made a bold and highly publicized declaration: “We’re going to impeach the motherfucker!” She was immediately attacked for her lack of “civility.” One of many, I defended her, in three pieces” “On Calls to Impeach the Motherfucker,” “Why We Need to Listen to Rashida Tlaib,” and “Is ‘Motherfucker’ the Concept Political Science Now Needs?”
My basic point was a simple one: Tlaib’s controversial comments were entirely appropriate ways of talking about tyrannical then-president Trump, and her candor indeed established her as an outspoken and exemplary defender of democracy, a true leader of her party. In doing so, I quoted from her “offending” January speech:
President Donald Trump is a direct and serious threat to our country. On an almost daily basis, he attacks our Constitution, our democracy, the rule of law and the people who are in this country. His conduct has created a constitutional crisis that we must confront now. . . Each passing day brings new damage to the countless people hurt by this lawless president’s actions. We cannot undo the trauma that he is causing to our people, and this nation. Those most vulnerable to his administration’s cruelty are counting on us to act — act to remove the president and put this country on a path to true justice. . . his is not just about Donald Trump. This is about all of us. What should we be as a nation? Who should we be as a people? In the face of this constitutional crisis, we must rise. We must rise to defend our Constitution, to defend our democracy, and to defend that bedrock principle that no one is above the law, not even the President of the United States.
More powerful words in defense of democracy have rarely been spoken by a U.S. Congressperson.
It is obvious that much has changed since then. And especially since October 7, 2023, when a brutal Hamas attack on Israel precipitated almost a year of Israeli attacks on Gaza (and the West Bank, and Lebanon), attacks so brutal, destructive, and murderous that they do not even merit the description “retaliation.” This Israeli policy has been deplorable and criminal, and it deserves to be vocally criticized.
In the past year, Tlaib’s brave action as the lone Palestinian voice of and for Palestinians in the U.S. has been exemplary. Her call for a cease-fire, her denunciation of the Israeli war and of U.S. military support for it, her calls for Palestinian self-determination—she has done these things as only she could do them. And in doing these things, she has acted not only on behalf of the rights of Palestinians—an eminently noble commitment!—but on behalf of a more accountable, humane, and just U.S. foreign policy, in the Middle East and more generally. She has called out the hypocritical aspects of the Biden administration claim to be all about “democracy,” and she has done so in the name of democracy itself.
And it is concern for democracy that will hopefully lead her, at the last moment, to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket.
Tlaib, through her well-earned influence with scores of thousands of Arab-American citizens, especially in Michigan, can still– even in this late moment—well turn the outcome of this election. By making a statement like the open letter circulated by Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats, and declaring that “voting for Harris is not a personal endorsement . . . . It’s an assessment of the best possible option to continue fighting for an end to the genocide, a free Palestine, and all else that we hold dear,” she can help to elect Harris and to keep Trump at bay. In doing so, she would also further cement her stature as a Democratic leader and indeed she would strengthen the party’s Progressive Caucus and especially her “Squad” colleagues.
Alternatively, she can decline to say anything. This might be the righteous choice. But it may well produce the worst possible political outcome—a second Trump administration.
Tlaib bears a tremendous burden of responsibility.
I hope she foregoes the righteous choice in favor of the politically right one.
A great deal hangs in the balance for us all.
