"Uncommitted" co-founder Abbas Alawieh, visibly upset that Mike Huckabee is about to be in charge, says "You've got to do something about this, President Biden!"
If anyone has the rest of the interview, I'd love to see it.
In run-up to the 1964 election, civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. were given an audience with incumbent president Lyndon Johnson, where he asked them to scale down their protest activity until after the election so he could be confident he could win. They understood correctly that by continuing to protest, they had political leverage.
Imagine an alternative reality where LBJ had not signed the Civil Rights Act, and instead Barry Goldwater had won and increased the segregation and discrimination facing African-americans. Would you blame them for using the only electoral political leverage they had available, and laugh at their misfortune?
The only check the worst excesses of the Trump presidency has is the potential for widespread civil unrest. The Democrats aren't capable of that. Grassroots Palestinian-american organizations are. In building that base of resistance, we shouldn't make the same mistakes that caused the Democrats to lose the election. In the words of Nate Silver:
Democrats...often get angry with you when you only halfway agree with them. And I really think this difference in personality profiles tells you a little something about why Trump won: Trump was happy to take on all comers, whereas with Democrats, disagreement on any hot-button topic (say, COVID school closures or Biden’s age) will have you cast out as a heretic. That’s not a good way to build a majority, and now Democrats no longer have one.
Abbas Alawieh is concerned for the lives of his family and friends under another Trump regime. We all are. He is one of us.
Yeah, but you're saying this about somebody who has committed that very sin, of condemning Biden because of disagreement on a hot button topic. Who then turns around and begs for help when the predictable happened. Isn't that somewhat hypocritical?
Are you saying it is hypocritical for him to campaign for the people in Gaza under Biden, and then continue to campaign for the people in Gaza under Trump? That's the opposite of hypocrisy.
It is ironic that he condemned Biden because of a genocide and they both lost, and now you are condemning him because of a genocide.
The uncommitted movement backed Harris. While not officially endorsing her they urged voters to vote against Trump and not vote third party.
Which leaves voting for Harris, without saying the words, "vote for Harris."
Didn't we TELL YOU? Pretty sure we fucking TOLD YOU.
You dipshits brought this down on us, so STFU and go enjoy your horrible consequences.
It was the Harris campaign that made the decision to not break from Biden on Israel, at the cost of at least a +6 points gain. That's the fault of the campaign's calculations to ignore those voters, take them for granted, and instead run to the right with Liz Cheney and having the most lethal Military. That single policy change would have secured her the swing states needed to win the election. Biden is a Christian Zionist, the genocide and de juro annexation of Palestine is exactly what he wants.
I voted for Harris and told others to do the same. It's still on the campaign to earn votes to win. Blaming voters is just sowing division when we need unity and solidarity to fight against Fascism.
The United States Administration is the one enabling Israel unconditionally.
Blaming voters is just sowing division when we need unity and solidarity to fight against Fascism.
Nothing anywhere in these comments was blaming voters. I was blaming the people who organized a whole campaign specifically to sow division and interfere with support for the only possible alternative, in this election, to full-on fascism.
I also think it’s partly the voters’ fault, in addition to being partly Biden’s fault. But I was pointing out voting numbers to argue for how effectively this particular campaign had sowed division, not to say it’s exclusively their fault.
Also, aren’t you a Stalin person anyway? Shouldn’t you be happy about the collapse of the US’s effectiveness to influence events in the world? Or is the nick meant to be ironic or edgelordy?
It's just an edgy internet username that's rolled over, feel free to look at my profile if you aren't sure. Dying empires always go out violently, why would I be happy about the untold level of violence that's going to unfold when I'm anti-violence? I support armed struggle, but only because that results when greater forces prevent any peaceful solution, resulting in people fighting for their lives against eradication.
I don't really understand what you're getting at here. It seems like say you aren't blaming voters, but you are if they are uncommitted voters. The Uncommitted Movement are dedicated Democratic voters that have done everything possible within the proper channels to changing the Policy of the Democratic Party to support a permanent ceasefire only possible through the implementation of Conditional Military Aid.
They organized hundreds of thousands of Democratic Party voters and get the support of dozens of Democrat Delegates. When the Party failed to give them any consideration, they staged a peaceful protest outside the DNC, which had enough room for neocon republicans to speak but not a Palestinian American. When the campaign continued not to give them any consideration, despite the significant gains that polling was showing (as linked above) and the large majority of support from not just democrats but the general population on Conditional Military Aid, the Uncommitted Movement still did everything but Endorse Harris.
They explicitly told people not to vote the Donald Trump or Third Party. They understood the dangers of a Trump administration. They did everything in their power to get the Democratic Party to reflect the will of the people and change position from unconditional support on Israel.
It was the right thing to do from a political standpoint, it would have been a massive gain. It was the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, there is no both-sides when it comes to genocide. It was the right thing to do from a Law standpoint, both domestic with the Leahy Law and with International Humanitarian Law. There was nothing but reasons for the Democratic Party to pivot on this. If they were open to changing on public pressure, that was the time. The fact that they didn't only goes to show that US support for this genocide is bipartisan, and that the Democratic Party would rather lose and continue the genocide rather than win and take the bare minimum steps to end it.
So what did you want to happen, should they uncommitted movement just have not bothered? Should American citizens have not cared that their loved ones in Palestine and Lebanon have been and are still being killed by American weapons? I don't, I think that's a completely unreasonable expectation to have for people that have been directly affected by our Administrations unconditional support for this genocide. I will absolutely not blame the election results and the continuation of this genocide on the people who are anti-genocide and did everything in their power to secure a permanent ceasefire through every democratic means possible.
The uncommitted movement was at least 1.5 million people in the general election, enough to win the swing states but not enough to explain the 10-20 million Americans that were not convinced by Harris' Campaign to go out of their way to vote. That shows that there were many other issues with her campaign. She did not address the material needs of the working class, she ran to the right on immigration and American Jingoism, and ran another neoliberal platform of 'nothing will fundamentally change' when people are angry at our failing institutions and desperate for change.
How is this a LAMF? Didn't Uncommitted say that as much as the Democrats suck, people should still vote for them over Trump?
They didn't say that, no. This guy tried to hedge it a little bit, by saying that Trump was much worse but stopping short of saying that people should vote for Harris as a result.
Some of his other cofounders, as of election day, were still saying people should leave the line blank or vote for Jill Stein. She got almost as many votes as Harris did, in Dearborn, and Trump picked up something like 20% more votes than he had in 2020.
I guess I had them confused for someone else. My mistake. Though given that this guy himself did say Trump was much worse, I'm still not sold on the idea that this is LAMF material.
Rejecting harm reduction predictably leads to full harm.
Man this community is gonna have a lot of fodder for four years...
Leopards ate my race.
Jesus, I don’t like that.
If it was only him and the stakes weren’t so high it would be an okay joke.