Bernie Sanders to voters skipping presidential election over Israel: ‘Trump is even worse’

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/bernie-sanders-to-voters-skipping-presidential-election-over-israel-trump-is-even-worse-222793285632

45 comments

  1. Protest non-voters are some of the worst type of privileged people.

    Believing that allowing a worse outcome because of a single issue that will only get worse because of your non-vote is the exact opposite of trying to help your cause.

  2. It really is that simple when it comes down to this election. Say what you want about Harris and her strength as a candidate, Trump is 100 times worse in every way. Sometimes it really does come down to something as straightforward as “she’s not Trump.” This election is about preserving democracy and if after four years you’re unhappy with Harris’ run as president, don’t vote for her in 2028, but in the meantime she’d make a perfectly fine bridge candidate, which is all most of us want at this point.

  4. Trump wants Israel to annex Palestine.

    Harris wants a two-state solution.

    Failing to support Harris means you are fine with Israel annexing Palestine.

  5. Unfortunately, they don’t care. They would rather see Trump win and Gaza turned to glass than to vote for Harris.

    I saw this in 2000 with Nader voters. And it gave us coal-ash oil man Bush because people worried that Gore wasn’t environmental enough!

  6. Even if Trump was marginally better on Israel, what the fuck about 12 million people being ripped out of their homes right here? What about us never having a free election again? What about workplace retribution for people who aren’t onboard with MAGA? What about women having basic freedom? What about millions of Ukrainians being sent to Siberia?

    I could go on, but you get the idea. There’s a fuckton more people who will be hurting than the Gazans if Trump gets back in the White House. They need to pull their heads outta their ass (the people not voting for Harris based on a single issue, that is). 

  7. No one who is refusing to vote for Kamala actually cares about Palestinians.

    They may care about the politics of Palestine, but they don’t care about Palestinians.

  8. Protest voters and nonvoters are always the first ones in line complaining about the status quo. You don’t get to complain if you don’t vote. Get off your high horse and vote like the rest of us plebs trying to make a better world for all of us.

  9. News flash, Trump is worse on every single voting issue. Every. Single. One.

  10. When the country of the people that these idiotic protesters are “supporting” just came out and fully endorsed Harris as candidate, not to mention that in lots of interviews with the people living in said areas, and these people still are protest non-voting it really makes you question their intentions and intelligence.

    If you want to help the people in Gaza then maybe actually listen to them instead of the bullshit propaganda on tiktok that you watch endlessly and vote for the fucking candidate that they endorse, Harris.

    It’s really not that fucking hard, but apparently for some people it is.

  11. Just fucking vote. Local, state and federal.

    The world is a mess, yes.

    We need to secure our oxygen mask first.

  12. I got into an argument the other day about this.

    Them: “Well, Harris is going to just keep doing what Biden is doing.”

    Me: “Trump is going to allow Israel to decimate everything there.”

    Them: “So they’re the same then.”

    Me: “I don’t think they are and I think you’re not being honest.”

  13. Bernie has my utmost respect for his stance against Bibi

  14. Yup, I’ve been screaming this for months now. The gloves are ON right now. If Trump got in, Palestine would be decimated very quickly, along with Ukraine. Hindsight will be 20/20 if Trump wins, just like in 2016. This is easily the most consequential election in US history and people are voting for the green party because a millionaire on twitch is driving a massive demographic to do so.

    I’m just at the point where if Trump wins, I truly believe Americans don’t deserve freedom. The whole cult mentality and conspiracy theory boom has rocked the foundation of the US.

  16. I think the people that make that the core of their political identity need to realize that “punishing” the Democrats by voting third party or staying home or “hoping they learn their lesson” is a one way trip to both a Trump presidency and a digit or two missing from the next estimate of the population of Palestine.

    “But voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil!”

    Yeah, no duh. That’s how democracy works. You get two choices. That’s it. The next President of the United States will either be Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. There is no other way this is going. So if you live in one of the seven states that actually matter (sorry Maine and Wyoming), you get to make a choice that either contributes to the victory of one of them or contributes to the victory of the other. That’s it. Staying home is a choice that benefits one or the other. Voting third party is a choice that benefits one or the other. Actively discouraging voters by spreading “both sides” propaganda is a choice that benefits, well, only one.

    “But if we don’t hold their feet to the fire—“ You know who you have absolutely zero leverage over? Donald Trump. He’s not going to give even the smallest furry sliver of a rat’s ass what any leftwinger holding a sign at Berkeley has to say about Gaza. So if you think your freedom of protest can and should be used to leverage a Presidential administration into doing something different on Palestine before it’s too late, you literally only have one opportunity to do so and that’s a Harris presidency. Of the two of them, she is the only one that has even the slightest fragment of a chance of listening to public outcry and shaping US policy accordingly.

    There are a lot of progressives that are going to throw Palestinians under the bus to make a point about how we’re throwing Palestinians under a bus. If Trump wins, Netanyahu gets a blank check for four years. If Harris wins, she might end up actually quite sucking on the subject, but she might actually do some good. Zero good, zero chance, zero hope for Palestine if Trump gets in office.

  17. “Trump is even worse” is the whole campaign strategy

  18. Does anyone think that any Gaza protest voters would ultimately have not voted for Biden/Harris anyway, even if there wasn’t the Gaza war? There is always a contingent of the population, every election year, who fit the “blue” profile but are angry at the Democrats for being “too corporate,” have “both sides are the same” opinions, and are mad that their ideal progressive candidate isn’t on the ballot instead.

    To look at some of the most vocal pro-Palestine supporters: College students – would those college students have voted anyway? Maybe, but also maybe not – getting college students to vote is a huge uphill battle in itself. There’s also the smug “I need to vote with my conscience” people who think that voting is a marriage proposal or contract and take themselves way too seriously. Then the accelerationist, contrarian types who foolishly think “things have to get worse before they get better.”

    I’m not saying “we don’t need their votes” but what I am saying is these types of people will usually find some sort of excuse to not vote. If the candidate’s platform isn’t 100% what THEY want (and they think they’re the smartest person in the room), they stay home, and because candidates are running to lead a country of 100+ million people, there’s no way ANY candidate will appeal to each individual person exactly, so they’ll just never vote.

  19. My question is why is THIS the hill they choose to die on? Of all the hills and all the terrible things happening in our own country, THIS is the thing they choose?

  20. The American way: voting for your “choice” with a gun to your head. Regression, activate!

  21. Look. I voted for Harris, but let’s not pretend that the single issue voters are all privileged folks who can afford to not care about this.

    When your issue is that, say, *you have family in Palestine* and you’re seeing how the government is responding to what is happening there…

    Yeah, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that the only thing changing would be whether the death toll is written in red or blue.

  22. Even if you don’t like Kamala, vote! Vote for the better of the two. That way, we will make a step foreword to one day even have a better candidate and country. It’s a starting point.

  23. Why shift the blame for genocide onto us, the people who won’t vote for genocide, instead of the DNC who could simply stop doing the genocide?

  24. Democrats are more angry at people who don’t support genocide than they are at the Harris campaign who are so unwilling to budge on genocide that they are okay with losing votes and handing the country to Trump. They would rather Trump win than take a stand against a genocide. Their entire campaign strategy lately is moving right and trying to get republicans to vote for them. They are alienating a lot of Americans and running such a shitty campaign that they might actually lose to fucking Trump, again

  25. It’s easy to forget how close we were to a war with Iran on behalf of Israel in Trump’s first term because COVID stopped it.

  26. If it wasn’t Israel, it’d be something else. The types of people who would sit out over Israel are so easy to manipulate. It’s sad.

  27. Yes, Trump is even worse.

    But does *no one* in the Democratic Centrist machine understand how depressing and alienating it is when you’re asked to accept *a literal mass genocide* as the Lesser Evil position?

    Do none of you grasp how evil, how disgusting politics has become when you’re saying “We can’t stop arming a nation that bombs hospitals, sends children into booby traps, ties prisoners to their vehicles to act as human shields, who parades with the underwear of female civilians, who kills journalists, who…. because our opponents will allow for even worse?”

    So no, refusing to vote might not make sense when presented with Lesser vs Greater Evil; but we got to justifying this kind of evil precisely because cowards and centrists and people who claim to be of but always hated the true left refuse to stop following the hard right over towards the right; “Oh, we can’t vote for hippies, we have to move to the centre!”

    “Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.
    You take a step towards him, he takes a step back.
    Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.”

    When, *when* will politics actually move back to decency?

    Or will you just let it get worse, and Trump becomes the new normal, and next time around you have to vote for Trump because the alternative is Mega-Trump?

    Not that it matters; none of you are going to actually *fight* to prevent your votes being discounted anyway. You’re on the precipice of Germany 1930s and you still think you can take the high road, or someone else will come and save you. But there’s no US Cavalry to ride to the resuce this time; it’s the cavalry themselves that is falling to fascism.

    But lecturing those who are disgusted with the state of affairs won’t motivate them to vote for genocide either.

  28. Protest voters have the same mindset as they complain about Israel having. They have determined the LGBTQ+ community, women, minorities, Palestine, Ukraine as acceptable losses in their campaign for “the revolution” or virtue signaling. They will justify their genocidal decision by deflecting and shifting blame to everyone else, again, like they accuse Israel of doing.

  29. Even Bernie won’t be able to get through to those losers

  30. Sadly, there are a bunch of prominant left leaning media personnel that said they won’t be voting Harris due to Israel/Palestine. Would be a shame if trump end up winning by a small margin.

  31. My wife had to explain this to a younger artist at a market we did. Like, look, Harris hardly gets me excited as a voter, but let’s be honest, in anything you’re critical of with her trump is significantly worse at if you lean anything left of far right.

  32. I don’t even get the idea to not vote. Hey I hate this thing… let’s do nothing about it..

  33. Coalitions win elections. If we don’t come together the worst person imaginable for Gaza will be president. Trump and Bibi were laughing it up at Mar A Lago for a reason

  36. The price of freedom is vigilance! It’s our turn to fight for our freedom. We will fight, and we will win! 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊

  38. This is such a gross reason to sit out an election. You are willing to capitulate on trans issues, immigration issues, reproductive issues, and so many others because neither candidate passes a purity test for an issue you started caring about less than a year ago.

  40. They know. They just care more about being contrarian than helping the Palestinians.

  41. It’s not about getting the better outcome, it’s about feeling superior by not participating

  42. Trump is ready to hand over Palestine to Kushner & Co to “develop” it. Yeah, they’re ready to swoop in like vultures as soon as they can.

  43. I feel like an anomaly. I lean very far left and abhor what the IDF is doing to Palestinians but I’m somehow being made to feel like I’m crazy for understanding that as an American who lives in America, **I should care about American policies in America**.

    Yes, what’s happening in Gaza can be considered genocide by many. Yes, it needs to be stopped. But how in the fuck can you be so detached from reality and the laundry list of problems going on in America where you’re basing arguably the most important vote of your lifetime on something that (let’s be real, to most of these people) has **nothing** to do with your daily life and potential future?

    If you’re willing to accept the implications of a second Trump presidency and potentially everything that Project 2025 entails and your biggest priority is letting people know that you’re aware that the IDF sucks (which 99% of the fucking planet agrees on), you’re probably living one of the most stress-free lives possible.

  44. what they need to understand:

    Trump will keep his promise and end this war.

    Which means there will be no Palestine. Which means the US will actively help *even more than they do now* to ensure genocide.

    Voting third party or sitting out is a vote in favor of genocide. Full stop.

  45. They don’t care, they’ve been calling Bernie and AOC “sellouts”

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