No Stupid Questions

I know people who voted neither candidate because Trump was horrible and Harris was pro-choice. Single-issue voters are the death of democracy. Full stop.

Non voters are just as responsible for the loss of democracy. They are not a single bit better than any MAGA even if they like to claim they are. They chose fascism over democracy

It's not Gaza. It's that the Dems are a party of the riches. They don't represent the poorer anymore. When you have this political shift, you open the doors of the far right.

People are tired of voting for the lesser evil. So now big evil won, and the idea is that that will teach little evil to stop being at all evil.

On a more serious note, I think for a lot of people Gaza was the drop that spilled the glass rather than THE reason they didn't support Harris.

Since no one seems to be taking OP's question seriously, I'll take a stab at this. There are a variety of reasons.

Some people feel that voting is offering material support to a specific candidate or system, and they simply cannot bring themselves to do so given the horrors that that person or system is either supporting or failing to condemn.

Others may feel that strategically withholding their vote as a punishment may motivate democrats to take these types of issues more seriously in the future.

Or they may feel that their vote is more impactful in magnifying the voice and power of third parties who offer more meaningful solutions to end the killing, even if they won't win.

Others still may believe that Trump's incompetence will accelerate the end of America imperialism and lead to a better global political situation sometime in the future.

Finally, some people feel that voting won't matter at all and is a distraction from efforts to directly slow or stop the war machine.

I don't personally endorse any of these viewpoints, but some are relatively serious positions and others are not, in my opinion.

Before I start let me note that in the end this particular group of people didn't affect the election. Harris is on the way to losing all swing states. Her failure is much deeper than Gaza policy. Blaming anti-genocide voters for this is just copium.

With that out of the way, you can divide people with this position into two groups: Arab Americans and everyone else. Arab Americans are people who are feeling the genocide firsthand. So, obviously, they tried to appeal to the Harris campaign and get them to move from Biden's position on the topic. The result: They were either ignored or antagonized by Harris. That led to the abandon Harris campaign in Michigan and elsewhere. Harris considered those people acceptable casualties in her failure of a campaign, and so they were burnt out and the momentum behind the Uncommitted movement and others turned from "let's save our Palestinian brothers" to "fuck us and Palestine (because let's face it, that's basically what Harris was saying)? Then fuck you too". Harris thew them under the bus and was thrown under the bus in turn. Maybe not very logical, but a very predictable reaction. Harris treated Arab Americans with just that much contempt, and then she and her enablers had the gall to tell the people attending a funeral every other day to "shut up and vote for her".

Now as for everyone else, it's a more simple instance of taking a stand against a politician for doing something you cannot accept. Now there is a pragmatic idea here that if you allow the DNC to get away with this they'll think supporting genocide actually wins elections, or that their electorate are such pussies that it doesn't matter what they think. Add in the goal of pressuring Harris to drop that policy that was important at the start of the Harris campaign and of course the idea of not wanting to vote for genocide and this was the result.

Of course it's not all 100% logical, but there is logic here beyond "omg bad guy I no vote".

It's simple, for a voter that doesn't have other important things or believes the candidates to be equal in other things, like the economy, it becomes a moral choice to not vote for genocide.

If they believe there will be human rights violations elsewhere, like in the US, but one candidate and not the other, then the moral choice becomes to limit harm.

Much of this argument stems from different base assumptions, as follows-

• Neither Trump nor Harris will commit other human rights violations, and they are materially the same to my family; staying home is the moral action.

• Trump will commit human rights violations, voting for Harris is the moral action.

• They will both commit more human rights violations; staying home is the moral action.

The people who were saying to stay home and not vote fell into camps 1 or 3. If you're unsure of why someone would believe in number 3 you should know we have illegal debtor's prisons that are ignored by the federal government, LGBTQ abuse that has gone unchecked by the federal government, illegal denial of asylum directly by the federal government, ... the list goes on. But rest assured there are reasons people would see them both as committing human rights violations in the US. This is not some Russian info op like the DNC fanboys would have you believe.

I think people need to stop asking why didn’t people vote for Harris and as why DID people vote for Trump.

I think everyone on the whole, is completely underestimating the completely apathetic to politics voter. There is a TREMENDOUS section of the population that would sway from Trump if they felt energized to do so. Kamala was not it. Her policies were not it. Her stance alone on Gaza was not enough (but should not be dismissed).

People voted for trump because they: are a huge supporter, or they felt they had a fatter wallet during his administration. They feel burned by Biden and Kamala is more of the same. Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.

Biden shouldn’t have even run, no one wanted it. He even said he’d be a transitional president. Then he backed out and Democrats held no primary. Why would any apathetic voter (especially the ones who were unaware Biden dropped out, check google trends) vote for the guy who made their bank accounts smaller if that’s all they care about?

I voted for Harris but not without reservations. The democrats do nothing to resonate with the left, and continue to distance themselves from leftist policies, which were popular on ballot measures this election.

A lot of people did in fact set aside Gaza until Trump was stopped. As for those that didn't, they should have listened to Bernie Sanders. I did months ago and went all-in on Dem support. There were multiple times when I wrote up an angry post about US support of Israel and then didn't post it because I didn't want to turn a voter into a non-voter or worse a Trump supporter.

I understand their position of never rewarding ethnic cleansing and war crimes though. They chose to make sure the Dems know they would never "settle" for the illegal killing of civilians. The support for Israel made it especially hard for Arab Americans to vote Dem. It's difficult to support a party that has been in power during the whole conflict yet gives unconditional support for the internationally condemned murder of Arabs.

I'm sure a lot also felt disenfranchised by the bipartisan protest suppression and condemnation. Even in Dem states peaceful protesters were punished, and sometimes pro-Israeli protesters who attacked got away with it. Then there was the whole "vote with us or else" pressure that went on for months. Dissenters like the "uncommitted" voters were insulted by the party that wanted their unconditional support.

So it's not like it's completely insane. But as Sanders points out that position only makes things worse and has done so.