"Leverage" in the US political system
If you want to control the levers of power, you need to be in the room.
One of the major differences between the US electoral system and the kind of parliamentary systems that are more popular in Europe is that, in the US, elections are “first past the post,” meaning that the winner is whoever gets 50%+1 of the vote in a given constituency. In parliamentary systems, there are larger constituencies that send multiple representatives to parliament, where the number of representatives sent to parliament is proportional to the vote totals in that constituency. This creates very different incentives.
In a parliament with proportional representation, it makes sense to be a minority party. If a party only gets 10% of the vote, it will still end up getting 10% of the members of parliament. And if several parties end up with 10% of the vote (or if there’s just one third party, and the other two are split at about 45% each), then no party has a majority in parliament. The minority parties then get a chance to play kingmaker, by offering their support to the plurality party to push them over the top into a majority. But they extract concessions from the plurality party in so doing, pulling the overall governing philosophy of the united government more in their direction.
But in a “first past the post” system, if a party gets 10% of the vote, they just lose, and lose badly. If no candidate from the major parties gets 50%, there will (typically) be a run-off between the top two candidates. But the 10% party is just out. This is why there are no real third parties in the US. A “first past the post” system is like the bonus structure in Glengarry Glen Ross. First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado (you get elected). Second prize is a set of steak knives (you lose, but hey, you’re the obvious choice to win the next election if the current guy sucks). Third prize is you’re fired.
This is why it’s common for political scientists to say that, in a parliamentary system, political coalitions are decided after the election, while in a first past the post system, the coalitions are decided before. In a parliamentary system, there’s an election, a bunch of different parties get a certain percentage of the vote (and usually no one party gets 50% all by themselves), and then the parties negotiate to form a coalition that can get to 50% and form a government. The governing philosophy of that government is determined during the coalition negotiations. In a first past the post system, all of that negotiation happens before the election. Different factions join up into two larger teams, and those two larger teams hammer out what their governing philosophy will be if they win. The two teams then present themselves to the electorate as a binary choice.
I rehearse this basic account from Politics 101 because I am very frustrated these days by people who, apparently, fail to understand how all of this works. These failures are rampant across the political spectrum, of course. There are fools aplenty anywhere you look. But my particular beef that inspired this post is with leftists who are loudly declaring that they will not support Joe Biden in November. This is, objectively, a very small group, but they’re loud on social media. The usual reason that these leftists give for not supporting Biden is Biden’s policy towards Israel. They think Biden has been far too accommodating of Netanyahu; they call him “Genocide Joe.” And no, they will not vote for a genocidaire in November.
This makes very little sense as a matter of electoral strategy. It’s ok to be a single issue voter where Israel/Palestine is your one issue, I guess. I’m not going to try to convince you to have different priorities. But if the plight of the Palestinian people is all you care about, that’s a reason to support Biden, not Trump. Trump is far more supportive of Israel than Biden is! Biden has been pressuring Netanyahu to commit to a path to peace with the Palestinians and has led the effort to deliver aid to Gaza. For these efforts, Biden has been criticized by Trump for being pro-Hamas. And while he was in office, Trump was an enthusiastic supporter of Netanyahu. If you think Biden’s not doing enough to protect Palestinians, I absolutely respect that position. But it is obvious that Trump will be worse. If all you care about is the welfare of Palestinians, you should support Biden.
When you push the “Genocide Joe” crowd on this point, the most common response is to appeal to the idea of “leverage.” “We want the US to stop supporting Israel,” is the argument. “Our only way to make the government listen to us is with the power of our vote. So if Joe Biden wants our votes in November, he’s got to agree to implement the policies we prefer. Specifically, he has to stop supporting Israel. That’s our price. It’s up to him if he wants to pay it.” This is pretty dumb!
Look, if you’re genuinely uncommitted between Biden and Trump, if you sincerely believe they’ll be equally good or bad, then that’s fine. Again, I’m not trying to argue that anyone should have different preferences. But the vast majority of self-described leftists would be much happier with Biden’s policies than with Trump’s. You might bemoan the issues that Biden and Trump agree on, but on the issues where they disagree, you’re probably solidly on Biden’s side if you’re a leftist. That means you’re part of the Democratic coalition. Most leftists realize this, of course, which is why they describe their strategy as using leverage over Biden, not using leverage over Trump.
But if you’re part of the Democratic coalition and you want to influence the policy of the Democratic party, there’s a way to do that. You have to win elections. There are plenty of elections other than the presidential election! There are local elections. There are primaries. If you’re passionate about left-wing politics, you should support left-wing candidates in local elections and primaries. This will provide a large base of support in the Democratic party for your preferred policies. This matters quite a bit! The Democratic party platform will be decided at the DNC this summer. That document is important; while individual officials might divert from it in various ways, the platform is the guiding mission for the party for the next four years. So, quite simply: if you want the Democrats to stop supporting Israel, the way to achieve that end is by getting “stop supporting Israel” put into the party platform.
That’s a heavy lift! While plenty of leftists don’t support Israel, plenty of other members of the Democratic coalition do. This is why Biden won’t just go along with the left’s demands on Israel. He’ll alienate more voters than he wins over by changing the Democrats’ policy on Israel. Now, that might be wrong; leftists will often argue that this is wrong. But the way to test that theory is to get the Democratic party together to hash out what policy towards Israel is most acceptable to the party as a whole, with an eye to the electorate as a whole. This is precisely what the DNC is for.
So if you’re a leftist who wants to influence the policy of the Democratic party on Israel/Palestine, by far the most effective way to pursue that goal is to get as many people in the room as possible at the DNC who share your preferences and will fight hard to get them implemented in the platform. The way you do that is by winning primaries and local elections — that determines who is in the room at the DNC. And by winning primaries and local elections, you demonstrate empirically that there is a voting base who will turn out to support your preferred policies electorally, and you’re not just imagining an electorate who secretly agrees with you about everything and will turn out in huge numbers to support you in November.
And what’s insane to me is that leftists haven’t pursued this strategy. There was a huge movement to pull together a protest vote against Biden on the issue of Gaza a couple months ago. But the strategy they decided on was to vote “Uncommitted” in the presidential primary. This is insane! The way you get policy implemented is if you have people in the room fighting for your policy. Noisy abstention doesn’t get you anyone in the room fighting for your policy. If you want to hold power, you’ve got to run a candidate!
Leftists will also complain that there was no real primary. But there was. There were other candidates. RFK Jr ran as a Democrat for a while before defecting to a third party bid. Marianne Williamson ran as a Democrat. And then there was Dean Phillips. So many people on social media were demanding “Someone other than Biden!” So Phillips ran as just someone other than Biden. He got like 1% of the vote. There was a primary; everyone other than Biden just got destroyed.
Imagine a world where leftist groups went to Phillips (or Williamson, or some other person) and said “Be the anti-Israel candidate, and you’ll have our support.” Then, when the primaries rolled around, voted for Phillips (or whoever). They wouldn’t have won the primary. But they would have sent delegates to the DNC who were anti-Israel. If Phillips (or whoever) performed surprisingly well, they might have built up a bit of momentum and sent a surprisingly large number of delegates to the DNC. That would have given actual leverage to impact the party platform and cause a change to policy. But that’s not what happened.
In the US system, governing philosophies are hammered out within parties before the election. That means winning local elections, demonstrating a strong base of electoral support, and using that support to influence the policy of the DNC. That’s how power actually works in US electoral politics. It’s a long, hard, unglamorous process, but that’s the process. Abstaining from it and declaring loudly at the last minute that you won’t vote unless the candidate agrees with all of your views isn’t deploying political leverage. It’s just childish.