Bless your heart.
Your uncommitted vote means nothing.

“I see a Democratic electorate furious with President Biden, specifically because of his response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

If that’s what you see, then you need to have your vision checked.

It’s clear that at least a plurality, if not a majority, of Democrats are less than enthusiastic about Biden as our nominee - for any number of reasons including a misperception that the economy ‘isn’t doing well,’ his age, and a generalized concern that he isn’t the most competitive candidate we could have against Trump.

And while many if not most Democrats think that Israel has taken things a bit too far in Gaza, those who are “furious” with Biden are aren’t “the Democratic electorate” at large but rather a small subset that are always furious about something or other.

I know quite a few people who are casting ‘protest votes’ in the Primary - but very few of them are “furious” and they aren’t so many as to quantify as ‘the electorate.’

All the things raised above are true.

1) I voted uncommitted, but I didn’t intend to be lumped in with the Free Palestine movement. There are many reasons why I’d like to hedge commitment to Biden. 2) I’m 100% behind him in the general. 3) This primary vote doesn’t matter that much.

@3
The primary is completely irrelevant.
As a result, the uncommitted votes are also completely irrelevant.
Come November, loyal party people (on both sides) will still cast their party votes without so much as a second thought.

@1,

As opposed to your commentary here?

For me the questions are same as the “debate” over a City Council resolution on the conflict - so what if that resolution passes or you vote uncommitted and the policy doesn’t change to you liking? Then what? What about those voters in places like Michigan or Ohio?

Seriously. Idiotic. 1 - it doesn't mean anything 2 - it sends a bad message of apathy and nihilism to other people who may just decide to not vote. If tRump gets reelected I'll blame morons like you.

Me @6: *your

Mike Blob @5: Exactly, which actually just reinforces @1’s point.

@3: “I voted uncommitted, but I didn’t intend to be lumped in with the Free Palestine movement.”

Good luck getting the Stranger to agree with your personal interpretation of your own vote. As far as they are concerned, your vote is “proof” of the Free Palestine movement’s ‘success,’ and nothing you can write here will have the slightest effect upon that.

Welcome to co-option!

How many of the Uncommitted voters have called the White House demanding a cease fire? How many have written their Senators and Congresspeople? How many have attended a ceasefire march? Unless you've done all three, you shouldn't vote Uncommitted...it's lazy.

I don't understand the voting uncommitted.

I am 100% committed to not voting for Biden or anyone else currently in power ever again.
I am 100% committed to never again "voting blue no matter who."
I am 100% committed to never voting for a Republican (never have, never will).

And to answer @10 - I have written multiple emails to Biden and all three of my congressional representatives EVERY SINGLE DAY for over 5 months now and not once received a response that wasn't a canned non-response response (almost all responses are of that nature) or a canned response that included "Israel has a right to defend itself."

How is committing genocide defending yourself? Bombing, shooting, and starving civilians - all civilians - is neither self defense nor defensible. More than half of the population of Gaza is comprised of CHILDREN.

How is using hundreds of billions of dollars of other countries' money and weapons defending yourself? (pro-tip: without assistance from the United States and Europe, Israel would not be "defending itself," it simply wouldn't exist).

I've also written other letters - to the editor of my local paper, to people I thought I knew, who I have loved for as long as I have known them, and to strangers, too - and all I have received in response to STONE COLD COMPLETE SILENCE (the silence is the worst, it is literally DEAFENING), denial, and the canned response of "Israel has a right to defend itself."

I never understood why Republicans were so terrified of people in this country being "woke" until I realized how many people I truly believed were awake, are so deeply, terrifyingly, incomprehensibly asleep and will to stay that way for their own comfort, because they truly DNGAF about anything else.

Stating you're uncommitted is easy.

Committing to something and standing by that commitment is something else entirely.

So Xina - you want tRump to be President? Not voting for Biden, or democrat, or blue is how we got tRump and almost got our government overthrown. Dumb radical liberals like you are what is endangering all the progress that has been made. A pox on you.

I think that Russia and Hamas (and maybe even the Israeli government) are playing the west - especially the extreme left-wing movement in the west. This whole thing was contrived to distract from Ukraine and create discord in the US and Europe, with the hope of getting trump back into office.

Hamas doesn't care about the Palestinian people. Israel (or at least the political arm of the Israeli government) doesn't care about the Palestinian people. Russia certainly doesn't care about the Palestinian people.

So an uncommitted vote seems pretty naive to me.

Many of us are furious with the Israeli government. If you feel that sending Biden a message in the primary is the right thing to do then go for it. But if Trump is elected the war in Gaza will expand to the West Bank, and possibly into Iran. If that happens hope you will be able to live with yourself.

It is so MAGA of the Democrats to be threatening everyone to vote for Biden OR ELSE.

Or else what?

I've said it repeatedly already, Trump already did the most damage he could do - because he actually WILL DIE SOONER RATHER THAN LATER. The judges he and his administration put in place, however, will live for decades, and they are dismantling everything they can as fast as they can and they've done it while Biden has been president.

So please explain to me what, exactly, will change if Trump becomes president again?
He'll steal more boxes of papers and sell them to pay off his trillions of dollars in legal fees and fines and judgements?

He'll talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and we'll have to listen to the nonsense he's spewing until he FINALLY drops dead.

If you truly think that Biden, who has spent hundreds of BILLIONS of working class American taxpayer dollars on funding Israel's genocide is something of a psy op by other countries to distract us from the fact that we have to vote for Biden, well...I honestly don't have any clue on how to respond to that.

HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF AMERICAN TAXPAYER DOLLARS AND METRIC FUCK TONS OF WEAPONS HAVE BEEN SENT TO ISRAEL.

Biden has said loudly and repeatedly that he is a Zionist and every action he has taken as president (including going around congress to do what he wanted to do without their permission, which he said so many times Mr. Trump couldn't do when he was president) has proven that his loyalty is to Zionism.

All of the promises Democrats made in 2020 and where are we? Women have no human rights. The tiny amount of legal protection in place to make it look like this country cared about racial equality are gone. Gay rights are going next. The federal government agencies not being entirely destroyed are being made wholly ineffectual through lack of funding.

We have a SCOTUS that is totally corrupt and has no code of ethics. OUR SUPREME COURT HAS NO ETHICS. There are 3 fully illegitimate judges on the court and then there's Clarence Thomas (put on SCOTUS after Biden and his congressional colleagues chose to not believe Anita Hill).

Fuck the Democrats and their hollow, meaningless threats. Oh if Trump becomes president again this country will be destroyed? THIS COUNTRY IS ALREADY FUCKING DESTROYED. Get a grip on reality.

The Democrats won't do anything if they get to remain in power and they won't do anything if Trump steals his way back into the WH. The Republicans tell everyone, every single day, in every possible way that they do not care about anything or anyone at all other than themselves, their power, and MONEY, ALL OF THE MONEY.

Democrats have been pretending they care and demand to be elected, again, so that this time they can prove it. Fuck them.

@11 & @15 - after reading those rants, it’s no wonder Biden and your members of Congress never responded to you with anything more than canned responses…

@1 - no, it means he doesn't care if Trump wins the election in November.

@14 - If Trump is elected, Bibi will slaughter every last Palestinian in the first year with Trump's blessing. That'll teach Biden!

I voted for uncommitted because I figure that is my only way to influence Biden and the Democrats (who I will most certainly vote for in November).
Those that cry the loudest against using a vote as a message are also against; stopping funding for theocratic Israel, against protesting and basically against anything that might upset the status quo they are happy with.
If the uncommitted numbers approach the difference between Trump and Biden then the Dems will hopefully rethink their support of the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the west bank. If not, Trump wins anyways ,because a lot of people (young & the educated) will just stay home figuring there is no difference in a critical issue between the two candidates.

@16: Yes, that such similar missives did not result in a complete change to our 75-year policy of supporting a fellow diverse democracy can be nothing but an indictment of our entire political system.

Also, by logic like this: ‘without assistance from the United States and Europe, Israel would not be "defending itself," it simply wouldn't exist,’ France, Belgium, Holland, etc. simply wouldn’t exist either (beyond having subordinately provincial status in the Greater Reich). How dare they use British and American weapons and soldiers!!

Palestinians have no army.

Palestinians live in a concentration camp and have been dehumanized for over 75 years.
Israel has no true army and they certainly are not moral (least of all the most moral as they claim repeatedly). They have a bunch of 19-23 year olds, who have no idea what they are doing, who violate all rules of engagement (because yes, there are rules to war, why? who the fuck knows, but there are rules), and who shoot to kill EVERYONE, even their own (which they have done repeatedly during this all out assault, kill anyone and everyone that moves, "war" on civilians).

No money and weapons from the United States and there is no slaughter of Palestinians.
Now Israel is bombing Lebanon and unlike Palestine, Lebanon has the means to destroy Israel, and if anyone here believes we are going to go into an all out war with the Middle East to save Israel, well, I wish you well. Hezbollah is not Hamas and Israel will lose. Israel won't have the chance to run over human beings with tanks in Lebanon, because they will be destroyed before they get the chance.

Bullying people who do not support Biden will not accomplish anything. If this country doesn't want Trump to be president, then Biden needs to go and someone else needs to be given the opportunity to lead - someone who is not a Zionist, doing the bidding of Israel, sending Isreael hundreds of billions of dollars while leaving the people in this country suffering and twisting in the wind.

Fuck Biden.
Fuck the Democrats.

xina, if your messages to the WH are similar to those here, I can guarantee you they are not being taken seriously. You are furious, and you have the right to be, but being furious and writing to people in power threatening to never vote for them again is probably not going to get you anything but a file where they will put all your rants. Not voting for anyone in power and not voting Republican means you can cast your vote for Jill Stein or whatever no-chance protest candidate while the rest of us practice real politics and understand that you're not going to get the benevolent, perfect leader you want. Anyone in that position has to tread carefully with Israel for many reasons. Obviously--because Biden doesn't like the position he's in either. But you don't vote for him and you are in essence casting a vote for Trump, and while waiting out his death may sound like a great idea to you, keep in mind evil people tend to have pretty decent longevity. See: Kissinger and Dick Cheney. Grow up!

Xina - your rant proves you have noodles for brains. Do you really think after an insurrection attempt - THERE IS NOTHING DoNaLd tRuMp can do if he is elected again. What a moron. And no one is threatening you. The possiblity of DT being in office another 4 years should be enough. Swallow your over sized opinion of yourself and act rationally.

Literally everyone wants a ceasefire. They just differ on the terms under which they are willing to have one.

Progressive leftists and totebag liberals may not like each other very much but a capricious universe has placed us in coalition against fascists and reactionaries. "Fuck Biden, Fuck the Democrats" indeed, but they are all we got. To wash your hands of the whole thing is to indulge in a kind of atomized consumer reasoning that misapprehends what politics even is.

I'm reading these comments and past ones from xina, and if I'm understanding her psychology, I think she actually wants Trump to be elected, and she's doing everything she can to will that into existence, just because she is so consumed by rage and hatred that anything other than a Trump revival is incompatible with that dark vision.

This is one situation where we have to balance compassion for people who are clearly mentally imbalanced with stopping them from inflicting damage on others. The mass shooter in Maine apparently had brain damage, but what he did was still pure evil. xina here is clearly using the unlimited amount of time she apparently has to inflict as much pain as possible on others.

P.S. Great comment by Catalina Vel-DuRay @13. As I had said in past Slog comments, I had been considering voting for Haley in the primary, then I was considering Uncommitted, but I've read enough in these comments to convince me otherwise.

It's silly to think a protest vote in an essentially uncontested state primary will influence global leaders.

I am not mentally imbalanced (the go to comment on SLOG). Not voting for Biden is not voting for Trump, no matter how many times you say it, it doesn't make it true.

I AM completely enraged and furious. Why most people are not completely enraged and furious is incomprehensible to me.

The people in power (Biden and everyone else) care ONLY about your vote. They literally do not care about anything else. At all. They want your vote and will do anything and say anything to get it. So yes, when you tell them, every single day, for months, that their specific actions will result in them losing your vote, they will notice. Disrupting daily life (like with protests, blocking traffic, showing up where people elected by the people are and making their lives uncomfortable, even if that involved interrupting their dinner, mobbing their offices, or whatever else the able bodied in this world are able to do that I am not) is the ONLY thing that gets any attention. Disrupt life and do not vote for those who actively arm and fund genocide. It's not complicated.

Those who are elected have not and will not in the future do anything about SCOTUS. SCOTUS isn't elected. SCOTUS judges are there for LIFE. It doesn't matter who is president, SCOTUS is dismantling and will continue to dismantle the entire country. That's Trump's legacy.

I do not want Trump to be president (didn't think it could happen the first time and boy was I wrong). I don't live in a state where the election can and will be stolen by the Electoral College - the only way every GOP president has won every time he's lost in the last, how many elections)?

Trump is completely incoherent, an avowed, out and proud criminal and traitor, and is so thoroughly and completely incompetent (in terms of being able to do the job, you know, the job he didn't do the entire time he was in the White House the first time) in every possible way, EXCEPT for being a really good cult leader. His cult is smaller now though and there are also too many Republicans who just aren't willing to give up what they've taken from this country to support a madman. So, I don't expect him to win, but I expect him to do everything he can to get back into the White House, by any means necessary.

He's not going to get back into the White House because people bullied me or anyone else to vote for Biden to keep Trump out of the White House. Biden either wins or loses on his own merit and his own merit right now doesn't cut it and doesn't earn him the votes of everyone who is completely enraged and furious right now. And this isn't just about Palestine. All of the promises made and none of them have come to fruition. All of the rights that have been taken from people and nothing done about (but vote for them again and they promise all those rights will be restored)!

It's total and complete bullshit. Nothing said to me here will change my mind or make any of your nasty ass comments truth. Not liking what you hear is one thing. Constantly ignoring and calling the literally hundreds of thousands of people saying the same thing I am nasty names, mentally ill, voters for Trump by proxy is, truly, as anti-democratic as you can possibly get.

There is no lesser of two evils here. There is only evil.

I don't want to change your mind. I want you to see a mental health professional.

North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania will decide who wins the presidential election. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are called "the blue wall" (nothing to do with Democrats, ironically) because they tend to vote for the same candidate.

No Michigan for Biden. So will Wisconsin and Pennsylvania break the blue wall in 2024?

Georgia's so compromised no matter who wins, there will be nothing but lawsuits contesting their results. They're not just making it harder for everyone who lives there to vote, they are actively purging voter rolls as fast as they can to see how many people they can literally prevent from voting because, "oops" they're not registered to vote.

So that leaves North Carolina, which only gave up their EC votes to a Democrat twice in the last 48 years: Jimmy Carter (1976) and Barack Obama (2008).

But please, continue to tell ME, how MY VOTE will put Trump in the White House. The last time Oregon even came into play was 2000 and even though it was a tiny amount of votes, Oregon went blue and it was, who?, FLORIDA, who stole the presidency from Al Gore by allowing SCOTUS (again, people who are not elected and serve for life) who gave the presidency to George W. Bush.

You can blame people who refuse to vote for Biden all you want. Biden is the problem. The Democrats are the problem. There ARE people out there who are capable of running this country who are not white old men who refuse to give up the power they have (or want). Voting for them does nothing to serve this country. Nothing.

And people wonder why people don't vote (oh and you can say anything you want about me, I have voted in every election that I was able to vote in since I turned 18). So how about you go after all of the non-voters, instead of the not voting for Biden voters? Nah? Yeah, that would actually require some WORK, huh, instead of bullying?

You’re right, Xina, and don’t get discouraged by the right wing trolls here, whether they identity as Democrats or Republicans.

I’m liking xina’s refreshing honesty here. Sure, she just flat-out lies as much as any of the Stranger’s writers or supportive commenters (e.g., “Not voting for Biden is not voting for Trump,” @28) but she’s not pretending there’s any distance between “ceasefire” and salivating over the thought of pushing the Jews into the sea (@21: “Hezbollah is not Hamas and Israel will lose.”) Whereas the Stranger had to lie about how CM Sawant somehow just magically appeared in front of Mayor Durkan’s protected family home, hateful attack speech in hand, xina baldly advocates for making the political personal, physical, and even family-threatening: “…showing up where people elected by the people are and making their lives uncomfortable, even if that involved interrupting their dinner, mobbing their offices, or whatever else…”

Advocating violence against anyone who dares disagree, pushing unapologetic eliminationist rhetoric, and refusing to recognize unwanted reality: you’ve earned it, Stranger. I hope you enjoy what xina shows you, because you did everything you possibly could to deserve it.

One small correction – there was never a "Muslim ban". Some countries with particularly poor terror screenings were subject restrictions, but many larger majority-Muslim countries were not, and Muslims were never banned from entering the country.

@27,

Of course a protest vote isn't going to do anything. Joe Biden of course hasn't seen a protest vote; he's seen several hundred thousand of them and if you don't think he and his team are paying close attention and factoring them into his campaign platform I can assure you that you're incorrect in that assumption.

Let your balls hang out of your pants and vote for the candidate of your choice.

Nevertheless, idealism has no place in politics, just ask Machiavelli.

Do the right thing for your party, or what you believe is necessary for your country.

Marianne Williamson is an excellent choice because she has expertise as a spiritual leader and supports world justice. Goodness knows she could provide the country with much-needed socio-political policy therapy.

She hasn’t gotten much electoral traction, so this vote would be more of protest, although this is the kind of leadership help America needs, with all the negativity surrounding Trump’s legal perversions and Biden’s influence peddling transgressions.

Everyone is peeing their pants over Biden’s elderhood, and it is true that at any moment he could fill his pants and fall, sustaining a severe injury.

You can only inject a man with so much Viagra® or Cialis®
to keep their weenies hard, so why not move VP Harris to the foreground?

Harris is younger, better looking and can tend to conferential and fundraising responsibilities while Biden nibbles on ice cream and panders to the Hard Left.

The big issue with the Democrat presidential mission is that they’re hung-up on Kamala’s weird stream-of-consciousness verbal forays, which really aren’t that bad, and communicate a sort of charming dissimulation that voters and world leaders find charming.

Move Kamala up front and let Biden sit this one out in the basement or lawn—whatever, just give Harris more prominence.

Remember, she’s photogenic, trained as a prosecutor and great in the rack (just ask Mayor Willie Brown) and would make an excellent substitute for Biden, who is waning.

This is what the Vice President is supposed to do anyway, so don’t overthink it—just do it.

Compare one of Kamala’s verbal fruit salads, which are vapid yet intriguing to sort out, with Biden mumbling about corn pop while soiling himself and you will see my point.

Trump is the proverbial “toothless lion” who will have to conduct his campaign from a jail cell, with less success than Biden’s 2020 basement campaign.

Sure, Trump has the yahoo vote, but Biden and Harris have the incumbency and $26 million in cash from that fundraiser with Clinton and Obama, flush with marketing cash so they can retain the White House.

Kennedy has an interesting VP candidate with Nicole Shanahan, who adds high-tech luster to his campaign, although voters remember all the weird anti-vax stuff he promoted and think he’s slightly bananas, although he has the Kennedy charm, and appears to have traction with Kennedy aficionados who still dwell in Camelot.

Look for a Kennedy crash-and-burn ala Ted Kennedy in 1980 when he ran against Carter, in plaid pants no less, who was an intelligent, worldly man, but not a capable decision-maker and bad at PR.

So, to encapsulate vote for Kathleen Williamson if you have a conscience, or Biden-Harris if you want to retain the White House.

Trump is a viper drowning in his own juices, and will wind up in the Big House getting cornholed by various drug chieftains who were incarcerated under his conservative justice department.

Pretend you’re voting for Harris because Biden may not make it through another term, with the press running interference for him like they did for FDR, which resulted in President Harry Truman and the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution to prevent Presidents from wearing out their welcome.