Well, for point 2, they were kind of right. It’s mostly a self fulfilling prophecy, but when a sizable chunk of your voting block says “take this position if you want my vote” and then you take the opposite position it really shouldn’t come as a surprise if you subsequently lose the election. That 100% was on Harris.
Whether Harris would have been better than Trump (for Gaza) is perhaps a more interesting question. Ultimately Israel is going to be using their own troops for this not US troops because US troops aren’t going to go along with gunning down unarmed civilians in mass the way the Israeli troops will. Whether it’s Trump or Harris that wasn’t going to change. The biggest difference is just one of political posturing. Harris would have made disapproving statements and basically said “we’re very disappointed in Israel” while still sending the exact same weapons and funds Trump is sending. Maybe Israel would have played things more low key, maybe not, we’ll never know now. So point 1 is kind of a wash.
Point 3 is really a more abstract moral question I suppose. At what point does something cross over into “supporting genocide”. Does sending money to the Israeli government count? What about doing business with companies that do so? What about having the power to do something about it and instead choosing to do nothing? I think we can all agree that Trump absolutely supports genocide. The argument for if Harris did is far less concrete, and for people who voted for Harris (or I guess Trump for that matter) more nebulous still.
The real problem ultimately though is that none of this existed in a vacuum. If this was literally a referendum on how the US should respond to Israel that would be one thing, but that was such a tiny slice of a much bigger discussion. The biggest and most concerning of which was Trump essentially admitting that he was planning on staging a coup of the US government which meant no matter how the Gaza situation was going to play our Trump absolutely could not be let anywhere near the office of the president.
The election is over though, Harris lost because she ran a shit campaign on proven losing policy. People need to get over that and focus on actually dealing with the shit sandwich we’ve collectively been handed instead of continuing to point fingers and argue about whose fault it was.
Well, for point 2, they were kind of right. It’s mostly a self fulfilling prophecy, but when a sizable chunk of your voting block says “take this position if you want my vote” and then you take the opposite position it really shouldn’t come as a surprise if you subsequently lose the election. That 100% was on Harris.
Whether Harris would have been better than Trump (for Gaza) is perhaps a more interesting question. Ultimately Israel is going to be using their own troops for this not US troops because US troops aren’t going to go along with gunning down unarmed civilians in mass the way the Israeli troops will. Whether it’s Trump or Harris that wasn’t going to change. The biggest difference is just one of political posturing. Harris would have made disapproving statements and basically said “we’re very disappointed in Israel” while still sending the exact same weapons and funds Trump is sending. Maybe Israel would have played things more low key, maybe not, we’ll never know now. So point 1 is kind of a wash.
Point 3 is really a more abstract moral question I suppose. At what point does something cross over into “supporting genocide”. Does sending money to the Israeli government count? What about doing business with companies that do so? What about having the power to do something about it and instead choosing to do nothing? I think we can all agree that Trump absolutely supports genocide. The argument for if Harris did is far less concrete, and for people who voted for Harris (or I guess Trump for that matter) more nebulous still.
The real problem ultimately though is that none of this existed in a vacuum. If this was literally a referendum on how the US should respond to Israel that would be one thing, but that was such a tiny slice of a much bigger discussion. The biggest and most concerning of which was Trump essentially admitting that he was planning on staging a coup of the US government which meant no matter how the Gaza situation was going to play our Trump absolutely could not be let anywhere near the office of the president.
The election is over though, Harris lost because she ran a shit campaign on proven losing policy. People need to get over that and focus on actually dealing with the shit sandwich we’ve collectively been handed instead of continuing to point fingers and argue about whose fault it was.