The Partial Observer by Wriley Nelson
Leave it Blank: No Salvageable Future for the Democratic Party Can Include Joe Biden
I am a registered member of the Democratic Party. I have no doubt that I have admitted to more embarrassing things in public, but no examples spring to mind. I’ve knocked doors, called voters and donors, and volunteered for half a dozen local and national candidates in the past five years. I’ve worked internships and jobs ranging from a Maine Senate race to the U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Caucus. As a Democrat, an American and a human being, I have no choice but to submit a blank ballot in the presidential primary on Tuesday, April 2.
I had reservations about Joe Biden in 2020, but I held my nose and supported him with my vote and countless hours of my time. As the campaign wore on, I came to believe in him as a candidate. I consciously chose to delude myself because I wanted to believe—had to believe—that someone, somewhere in the political system would look out for me. My shame at falling for Biden’s lies in 2020 is mitigated only by the fact that, unlike many people out there, I am at least aware that I was suckered.
I have always firmly believed that ideologies, governments and movements must be judged by their concrete results. In the last five months, the Israeli government has killed more children than every war of the past four years combined. Even before the October 7 attacks, 2023 was the deadliest year for Palestinian children in nearly 20 years, beating a record set in 2022. Judge a tree by its fruit: The Israeli government and its patron, the Biden administration, are world champions in child murder.
It has been nearly six months since the Israeli government began an indiscriminate assault on the people of Palestine in a massive act of collective punishment for Hamas’ attacks. They have killed more than 30,000 people, including more than 12,000 children. Hundreds of thousands more are trapped under rubble, undergoing amputations and C-sections without anesthetic, antibiotics or electricity, breaking their Ramadan fasts on grass and lemon rinds, and dying in ever greater numbers. All of this has been broadcast live for people around the world to watch.
As you read this, the U.S. government and one of its closest allies are starving nearly 2 million human beings. Aid agencies report that the Palestinian population has fallen into famine faster and more completely than any other population on record, entirely as a result of deliberate Israeli siege. Radical Zionist protestors, including U.S. citizens, are blocking food shipments at every entry to the besieged Gaza Strip. Israel has herded 2 million people into an area half the size of the Town of Hartwick, cut off all sources of food, electricity, medicine, and water, and bombed the entire area so recklessly that many Israeli hostages in Hamas custody have been killed by “friendly” fire.
Israeli troops and citizens have gleefully posted publicly available social media videos of themselves breaking into homes, trying on Palestinians’ underwear and eating their food after forcibly evicting them. They have stripped people naked and humiliated them, shot and bombed civilians in cold blood and, at least twice now, have gunned down starving people waiting in line for the trickle of food aid that reaches them. They tortured United Nations aid workers to obtain false confessions that Western governments used as an excuse to cut support for UNRWA, the only thing between much of the besieged population and starvation. “Self defense” does not justify 12,000 dead children. “Human shields” do not justify 12,000 dead children. Nothing justifies 12,000 dead children. I defy anyone to tell me otherwise.
Through all of this, Joe Biden and his allies in the Democratic Party have stood by Israel. He has made more than 100 covert arms shipments, vetoed three U.N. resolutions condemning the genocide, and is currently pushing to send more than $14 billion more in military aid. At a time when one U.S. child in five does not have enough to eat, our president is willing to spend an unlimited amount of money to deliberately starve Palestinian children. There is no defense or justification for that.
Most disturbing for me as a party member is the constant lying. Biden and his supporters clearly think their voters are stupid. Every day, the White House “leaks” rumors that Genocide Joe is really, truly, seriously getting mad at Netanyahu for real this time and will take steps to halt the slaughter—then turns around and pushes even more money to kill children. Biden sheds crocodile tears for the few casualties he’ll even admit exist, hoping that the world will ignore the obvious truth that he could end the genocide with a single phone call.
Rather than insist that Israeli troops and settlers allow thousands of truckloads of food rotting outside Gaza’s borders to reach starving people yards away, Biden launched a gimmick aid airlift that provided at most a single meal to 2 percent of the besieged population. U.S. food fell on Gaza at the same time as U.S. bombs, allegedly killing and injuring even more civilians. This is beyond parody.
It is abundantly clear that Biden and Democratic officials cannot be motivated by conscience or humanitarian concern. Every day, they make it clearer that they won’t respond to self-interest, either. Biden will not win re-election on a platform of blank checks for genocide. The “Uncommitted” movement and related mass protests in the Democratic primary have won massive vote totals in key swing states, many of which Biden is already losing due to his bizarre campaign strategy of boasting about a booming economy in direct contradiction to most voters’ lived experience.
This goes deeper than raw voting numbers, however. Political campaigns do not run on money alone. The vast majority of the legwork to draft statements, plan events, and knock on doors comes from young activists and operators who are willing to work 12-hour days for career advancement and The Cause. These are precisely the groups that Biden has most alienated. If he heads the ticket, the Democratic Party’s vaunted “big tent” coalition will lose Gen Z, Muslim Americans, many people of color and progressives. Without them, what exactly remains? College-educated white centrists in the suburbs? Biden’s Democratic Party sounds like Reagan’s Republican Party spiced up with smug condescension and oat milk. Joe Biden has murdered 30,000 Palestinians and is actively starving 2 million more. To deny that this is worse than anything Donald Trump has ever done is to deny the humanity of the Palestinian people. This primary season, every vote for Biden makes Trump’s path to the White House easier.
I will remain registered as a Democrat long enough to cast my blank ballot, the only choice that the “party to defend democracy” has given me. What I do after that is in the hands of Democrats across the country. Party leaders, activists, and voters at the local, state, and federal levels still have months to find a presidential candidate who isn’t the world’s most prolific living child murderer or, if morality cannot move them, at least a candidate who can win. They are stopped by fear: fear for their jobs or career advancement if they speak out against the party; fear for their pet political causes if they reject their party’s direction; and that quintessential politician’s nightmare, the fear of admitting they were wrong.
I kept my silence for nearly six months from similar fears. I must now live the rest of my life with the knowledge that I kept my head down and went along while my government slaughtered children. For my entire life, I’ve been an avid student of history, especially the darkest and most disturbing parts. Since I was a child, I have wondered what I would have done if I lived during slavery, the Holocaust, or other crimes against humanity: Would I stand up for the right or follow the crowd? It shames and sobers me to learn that I would have done nothing, at least for the first six months. For the sake of their own souls and our common humanity, I beg Democrats to join me in putting a foot down and saying “no more.”
Wriley Nelson is a contributing writer and former Iron String Press news editor.