Debate: Should Americans Vote for the Lesser of Two Evils?

Two Muslim Americans discuss whether voting or abstaining is the better option this November.

“When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither.” So wrote the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre on the eve of the 2004 presidential election. Today, we offer a debate that flips the question: Even if we don’t like either candidate, do we still have a duty to vote for the lesser-of-two-evils?

Joining

Shadi Hamid

to debate this topic is

Haroon Moghul

, Director of Strategy at The Concordia Forum and the author of Two Billion Caliphs: A Vision of a Muslim Future. He previously appeared on our pages with an article: “What I told My Muslim Students About Gaza.”

Shadi and Haroon are increasingly disillusioned by the Harris campaign’s positions on Gaza and its dismissive treatment of Muslim and Arab voters — but they come to very different conclusions about what to do about it. What follows is a searching and at times emotional back-and-forth on how citizens should should think about morality and responsibility in a democracy.

— Santiago Ramos, Executive Editor

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Shadi Hamid:

I know you’ve been wrestling with the same question that so many Muslim-Americans are struggling with: to vote or not to vote. For those outside of our community, it might seem like an odd debate to still be having, although it’s worth noting that most Muslims seem to have made a decision. As recent surveys indicate, most are not voting for Harris, which would suggest a stark de-alignment for a once reliably Democratic constituency.

The reason is simple enough: Biden and now Harris haven’t just been bad on Gaza (that’s to be expected) but bad in a way I would’ve never anticipated last October when the war started. The Biden-Harris administration has actively facilitated, to the tune of billions of dollars of supplies and weaponry, Israel’s mass atrocities against the Palestinian people. And when challenged, leading Democrats like Nancy Pelosi shrug their shoulders and say “death is sad,” as if the U.S. is powerless. Gaslighting on top of inhumanity.

It is entirely legitimate for Muslims, like anyone else, to vote their conscience. In the end, it’s only you (and God) in the voting booth, and I think there’s something inspiring about being unreasonable in the face of profound injustices. If Biden or Harris woke up one day to say women shouldn’t have a right to abortion, it wouldn’t be surprising if some liberals decided to withhold their vote. That’s democracy! At the same time, voting in a two-party system is always at some level going to be an exercise in choosing the lesser-of-two-evils.

So while it may be “legitimate” for Muslims to vote for a third party or abstain altogether, is it prudent? Presumably, we have strong opinions about the Middle East but also strong opinions about any number of proposed Republican policies that will affect millions of our fellow Americans for the worse if Trump wins. God help me, I feel it too — the desire to punish Harris and the Democratic Party is enticing, because it entails the possibility of sending a powerful message that could reverberate electorally for decades. At a visceral level, this is justice. If you commit, or help to commit, evils of the sort we see in Gaza daily, then there must be an accounting.

Yes, but … would such an accounting actually help our fellow Americans?

Depending on the day, I sometimes squint and see myself as a single-issue voter. Even if Republicans were awesome on all my policy preferences, I just can’t vote for a party led by a man who tried to overturn an election and still refuses to say he’d accept the democratic outcome if he loses. So, if a Trump victory would heighten polarization, undermine democratic institutions, and perhaps lead to political violence and instability, then, well, that’s a pretty big deal. But it’s also the case that Trump probably wouldn’t be better on Gaza, although I think the appeal of Trump on this is that he’s so unpredictable that it actually seems plausible that he might put more pressure on Netanyahu, even as he’s criticized Democrats for being too “Palestinian,” a word he’s repurposed as an epithet.

There are other probably reasons for voting for Harris that I could list off, but they all relate to what I take to be a moral and religious imperative: the minimization of harm. Is the minimization of harm not enough?

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Haroon Moghul:

So yes, we’re animated by many of the same principles. But those principles have carried me to a different conclusion. Like you, I’m not voting for Trump. For similar reasons, though, and with equal certainty, I can’t imagine voting for Harris. That probably confounds many who might wonder how I can see Trump and Harris as broadly equivalent.

So let me try to explain my decision. I’ll start with the Muslim ban. Rejecting people based on color or creed is of course awful. But if I wouldn’t vote for a candidate who proposes and pursues that, why would I back a candidate who excuses ethnic cleansing because its victims are Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims? Sure, neither Biden nor Harris use Palestinian as an epithet. But they treat Palestinians, broadly, collectively, as legitimate targets. Which is worse?

Or we could move on to Trump’s personality. I agree that he’s unsuited by temperament and character for the White House. But the Biden-Harris administration is intimately and enthusiastically onboard with a war that has crossed every boundary. You note Trump’s unpredictability, that there is no line he would not cross. But I wonder if any Israeli atrocity would inspire Biden or Harris to temper their support?

When we talk about the lesser of two evils, we hopefully mean so colloquially. We usually don’t mean one of the two actually crosses the line into war crimes. While elite Democrats package themselves as all that stands between us and the end of democracy, I see things differently.

Trump did emerge from a moral vacuum, which the Democrats have their share of responsibility for. Likewise, Trump exploits the democratic deficit in our political institutions. But did he create it?

Even as Biden and Harris pretend to be frustrated with Netanyahu, they’re backing his war unconditionally. When exactly did we, as Americans, vote for this? Will we ever, as Americans, get a say on our escalating involvement in a catastrophic conflict? How did we decide that Israel’s excesses matter more than our own country’s needs? Most Americans are skeptical of foreign entanglements, repeatedly report as much, but our involvement and the consequent dangers continue unchecked.

My responsibility before God, my loyalty to my country, and my conscience tell me that I cannot vote for Trump. These same demand I do not vote for Harris, either, including for the reasons above. But to me that’s not the end of the conversation. It’s the beginning. Because my conscience and my patriotism do not accept inaction.

Certainly I understand why some folks want a protest vote. But a protest vote feels wholly inadequate and untrue to the awesome responsibility before us. It isn’t true to my faith. It isn’t enough for our country. It doesn’t satisfy my conscience. Which is why I’d ask you, Shadi: If your conscience also tells you the war in Gaza crosses all red lines, then can you believe a candidate who enables that war is going to minimize harm?

Save us from Trump? Rescue our democracy? My focus right now is not on November 5th. I’d like to begin to articulate ways forward, beyond the false choice of the 2024 Presidential election. Right now, I want to empower like-minded people. Strengthen communities. Create institutions… all to build a democratic, principled, dynamic and compelling vision for our future.

Isn’t that a better focus for us than a two-party system so far off the rails that the candidate who supports ethnic cleansing can be described as the lesser of two evils?

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Shadi:

You bring up a number of compelling points, so compelling in fact that I’m not sure I really have the heart to challenge them in similarly compelling fashion. It’s hard to make the case for Kamala Harris, and I wish she could have made it easier by at least signaling some potential change in policy toward Israel. It’s not too late, though. She still can, and that’s why I wrote my “wake-up call” column in the Post as sort of a last-ditch effort to sound the alarm.

That said, I want to take issue with a couple things. I’m not sure I mean “lesser-of-two-evils” colloquially. The reality is that elections in a two-party system are a binary choice. With single member winner-take-all districts, it is practically impossible for third parties to play anything other than a spoiler role nationally. Either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be the next president, and if enough Arabs and Muslims defect, there’s more than a good chance they could tip the election in swing states. Result: four years of Donald Trump. (The political scientist Youssef Chouhoud has created a handy calculator where you can actually measure the net vote loss for Harris in swing states.)

So, we do have agency, and we have it right now. So maybe we should be focusing on November 5 before we get ahead ourselves about some undefined, hypothetical future. If Muslims do end up tipping the race to Trump, it’s not as if Democrats will necessarily learn the right lessons. They may in fact end up blaming us, which would jeopardize the inroads we’ve made within the party. Which leads me to another point. We’re not just voting for Harris; we’re voting for a party and personnel. Muslims and Arabs have taken on important positions within the party apparatus and in the staffing of the Biden administration. Having those voices fighting the good fight from within a Harris administration is better than being largely shut out of a Trump administration.

At least Harris will have to constantly contend with internal pressure from the progressive and pro-Palestine wing of the party, including rising stars like Rep. Ro Khanna and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez. Even traditionally pro-Israel senators like Chris Coons have become more open to conditioning military aid to Israel. Among Democrats, it is now perfectly mainstream to question that aid. That is a real gain. The Republican Party doesn’t have a pro-Palestine wing, and it has championed legislation across the country that would penalize pro-Palestinian speech. Four years of Harris will give us the chance to continue to fight for what we believe in by channeling our grievances, hopes, and demands within the political system. It might seem futile, but it’s not nothing.

In a democracy, we get what we deserve. To the extent that Democrats have disappointed, it’s at least in part because they’re responding to structural incentives that reward pro-Israel positions. Those who care about Palestinian rights have so far failed to create countervailing incentives. But as the party shifts generationally, this too will shift. This, it seems to me, is the longer struggle, but it’s a struggle that can’t be separated from what happens on November 5.

But even if we put all of that aside, there would still be the fact of Trump’s domestic policies and his disregard for democratic institutions. I don’t think any of that means the end of America as we know it, as catastrophists often attest. But I do believe that a Trump administration will be worse for Americans on any number of metrics. I just don’t see how we can simply bracket those concerns. How can that not be part of our calculus?

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Haroon:

We’ve been snubbed, gaslit and dehumanized, as you rightly noted. But if that’s the case (and it is), how can it simultaneously be true that “Muslims and Arabs have taken on important positions within the [Democratic] apparatus and in the staffing of the Biden administration”?

Last fall, alarmed by Israel’s war, many Americans reached out to Biden in various ways. We went as fellow Americans who’d voted for him by great margins and in key states. We went as loyal supporters of the party. We went as a community in pain. Yet the door was slammed in our face, again and again and again. As the war spreads, Harris appears progressively less interested in any meaningful acknowledgement of her complicity or our concerns.

That’s instructive, in its own difficult way: We didn’t make many inroads of the kind we could count on. Is that because “those who care about Palestinian rights have so far failed to create countervailing incentives”? Or is that because the deck is stacked, certainly against us, but against Americans more broadly? And if the latter is true, then our opposition to Harris (and, I’d hope, Trump) is actually a broader commitment to America–and Americans.

Most Americans want a ceasefire. But there won’t be one, because this isn’t actually about one community out-organizing another.

It’s worth underscoring that by so doggedly backing an undemocratic regime – Israel – we inevitably corrupt our own democracy. But that democracy is already plenty corrupted, the ongoing erosion of our constitution and our politics; each party chipping away at our system of government, with special interests and big money concurrently hammering away at what’s left of any sense of accountability, transparency or decency.

In the past year, we have repeatedly violated the Leahy Law, ignored our own laws, and mocked our own international commitments. In weeks and months to come, we’ll surely learn our military involvement in Israel’s wars has been greater than we’d been told. That we are even more complicit in this open-ended carnage than we suspected.

At no point, however, was that voted on. At no point will anyone be held responsible.

To attempt to dance around this, to play word games over war crimes, to gaslight the constitution itself, that is odious enough. Except in pursuing an unchecked war, in shrugging off every constitutional, humanitarian and democratic consideration, Harris has done more than undermine our laws and stain our soul. She’s endangered America.

While I’m not voting for any of the Presidential candidates, I’m planning to vote for competent, compelling local and state candidates (incidentally, all are Democrats). In many of the trends you so eloquently pointed out, the courageous politicians, the challenge to decades of unthinking consensus, the generational shifts, I find hope for America, hope enough to invest in and build on. But that has to be done on principles.

Or else how are we any different from the Trump voter who knows full well his candidate is reprehensible, but believes through him he can achieve some useful outcome? Which is why I’ll go back to that undefined, hypothetical future. Yes, it’s possible that Democrats might blame us if Harris loses. (In fairness, they don’t seem to think too much of us anyhow.) But who will Americans blame if this war continues to spread and creates a global crisis?

The past year already suggests how little Harris — a prosecutor! — makes of American laws and American democracy, the deep double standards that inform her worldview. If she wins, though, she will be exonerated in a manner, which augurs worse for the subsequent four years, for Palestinians, for the Middle East — and for Americans. Consider how many have already died. How much brutality has been aided and abetted. How much more she could do.

How much has already been done.

For if instead Harris loses and Trump wins, do we think he will not build on the terrifying precedent Democrats have already set? We know that if we give Trump an inch, he’ll take a mile. So what happens if we give him a genocide?

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Shadi:

On your last point, I’m a bit confused. You’re saying that if Harris loses and Trump wins, he’ll build on the terrifying precedent Democrats have already set. But isn’t that an argument for not wanting Trump to win?

And a slight quibble on Israel being described as an “undemocratic regime”: Israel easily meets the minimal conditions of democracy within its own polity. It does terrible things, but democracies are not immune to acting egregiously towards non-citizens in contexts of occupation and committing wartime atrocities. I think it’s worth separating those things, because that separation applies to the United States as well. We do not live up to our democratic ideals abroad, and routinely violate them particularly in Arab and Muslim-majority contexts. But American democracy at home, however flawed, is still very much alive and vibrant, and showed its resilience even in the face of Trump’s disregard for democratic institutions, including on January 6. I think there’s something to be proud of there.

As for Kamala Harris “pursuing an unchecked war” and “shrugging off every humanitarian and democratic consideration” in the process, I think that’s attributing to her too much agency and responsibility. The Biden administration’s policy has been dominated by, well, Biden who still believes in an Israel that no longer exists and perhaps never did — as well as a handful of close advisors. Two in particular, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, were behind the decision to greenlight Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. It’s not clear to me how much Kamala Harris could have done to change this, even if she really wanted to.

Where I put more fault on Harris is her seeming insistence on alienating and disrespecting Arab and Muslim Americans in Michigan with a bizarre series of decisions, statements, and missteps, although at this point I’m not really sure they’re missteps. All of this is pretty outrageous, but it’s not quite the same as saying she is somehow to blame for Biden’s disastrous choices, because as a matter of policy implementation, she isn’t.

Again, I return to the long game and the necessity in American politics to sometimes take short-term losses and stomach humiliations in the hope of continuing to build a longer-term pro-Palestine constituency within the Democratic Party — something that Arabs and Muslims have a better chance of doing if Democrats are in the White House. I was recently reading about the strategic thinking behind the Prophet Mohammed’s decision to accept unfavorable terms in the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. At the time, some of the Prophet’s companions considered the terms to be humiliating and were initially confused as to why they were accepted rather than resisted. What seemed like a defeat became a victory, but only in due time. To be clear, these are not analogous situations! But I think there may be a wisdom there, of not allowing ourselves to be too consumed by outrage and despair and to accept that sometimes we have to work within unforgiving constraints and limitations.

The fact of the matter is that Muslims are still relatively weak in the broader context of American electoral politics, but we have been gaining more traction within the Democratic Party. You’re right that that hasn’t been enough to stop Israel’s brutal war(s). But just because we haven’t gotten the outcomes we might have hoped for doesn’t mean that we can’t get them in the years to come. Policy influence takes time and must be built and nurtured within the system, even if that system is still stacked against us. I just don’t see any viable option outside of working within one of the two main parties, and one party, the Democratic Party, remains much more open to our input and participation than the other.

You say: “How are we any different from the Trump voter who knows full well his candidate is reprehensible, but believes through him he can achieve some useful outcome?” Do we really have to be that different? I think it’s entirely legitimate for someone to vote for Trump if they believe a Trump administration will usher in better outcomes on their non-negotiables, for example abortion. If you really believe that abortion is tantamount to mass murder, then it’s understandable that you’d vote for the person who will reduce the incidence of the crime in question. Because, again, it’s a binary choice: one candidate will restrict abortion access, and the other candidate will increase it.

So maybe I’ll just end with a prod to outline your theory of change a bit more. I’m still unclear on how you see us getting from point A to point B. How exactly does not voting for Harris — and Trump potentially winning, if enough Muslim voters agree with you — get us closer to your preferred outcomes, because presumably outcomes are what matter?

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Haroon:

Since this is a conversation about American elections, I just want to respond briefly to the point about whether Israel is a democracy. Some fifty percent of that country lives at best as second-class citizens; a centrist position in its current politics is to be in favor of apartheid. I hope we can come back to this, but for now we must turn to America’s elections.

I’ve appreciated your pushing me to think through my choices. While I’m not supporting any candidates for President, as I said, I am voting for some local and state candidates. All of them are Democrats, which I shouldn’t discount. You’re right that we need a vehicle to bring about our goals – and that the Democrats are the more hospitable party.

That said, I fear a Harris win would render the Party less hospitable; we have good reason to believe she would encourage the further sidelining and marginalizing of our priorities. That’s yet another reason I won’t vote for her, but the main reason stands. Which is why I was quite surprised you said I was “attributing to [Harris] too much agency and responsibility.”

There are few people besides her who have more agency and responsibility right now. She is Vice-President of the country without which Israel’s war would be impossible. She is, furthermore, running to be President. In a country where money is speech, sometimes literally, she’s raised over a billion dollars. In all this time, she’s also expressed almost no substantive recognition of the harms done by her administration’s policies — which would be welcome, though embarrassingly inadequate. After all, agency and responsibility are proportionate to capacity and ability. From that metric, she deserves significant blame.

You asked about my theory of change. It begins with this – that means and ends must align. A noble end cannot be pursued ignobly. The end doesn't justify the means. Of course, I know democracy asks us to make compromises. Sometimes that’s a good thing. This year, though, supporting either candidate for President requires compromises I cannot make. In Harris’ case, that would be overlooking a war pursued by her administration, which she refuses to speak out against, let alone moderate or temper, at the cost of thousands of civilians. Our response can’t be that Trump would have done the same or worse. Because even if he did, she has done what she has done. Trump’s immorality doesn’t absolve Harris of her responsibility – or us of our agency.

You turned to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, the 628 pact between Muslims, then in Medina, and the Meccan elite, when the blessed Prophet had to push his followers to make compromises they deemed unfair. But here’s the thing: Those compromises were unfair to them. We’re being asked instead to excuse Harris for crimes committed against defenseless civilians, even as we live our lives in relative peace and security.

For as much as we are frustrated by our government’s policies, we are also blessed with liberties many others lack. Of course, alongside countless other Americans past and present, Muslims helped defend and extend those freedoms – I don’t live very far from Muhammad Ali International Airport, after all. Which is resonant twice over: In too many instances, our country has had something to do with why some Muslims lack those liberties.

When I brought up the future earlier, that was because my sense of responsibility doesn’t end with rejecting Trump and Harris, but perhaps only begins there. Thereafter my capacity and ability must be put to work. Until, while writing back to you, I realized that this very exchange represents at least part of the future I was looking for, or at least my part in that future.

Shadi, even as you and I are committed to the same country, informed by the same faith, and outraged by the same wrong, we disagree on how best to move forward. Frankly, I don’t believe anyone really knows right now, which is part of why I have no concrete theory of change. There simply can’t be. A multiplicity of approaches is therefore inevitable, even if they will be in tension with each other. More than necessary, I’d argue this principled pluralism is praiseworthy.

On such core truths, the fundamental humanity of Palestinians and Lebanese, the injustice of this war, and the lack of alignment between the American people and our government, I’m glad that our circles include independents, Democrats, Greens, even Republicans, conservatives as well as progressives, secularists and traditionalists. The more we can bring these voices into conversation, even contentious conversation, the better.

This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets.

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