Westneat: Washington’s ‘uncommitted’ are helping Trump

“This primary is a rare opportunity to tell Genocide Joe how you feel” was how the Seattle chapter of Democratic Socialists for America put it.

I can think of few better ways of aiding Trump to win another presidency than this.

Remember when Kshama Sawant went out to swing-state Pennsylvania in 2016 and campaigned against Hillary Clinton, calling her a “warmonger” and saying the real problem with Clinton is that she and Trump were cut from roughly the same cloth?

What an epic misjudgment. Look at what happened on just a single issue: One candidate caused the first rollback of civil rights in our lifetimes, with the repeal of Roe v. Wade, while the other would have fought to protect those rights. This chasm between the candidates was as obvious at the time as it is today.

What’s happening now is a bit like Sawant all over again. It’s the left being the gift that keeps on giving for the right.

“Until this administration ends its support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and delivers a permanent, lasting ceasefire, Joe Biden will bear the responsibility for another Trump presidency” was how the national DSA outfit put it.

So unless Joe Biden somehow ends hostilities in the Middle East — something no American president has been able to do — then you’re going to sit it all out and be cool with Trump?

Of the major options on the party primary ballots next week, Biden is one who is at least working toward a temporary cease-fire and who arguably supports a two-state peace solution in the Middle East the most. Trump urged Israel to “finish the problem” with Gaza.

This past week, a senior aide to Trump harangued the Biden administration for even airdropping food to starving people in Gaza. The Trump campaign also posted gleefully about the “uncommitted” movement here in Washington, because it so plainly helps the Trump camp. Trump loves nothing more than uncommitted liberals.

I had to shake my head when I saw some advocates for the local uncommitted movement saying they would surely shift gears later on and “work our butts off” for Biden. Kind of hard to walk back calling him “Genocide Joe,” don’t you think?

I’ve never been a big fan of Biden, or really of any presidential candidate in my lifetime other than Barack Obama. But there’s a false premise at work here, which is that politics is about pursuing some kind of purity. It isn’t; it’s about hard, unclean choices in a winner-take-all system. You hope for incremental gains, at best.

An analogy I’ve seen is that voting is like taking public transportation. There’s rarely a bus heading exactly where you want to go. So you take the one that’s going closest to where you hope to be.

Ask yourself: Which bus is that in this year’s election, on this issue or a host of others? Better pick a real bus soon, one with a name on it. Because the available ones are few and far between and, for better or worse, are both rapidly leaving the station.