For the last year, Kamala Harris’s more aggressive defenders have wielded a particular rhetorical weapon against Jill Stein voters like me: A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump. I’m a little late to the party in saying this, but there’s an obvious retort to them worth repeating ad nauseam: A vote for Harris is a vote for genocide. Call it Stein’s Maxim.

Stein’s Maxim retort has two advantages over theirs. For one, it hits a lot harder. For another, unlike theirs, it’s true.

Taken at face value, “A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump” is flat-out nonsense. A vote for X is a vote for X, not for someone else on the ballot. If I vote for X, and you accuse me of voting for Y, the obvious objection arises: if I had wanted Y to win, I could have voted directly for Y, yet I didn’t. So how could my voting for X be a vote for Y? It obviously can’t be an intended vote for Y. The only intended vote for Y is an actual vote for Y.

To belabor the painfully obvious: Each vote in an election as big and indirect as ours starts out diluted. So every direct vote for Y is already diluted. To vote for Y by voting for X is to dilute the diluted. A person who wants Y to win would not dilute a diluted vote; he would choose the least diluted vote, namely a direct vote for Y. So accusing X-voters of covertly wanting to vote for Y is blatant nonsense, at the level of 2 + 2 = 5. A vote for X is a vote for X. A vote for Stein is a vote for Stein.

Harris voters take great pride in being smarter and more sophisticated than Trump voters, but I’ve encountered Harris voters who literally believe that Stein voters are intentionally voting for Stein in order to elect Trump. I have not encountered a Trump voter quite that dumb. So maybe the hauteur is misplaced? Maybe Harris voters are not quite as smart as they think they are.

Confused Harris voters: West Orange, New Jersey

There is, I know, a more sophisticated argument “out there,” according to which Stein voters don’t intend to vote for Trump, but are unwittingly doing so. I’ve encountered countless Harris supporters who fervently believe this, but have so far not encountered a single one willing or able to download this phantom “argument” from their overactive imaginations to the actual world that the rest of us inhabit. I invite anyone who thinks they can reconstruct this “argument” to do so, but I’m confident there is no actual argument “out there.” What there is, is a lot of handwaving and noise about “Ralph Nader,” “spoilers,” “being a shil for Putin,” and all the rest. That’s not an argument, but a series of free associations and non-sequiturs in search of an argument. If anyone can work it into an argument, go ahead, but I don’t see it happening in finite time.

The argument for Stein’s Maxim is a marvel of clarity by contrast. The argument is this: There is a genocide taking place in Palestine. Biden and Harris have actively supported Israel’s commission of this genocide, and have vowed to continue to do so into the indefinite future, even if every last Palestinian is exterminated as a result, and even if Gaza and parts of Lebanon are rendered uninhabitable for the next hundred years. A vote for either of them would be a vote for the policy they have enacted for the last year, and have vowed to enact into the indefinite future. Hence a vote for Harris is a vote for genocide.

That’s it. If anyone thinks they can refute this argument, I invite them to do so. But at this point, every element of the preceding argument has become patently obvious to anyone with eyes to see. So I hate to break the news, but a vote for Harris is a vote for genocide.

It’s no argument to say that there are other issues besides Palestine to worry about. I agree that there are. That’s why Biden-Harris’s facilitation of Israel’s genocide is so galling: it’s a distraction from those other issues. But the existence of other issues doesn’t change the fact that Israel is committing a genocide in Palestine, that Biden and Harris’s have presided over this genocide, and that Harris has promised to continue with it.

But won’t Trump be worse? Much worse? Much, much, much worse? I doubt it, but suppose he is. It doesn’t change anything. Suppose that Trump is much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much worse than Harris. How does that change any of the following?

1. Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, and intends to finish the job.
2. Biden-Harris have facilitated this genocide.
3. Harris has promised to continue to facilitate it.

It doesn’t.

If you want to insist that Trump will, on entering office, commit a Super Duper Mega Huge Genocide as contrasted with Biden-Harris’s mere genocide, feel free to define your terms, adduce your evidence, and make that argument. But it’s not going to change the fact that a vote for Harris is a vote for genocide.

You might insist that it’s irrational for anyone to permit a Super Duper Mega Huge Genocide to take place when there’s the possibility of downgrading it to a mere genocide. A vote for Harris downgrades the hypothetical Super Duper Genocide into the merely actual genocide we have going right now. Go ahead and insist. Once you come up with the argument, I’ll listen. But first I’ll point out that it doesn’t change the fact that a vote for Harris is a vote for genocide.

What about abortion? Yeah, what about it? As in: what about how little Harris–distracted by Ukraine, Israel, and the election–has done to safeguard it? Yes, I see that. But even if you want to pretend that the minute she’s elected to office, Kamala Harris will don a cape and fashion a Super Duper Executive Order that somehow safeguards abortion all across this land, the fact remains: a vote for Harris is a vote for genocide.

Jill Stein: Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

But Trump is going to overturn our whole system! I know. Sorry to sound like a broken record, though. It doesn’t change the fact that a vote for Harris is a vote for genocide.

I hope you see the point. No amount of verbal trickery or earnest what-abouting can legislate the obvious out of existence. If someone commits genocide, or actively, zealously aids in its commission, and then insists unapologetically that she will continue to do exactly what she has done for as long as she can, then if you vote for her, you are voting for genocide regardless of any other fact you care to adduce. No other fact is going to change this one.

A vote for Harris is a vote for genocide. Go ahead and do it. Go ahead and excuse it. Go ahead and point fingers at us for “electing Trump.” But it’s not going to change what she’s done, or what you’ve done to support what she’s done.

A vote for Harris is a vote for genocide.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1227668715152793

Thanks to Mike DeFilippo, Susan Gordon, Kate Herrick, Roderick Long, Edwin Milan, and Hilary Persky for useful discussion of this issue. None of the preceding necessarily agrees with anything I say here.