In thinking about the unhappiness of some young, progressive, and socialist minded voters who say they have a problem voting for Biden, we should remind them of the dilemma of the abolitionist movement when the Republican Party’s nominee in 1860 was a candidate whose oratory didn’t lift people out of their seats, telegenic he wasn’t (albeit in a non telegenic age), didn’t dress to the nines, and, above all, held a position on slavery that most abolitionists considered inimical to their own views and life work.

Of course, I’m talking about Lincoln, who, by his own words, said he wouldn’t abolish slavery where it existed, while adamantly opposing its expansion to states and territories where it didn’t.

In his famous Cooper Union Address in New York City in February of 1860, Lincoln in a single sentence provided the rhetorical ammunition that fueled the abolitionist critique of Lincoln and his politics:

“Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States?”

As you would expect, Lincoln’s words nagged at the conscience of abolitionists, while presenting them with a very practical question? Should they set aside their desire for a pure abolitionist ticket and cast a vote for a candidate who says that he won’t challenge slavery where it is, but will where it isn’t?

Or, should they refrain from party politics until a pure abolition ticket is on the ballot in some future election?

Not surprisingly, the abolitionist movement was divided.

What would be mind-boggling is if they were not. Even those who voted for Lincoln must have done it with a mix of hesitations and hopes.

If social media was available during that time, some abolitionists might have established a #NeverLincoln site. Other abolitionists, including a sizable wing of Black political abolitionists, were of a different mind. They wanted no part in sitting out the election. Frederick Douglass was one of them, and while he had plenty of criticism of Lincoln, Douglass was a strategic and tactical thinker of the highest order and understood the dynamics of what a Lincoln’s election and presidency would set into motion. He wrote:

“What, then, has been gained to the anti-slavery cause by the election of Mr. Lincoln? Not much, in itself considered, but very much when viewed in the light of its relations and bearings. For fifty years the country has taken the law from the lips of an exacting, haughty and imperious slave oligarchy. The masters of slaves have been masters of the Republic. Their authority was almost undisputed, and their power irresistible. They were the President makers of the Republic, and no aspirant dared to hope for success against their frown. Lincoln’s election has vitiated their authority, and broken their power. It has taught the North its strength, and shown the South its weakness. More importantly, it has demonstrated the possibility of electing, if not an Abolitionist, at least an anti-slavery reputation to the Presidency of the United States. The years are few since it was thought possible that the Northern people could be wrought up to the exercise of such startling courage. Hitherto the threat of disunion has been as potent over the politicians of the North, as the cat-o’-nine-tails is over the backs of the slaves. Mr. Lincoln’s election breaks this enchantment, dispels this terrible nightmare, and awakens the nation to the consciousness of new powers, and the possibility of a higher destiny than the perpetual bondage to an ignoble fear.” (Excerpted from “The Late Election,” Douglass’ Monthly, December 1860, FULL TEXT via University of Rochester)

Let’s hope that those who say that they will never vote for Biden will take close measure of Douglass’ words and come to the understanding that Biden’s reelection is absolutely necessary if we hope to “break the spell” of Trump and the MAGA movement. To believe that sitting out the storm or voting for a third party candidate is the best course is a pernicious and dangerous delusion.

Let’s hope we are smarter. No Biden, no leverage. No progressive agenda. We will be fighting on our heels, to put it mildly, to prevent the slide toward a dark authoritarian time. And once we arrive at that place, the climb back is steep, likely long, and dangerous.

Elaine Stefanik, Republican member of Congress and Trump acolyte, insisted in a recent House Congressional hearing without any evidence that calls for “intifada” and the use of slogans such as “from the river to the sea” by students protesting the relentless bombing and invasion of Gaza were tantamount to supporting/advocating genocide of Jewish people.

One doesn’t have to agree with the political wisdom of such slogans to take strong exception to the duplicitous and unproven claim pouring out of her mouth. Stefanik is good at the politics of assertion, to coin a phrase of Fred Garboury, a deceased labor journalist, lovable raconteur, and old friend of mine. Like Trump, in her mind, it is enough for her to say it to make it true.

Some protesting students – a small minority I would guess – do support the genocide of Jewish people, but any factual, data driven evidence proving that supporters of Palestinian national rights en masse embrace such an outlook is nowhere to be found.

But for Stefanik that’s beside the point. Truth isn’t what she is after in these hearings. If it were, she would invite a cross section of students, professors, and administrators to the hearing, not to grill them, but to listen to them with the hope of gaining a better understanding of the clash of contending views over the events in Israel and Gaza as well as the rise of antisemitism (and islamophobia) on their campuses.

Her mission, instead, and it was evident at the hearing, is to establish in the public mind that students, professors, and administrators alike are antisemitic and “elite” universities are breeding grounds of marxism and anti-Americanism as well as antisemitism. Following the hearing, she said in a statement,“ One down. Two to go …” And then added,

“This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America. This forced resignation of the president of Penn is the bare minimum of what is required.”

In other words, her search for the “pervasive rot of antisemitism” in the most prestigious educational institutions in America isn’t over. It will continue at accelerated pace, while coupled to a campaign to root it out far beyond college campuses.

It should not need to be said that antisemitism should be aggressively resisted and rejected across the country as should islamophobia. But if left to the likes of Stefanik, Trump, and their motley antisemitic gang of MAGA followers, it will be weaponized to turn distinguished university presidents, professors, and students into implacable enemies of Jews and Israel, while at the same time pressuring major universities to retreat from their democratic, egalitarian, progressive, and educational mission.

Moreover, don’t think this motley gang will confine itself to “cleansing” antisemitism from our major institutions of higher learning. It will also in the name of fighting antisemitism do everything it can to divide and sap the strength of the anti-Maga coalition in the lead up to next year’s elections.

In its zealous pursuit of this nefarious political objective, it is easy to hear the distant echoes of McCarthyism – an earlier incubus of far right politicians and politics – that employed the cudgel of anticommunism to pursue its broader mission of weakening democracy, restricting free speech, and discrediting and dividing the liberal-left New Deal coalition in the 1950s.

It is imperative to struggle against antisemitism and Islamophobia at this moment, while also protecting democracy and free speech. There should be no dispute about that. But that responsibility should fall on the shoulders of the broad democratic and anti-MAGA movement. It would be worse than naive to think that Stefanik, Trump, and the MAGA coalition, sunk as they are in the ideology and practice of antisemitism and white christian nationalism, will shoulder that lift. It’s akin to putting the fox in charge of the hen house. And we don’t want to so that, do we?

Rising antisemitism – and not only on college campuses and not only on the right – on the one hand and on the other the politically motivated deployment of invented claims of antisemitism to stifle and discredit dissenters of the relentless bombing of Gaza are a part of the complex, entangled, and contradictory political ecology of this moment.

Neither one is a new phenomenon, but with the outbreak of fighting, first in Israel where 1200 were slaughtered on October 7 and shortly thereafter in Gaza where the death count rises above 16,000 (and counting,) both have spread in reach and gained in intensity.

For anyone who hopes to live in a world of substantive equality, peace, and freedom resisting both is imperative.

While the political class and media gang up against the three presidents of Ivy Leagues colleges for their misspeak and moral insensitivity in the face of rising antisemitism, the resumption of bombing and consequent mass murder of the people of Gaza – over 16,000 – going on right before their (and our) eyes, courtesy of Netanyahu and the Israeli military machine, doesn’t seem to merit the same outrage from these interlocutors.

“One down. Two to go,” Ms. Stefanik said in a statement on Saturday. “This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America. This forced resignation of the president of Penn is the bare minimum of what is required.”

Beware Beware Beware!

“Rot” for Stefanik – a Trump flunky – goes far beyond the presence of antisemitism on college campuses. And even if it didn’t I would have little confidence in her sincerity and capacity to address antisemitism. After all, the MAGA movement, and she is one of its leaders, is a purveyor of the worst kind of antisemitic tropes and constantly rails about the takeover of the country’s most “prestigious” college campuses by the left .

Even her choice of the word “rot” I find suspicious. It strikes me s a close cousin of “vermin.” And guess who uses that term?