Now that the dust seems to have settled following the US elections, a critical look at Washington’s foreign policy under the Democratic Party administration is in need. While it is clear that the genocide in Gaza was not a primary issue for most American voters, the issue was of central importance in undermining the Harris campaign.

The landslide victory for Donald Trump in the American elections clearly inflicted a psychological blow on supporters of the Democratic Party. Immediately after the results were in, social media was ripe with commentary from angry Democratic Party supporters who sought to blame every single minority group under the sun. Allegations were made against Black men, Latinos, Arabs, Muslims, and even Native Americans, who had death wishes placed upon them and were racially abused on a grand scale.

Meanwhile, CNN, MSNBC, and other mainstream US broadcast media outlets were floating a million ideas as to why their favored candidate did not win the election. Some commentators even ridiculously argued that Kamala Harris was not pro-"Israel" or pro-Ukraine enough.

While the failures of the Harris campaign were numerous, the particular effect of the Democratic Party’s foreign policy approach, coupled with their reliance on Identity Politics, is not receiving the very relevant coverage it deserves.

A diverse Apartheid and inclusive exploitation

At the tail end of the Presidency of Barack Obama, the Democratic Party had clearly shifted to become an institution that would form its base in the Identity Politics of minority communities in the United States. This shift's relevance to foreign policy is very much of importance and set up the US imperialist Party for a resounding series of failures. 

While the kind of Identity Politics that the Democratic Party promoted was purely performative and sought to rob the traditional Leftist anti-Racist and anti-Imperialist causes of their class element, those who are read in the topics are inherently wedded to tangible policy shifts that seek to create a more just society. So, while Democratic Party lawmakers can take a knee and signal that they are opposed to racially motivated police violence, they don’t actually allow for legislation to be passed to achieve some of the key objectives set forth by African American activists, civil-society organizations, or rights groups.

Similarly, while the Democratic Party holds itself up as a lesser of two evils when it comes to the issue of healthcare, it cannot actually take the step to provide medicare-for-all to its public. This is because the Party’s donor class, and even many of their Party members, hold a significant stake in maintaining the status quo. Yet, the messaging around healthcare has not dramatically changed with the shift towards building an Identity Politics base.

Meanwhile, the shift towards performative Left-based Identity Politics provoked an equally vocal Right-wing Identity Politics that enabled the Republican Party to come out swinging for the majority White population of the United States. Donald Trump’s campaign was filled with this White Identity Politics propaganda, which sought to pick out the most statistically fringe ideas that were being promoted by the Democratic Party and use them to portray the American White population as a victim group. 

The Republican Party used this White Identity Politics as a means to garner support and turn attention away from class politics also, but has done so way more effectively. This is because the US’s foreign policy of conquering, subjugating, abusing, killing, and stealing from the Global South, is congruent with an inverted Identity Politics argument that is rooted in the idea of Western White Identity. Therefore, there is no contradiction between that messaging and imperialist endeavors.

Yet, the Democratic Party was now stuck as the Party which claimed to represent every minority community, while also operating a Western Imperialist regime. This created major problems for the Democrats, which sought to mask their ideological contradictions with more performative decisions. 

For example, when images emerged from the US southern border, of White Border officers rounding up Haitians on horseback in order to deport them, the answer to this crisis was to place Kamala Harris in control of the border issue. Similarly, when former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was exposed for not taking questions from African reporters, the Biden administration replaced her with Karine Jean-Pierre, who would also not take questions from African reporters. By inserting Black women into these positions, it enabled the White House to claim that it wasn’t racist. 

While this performative pandering to the Democratic Party base had certainly worked to an extent, this strategy fell apart with the handling of the war in Gaza. Polling data consistently showed that after months of war in the Gaza Strip, around 70-80% of Democrats wanted a ceasefire, while around 60% of all Americans polled said the same. Not only this, but the majority of Democrats polled were found to have agreed that "Israel" is committing a genocide in Gaza.

After the Biden administration had spent over a year and a half labeling Russia a rogue State, applying sanctions, sending unlimited supplies of weapons, and claiming that it was doing this in support of a “resistance” to occupation, annexation, and a genocide, October 7, 2023, collapsed this argument on its head. 

Suddenly, here the US stood, arm and arm with the Israelis in backing some of the worst atrocities committed since the Second World War. The Israeli regime has been occupying Palestinian land since 1948, is accused of operating an Apartheid regime of Jewish Supremacy by every leading human rights group, is filled with an entire coalition of the most obnoxious racists who not only hate Arabs and Muslims, but are also vehemently anti-Black and have track records of publicly documented racism dating back decades.

We are currently in an era where social media dominates in the space of news consumption, where X [formerly Twitter] is the top platform used for this purpose. Therefore, especially amongst potential younger voters, day in and day out they were subjected to videos of dead children, paired with videos of racist soldiers who filmed themselves dancing in the underwear of displaced and murdered women in Gaza. 

Vice President Kamala Harris met with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, when he visited Washington in July, then proceeded to continuously tell the public that she supports the Zionist Regime’s “right to self-defense” and could not express sympathy for Palestinian civilians without mouthing off about October 7 propaganda that had long since been debunked. 

At the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Kamala Harris wouldn’t even allow for a Palestinian voice to be heard, even from a Palestinian American who would say exactly what she wanted. “I’m speaking” was the standout comment that ended up sticking with Muslim and Arab voters, which is how she responded to pro-Palestinian activists who yelled out at her during a speech.

While the polling data is absolutely clear, demonstrating that most American voters did not view foreign policy as a top priority, with around 15% or lower having voted on it as a major issue, there is no doubt that the collapse of the performative Identity Politics played a perceptive role in influencing voters. The majority of Democratic Party voters said that “Democracy” was the top issue they voted on, which is very telling, considering the large range of other issues that Kamala Harris could have oriented her campaign around.

There should be no confusion here, nothing indicates that a significant portion of Americans looked at Gaza as a priority in deciding their vote, yet perception is a major issue in politics. After all, Jill Stein’s Green Party only managed to secure 705,866 votes nationwide, amounting to 0.5% of the popular vote, compared to her 2016 run in which she garnered 469,627 votes, or 1.07% of the popular vote at the time. Stein ran her campaign largely on the issue of Gaza and was not able to gain 1% of the national vote.

It is certainly notable that Kamala Harris managed to not only lose the popular vote to Trump, but key categories of minority groups like Black men, had voted in higher numbers for the Republican candidate than in the previous two elections. This was indicative of a major perception failure. 

While the performative messaging of a Democratic Party who will take the knee and espouse rhetoric of diversity, anti-racism, and inclusion, may have worked when they were out of office, it failed to perform as well when they were in the decision-making position and did nothing to actually follow through on their rhetoric.

Another very telling outcome of the elections was the instant reaction from hardline Democratic Party supporters, as mentioned above. It was an all-out blame game, with fingers pointed at every minority community imaginable. Social media platforms were rife with unhinged individuals wishing death on people. There were videos produced in which it was stated that “we won’t care” when Black men are killed by police, while others commented that they wish for more children to be blown to pieces in Gaza, as videos started emerging of women buying Starbucks and McDonalds as a sign that they were abandoning the pro-Palestine boycott.

The petty, racist, and genocidal reactions from supporters of Kamala Harris embody the Democratic Party’s brand of Identity Politics. Privileged gluttonous self-righteous performative politics are expressed here, demonstrating that supportive language towards the causes of African Americans subjected to police violence and Palestinians enduring Genocide, were all transactional. The underlying tendencies of their ideology are quintessential of the Democratic Party’s supremacist programme. It is to say, “I will continue to be nice to you so long as you do as I say, but if you question why I have done nothing to actually help you, I turn into a supremacist neo-Con.” 

It is clear that many millions of Americans were infatuated with the performative self-righteous and American-exceptionalist campaign of Kamala Harris, but it wasn’t enough. This comes down to a failure to motivate enough people to buy into your performance, which the Democratic Party failed to do.

The Democrats tried desperately to weaponize Identity Politics in their favor, but a major issue with this is that most of the scholars of Identity Politics remain consistent in their anti-racist stances. Take Ta-Nehisi Coates for example, who published a new book this year entitled “The Message”, the largest segment of the book is about Apartheid in occupied Palestine. Why? Because the likes of Coates, they truly believe in Kimberlé Crenshaw’s idea of Intersectionality, which argues that the struggles of oppressed groups are inherently connected to one another. 

Although the scholarly jargon that fills textbooks and is the subject of intense debate amongst committed Left-wing adherents to the ideals of Identity Politics attempting to weaponize a framework like this while supporting mass murder of Indigenous populations around the world is a losing strategy, the young people, scholars, social media influencers and those who choose to study this field, are wedded to the idea that Apartheid, Racism and Genocide are never correct, which is why you cannot succeed in disconnecting opposition to US imperialism from the mindsets of these individuals. 

Ultimately, the Democratic Party is a Western liberal-supremacist institution that works for an elitist oligarchy. This is most evident in their foreign policy platform: while preaching anti-Racism, they literally aided an ethno-Supremacist European settler regime to exterminate a portion of an indigenous population. US President Joe Biden used typical Orientalist descriptions of Palestinians to claim they are driven by an “ancient desire to kill Jews”, a deeply racist statement that came at a time when the people of Gaza were suffering a manufactured famine. 

While Donald Trump is also a monster in his own right, his platform is more honest and ideologically consistent. Kamala Harris’s campaign was a bundle of contradictions and gaslighting statements, using celebrities to drag the dead corpse of the Democratic Party campaign across the finish line. Harris never represented minority rights, she represented a patronizing group of privileged American bigots, who exposed their insanity upon the news of her loss.