Why I regret casting an antiwar protest vote in the 1968 election

In 1968, I was a full-time anti-Vietnam War organizer and voted for a third-party candidate. I now regret that protest vote, which has led me to think differently this time around.

I certainly sympathize with many progressives who intend to either sit out this election or vote for the Green Party’s Jill Stein or Cornel West. Kamala Harris’s continuing support for Israel’s war on Gaza and now Lebanon is abhorrent to anyone opposing war. For the past year the Biden-Harris administration has functioned as a willing ally and enabler of Israel’s genocide. Though not a self-proclaimed Zionist like the president, Harris parrots Israel’s talking points and lies about the war on Gaza. At the Democratic convention, she didn’t even permit a Palestinian representative to speak for five minutes from the platform.

But come election day, I won’t be casting a protest vote as I did in 1968 — even though I see so many parallels with the choice we faced then.

Like Harris, that year’s Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, served as vice president, standing loyally by as Lyndon Johnson sent more than a half-million U.S. troops to Vietnam, hundreds of whom were dying every week in 1968. Far from distinguishing himself from the war hawks, Humphrey made speeches supporting the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies as thousands of American soldiers were killed and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were slaughtered.

Adding to this outrage, Humphrey was nominated at the infamous Democratic convention in Chicago where the local cops brutally assaulted antiwar demonstrators in what was later described as a “police riot.” I was one of those protesters and was jailed for my efforts. Many antiwarriors demonstrated against Humphrey during the subsequent campaign, often chanting “Dump the Hump.” So, when election day came, I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for someone I considered a war criminal and cast my ballot for comedian Dick Gregory, who was running on a third-party ticket.

What I did not consider, however, was Humphrey’s opponent — Richard Nixon. At the time, I considered the parties as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Both seemed indistinguishable on Vietnam. And both reflected the same Cold War anticommunist mentality that underlay the American imperialist project and the growing military-industrial state.

I ignored, however, the profound differences between the two candidates on a host of other issues. For example, Nixon’s campaign revolved around what he called a Southern strategy. By using thinly disguised racist “law-and-order” rhetoric, he hoped to peel away white Southern and Northern white working-class voters from the Democrats. Ronald Reagan and later Republican administrations have solidified their appeal to white voters to effectively roll back the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement, especially on voting rights.

Today, the differences between the two parties are even more stark on a wide variety of issues – from women’s and LGBTQ+ rights to the climate and consumer protections to electoral integrity. The evidence can be found in Project 2025, the Republican blueprint for a new Trump presidency. Or in what Trump proclaims at his rallies. Earlier this month, he declared that he intends to use the military against protesters whom he considers “the enemy within.”

This kind of authoritarian rule is happening around the world, including Erdogan’s Turkey, Orban’s Hungary and Putin’s Russia. There is very little to protect it from happening here. We certainly can’t rely on the current Supreme Court.

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In the face of such a prospect, shouldn’t we do whatever is possible to forestall an autocratic regime? I no longer see casting a symbolic protest ballot — or sitting on the sidelines — as an act of conscience. Real acts of conscience imply taking a risk and being willing to accept the consequences.

Still, some might argue that it’s worth voting for the Green Party’s Jill Stein to send a message to the Democrats that they can’t literally get away with murder in Gaza. But would it convey that message?

In 2016, when Stein last ran for president, she received more votes than Trump’s margin of victory in three key states: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In this election, that could be enough to help him retake the White House. Trump’s solution to the Gaza war: Netanyahu should “finish the job.” Is that something that would help the Palestinians?

More than anything, they need us to continue challenging the U.S.-Israeli genocide by street actions, by supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, and by educating our fellow citizens about the reality of the Zionist settler-colonial project. When it comes to radically transforming the two major political parties it’s going to take a lot more than one election cycle. It will require building powerful movements that address systemic issues like racism, poverty, ecological devastation, and war and militarism.