Across the country, Democrats are organizing campaigns to vote uncommitted in the primary elections. Yet the aims of this movement are to do more than simply register dissent against Biden’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Uncommitted Campaign will pick up delegates in every state and congressional district where more than 15% of voters cast an uncommitted primary ballot—creating the possibility of leverage within the party at the upcoming DNC. Vote Uncommitted organizers from the state of Maryland join The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the campaign and its implications for the election.
Studio /Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us once again. In this 2024 Democratic Primary Race for President, there’s another candidate of sorts that in some states has taken a share of the votes, 29% in Hawaii, 19% in Minnesota. And those votes have generated and been generated by the Uncommitted Campaign, opposing US support for Israel in this war in Gaza that’s devastating Gaza, among other issues. It began in the Michigan primary, where over 100,000 Democrats voted uncommitted and it grew from there.
So some of the leaders of that campaign are joining us today. The leaders here in the state of Maryland. We are joined in studio by Ryan Harvey. Ryan Harvey is a longtime activist in this community, and one of the organizers of Listen to Maryland Vote Uncommitted Campaign. Ryan, good to see you again.
Ryan Harvey:
You too, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
And two folks I’ve not met, but I’m looking forward to talking with. We have joining us today, Lyle Rubin, who is a Marine veteran of the war in Afghanistan, author of Pain is Weakness Leaving The Body, and he’s based in the Baltimore area. Good to have you with us, Lyle. Good to meet you.
Lyle Rubin:
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Marc Steiner:
And Anna Evans-Goldstein is with us, a longtime organizer and activist. She’s a member of the Greater Baltimore Residents for Ceasefire Group and an organizer with Listen to Maryland Vote Uncommitted campaign. So good to have you all with us.
Anna Evans-Goldstein:
Thanks.
Marc Steiner:
Let’s take step backwards and talk a bit about the history of how this campaign started and why. It seems to really be growing to serious numbers of voting uncommitted. Let’s talk about what that means. And Anna, you’re the first person I talked to about this, at least for this show. Let me start with you.
Anna Evans-Goldstein:
So it actually got started in January in New Hampshire and they had a campaign around writing in on the ballot, and it kind of took off from there. So you mentioned some of the states that have had really successful turnouts, but in each state that’s had a primary so far, there’s been some sort of option, either the official vote uncommitted or a write-in campaign, and it’s really taken off. And we’re really excited here in Maryland to be following suit with what’s been going on across the country, particularly because we are historically just a democratic state. We have gone blue in all of the last elections for the last 30 years. And so it really sends a very strong message coming from a state such as ours that the Democratic Party at large is calling for a ceasefire and we want to be listened to.
Marc Steiner:
Let me just, a little background for a second. You’re a veteran, you fought in Afghanistan?
Lyle Rubin:
I am.
Marc Steiner:
Right?
Lyle Rubin:
Yeah, I was in Afghanistan in 2010 during the surge.
Marc Steiner:
So talk about what brought you into this campaign.
Lyle Rubin:
Well, I’m Jewish, aside from just being a veteran. So when I was younger, I actually worked for APAC. I worked as a summer campus intern. I actually was a bit of their poster board. I sat on their board of directors as one of the student activists for a year.
So I’ve been through my own journey. I became very disillusioned with my own mission in Afghanistan as a Marine officer. And through that experience, I began becoming disillusioned with much of US foreign policy and just the role that the United States has played in so many parts of the world. And again, being Jewish and having a prior history with APAC, I did end up focusing a lot on Palestine solidarity work as a graduate student. I’m a writer, so I’ve written some on this issue and I’ve just studied it for years now. So it’s something that I care a lot about.
Marc Steiner:
That’s a huge leap from APAC to being part of Ceasefire.
Lyle Rubin:
I would say so, yeah.
Marc Steiner:
So that could be a conversation itself. And Ryan, so you’re no stranger to these kind of activist projects. So talk a bit about what draw you into this one though.
Ryan Harvey:
Yeah. Well, similar to Anna, we’re both part of a little crew called Greater Baltimore Residents versus Ceasefire for folks in the area. We first started organizing a pressure campaign to try to get Representative Mfume to call for a ceasefire, organized a big sit-in his office, brought a bunch of people out. And then following that, we built this sign-on letter with the goal of getting 25 local Baltimore area organizations to publicly sign on calling on our congressional delegation to call for a ceasefire. We ended up getting now 200 organizations and small businesses.
So we’ve been just, since October 7th and the response by Israel, we’ve been just trying to work to identify strategic ways that we can build pressure on the US government to call for a ceasefire and to really pull its weight in regards to Israel. So the Uncommitted Campaign, we saw that popping off in various states and we saw that Maryland is one of those states where uncommitted is actually on the ballot, so it’s counted as a candidate. And we decided to initiate a campaign and then found out there was another group doing the same and we merged forces and here I am.
Marc Steiner:
So the Uncommitted Campaign came in place, if it gets X number of votes in certain states, in this state or any other state, it gets delegates, right? The DNC?
Ryan Harvey:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
Is that correct?
Ryan Harvey:
If we get 15% of the state or if we get 15% of any given congressional district, you’ll be allotted delegates.
Marc Steiner:
I want to wrestle a minute with a couple of larger political issues when comes to this campaign. I’m curious to see how you see this playing out politically in our country right now. We have this horrendous war taking place in Gaza, post 50,000 people have been killed. People lost under the rubble. Many more wounded. Talked to a friend of mine today who’s a local rabbi, who’s actually acting as a medic in Gaza to help Palestinians, and his stories were just really hard to listen to. So we have that and that’s what’s motivating this Uncommitted Campaign. We’re also faced in this country with the Democratic Party, which is divided between progressives and this neoliberal establishment that actually runs the party. On the other side, you have these neo-fascist racists who could actually win the election. So talk a bit about that in terms of strategically how you see the work you’re doing on Uncommitted fitting into that kind of more complex, not more, but that complex picture of what we face politically. And Anna, let me let you start.
Anna Evans-Goldstein:
Yeah, well, a couple points. For the current Uncommitted Campaign, Biden is not running against Trump in the primary. The primary is a standalone for the Democratic Party. And so we see this as an opportunity to push Biden on a key issue that democratic voters have already been expressing for over seven months now that they care about. Over 75% of Democrats want a ceasefire and have been calling for a ceasefire consistently. And the Biden administration continues to not listen. And so there’s this great mechanism in our country for registering dissent and sending a message. It’s electoral politics. We don’t get polled on our policy preferences, but we do get to vote in a candidate or vote against a candidate, and this is the mechanism to do that in the primary.
So that’s one sort of big overarching point. And underlying all of that, just to kind of hammer in on pushing Biden to be the best candidate, if we’re talking about the general election in November, Trump has already said that he unequivocally supports Israel. It will be unconditional support. And so if we’re talking about making the better candidate that can beat Trump in November, we want Biden to call for an immediate ceasefire. We want Biden to use his weight to push Israel to stop its genocide. And so this is really both a mechanism for registering our dissent that we have been pushed to because our protests, our calls, our emails have not been listened to, but it’s also a way to demand the candidate that the party wants.
Marc Steiner:
Were you about to say something, Ryan?
Ryan Harvey:
I was just nodding in agreement.
Marc Steiner:
Okay.
Ryan Harvey:
But there’s something really important that we’re seeing, right? The United States has a progressive movement, dare I say, we have a bit of a left in the last 10 years. And what the Democratic Party has been doing for decades has been bending to the right, wherever possible, whether that’s on military stuff, whether it’s on domestic issues, whether it’s on trade and economics, thinking it’s a safe thing to do. Biden, in his last election, what took Biden from being the Joe Biden we remembered to being the, I’m going to be the most progressive president in American history? It was the Bernie Sanders campaign. It was the progressive movement. And he, after Super Tuesday, he brought a bunch of the Biden people. He brought people from the Sunrise movement and the Dreamers into the fold, and not just as a symbol, but said, “How do I win your people?”
That was the promise that brought Biden into office. The idea that they seem to be thinking, the party leadership, the people around Biden, seem to be thinking that the way to win this election is to try to get the anti-Trump Republican voters to get behind Biden and basically ignore all of the groups and the individuals, this whole generation that helped bring them into office. I think that’s foolish. It’s foolish and it’s morally wrong because of what’s beneath all of that. That scares me. And I think that this campaign, we’re not out here convincing Maryland voters to vote uncommitted. We’re not out there telling them, trying to convince them of one thing or another. We’re just finding people who are really angry, who might not be voting anyways.
On one hand, we’re giving them an opportunity to vote. We might even be kind of pulling them back, right? It’s giving Biden a lifeline. If we get whatever percentage of the vote, that’s not a testament to how good we are at convincing people of the issue. That’s a testament to where people are. This is a one-month campaign. We don’t have a lot of time to build these deep relationships with people. We’re just finding people who are out there. So I think that’s a really important thing for these folks to be paying attention to.
Marc Steiner:
And Neil, jump in here. And where do you think this entire campaign takes us, politically?
Lyle Rubin:
I think, well, just kind of dovetailing on what Ryan was just saying. I mean, another way to look at this is Biden won in 2020 because of a broad coalition that included young people, included progressives, included Arabs and Muslims, and a number of other people, people of color who identify not only with Palestinians, but with historically oppressed people in poor countries that aren’t white, that have been treated in similar manners throughout history. And I just think at a very pragmatic level, in order to win again, we need that same coalition. So what we’re trying to do here is not just a moral demand, although it very much is a moral demand, but it’s a strategic demand that Biden needs to move in such a way that he can regain the trust of that coalition and therefore beat Trump again. And if he doesn’t regain that trust, I think we’re at more risk of losing this election than if he does.
So that’s my major point. I also just want to reinforce that I’ve phone banked many times for many different causes. This is the easiest phone banking campaign I’ve ever taken part in. I hardly have to do any work, whether I’m talking to someone who’s very involved politically, someone who’s not particularly involved politically, someone who’s an active Democrat, someone who isn’t an active Democrat, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just amazing how many of them are aware of what’s going on in Gaza and how many of them are angry about it, and how many of them are willing to try to do whatever they can in their own lives to stop it. So I think strategically we need to win the upcoming presidential election, but I think we also need to harness this kind of anger and energy towards longer term goals that include a more peaceful, just engagement with the world, beyond just Gaza, beyond just Palestine.
I think the kind of elephant in the room for American politics, really since its inception, but certainly in modern times, has been this kind of imperial role that the US plays in so many parts of this world. This assumption, this arrogance that we reserve the right to rule over other peoples. We reserve the right not to listen to their own protests, and that needs to change. And I think all the young people rising up in universities right now, and for that matter, the Palestinians rising up with their own lives in Palestine, speaks to the urgency and need for that kind of change.
Marc Steiner:
This is, I think the first time I can remember in terms of what’s happening in Palestine and Israel, the effect is having on this country is much different than ever before. I remember being a kid in ’56 when the ’56 war happened. In 1967, when the October war happened, I was on the front of the line to join the Israeli army to go fight. Even though I was an anti-war activist here, I was ready to go fight in Israel. But you see things that are really fundamentally changing.
And you can say part of it, I’ve seen people make arguments that part of it is being driven by anti-Semitism. There’s no question in my mind that that is a piece, always will be a piece of it. But the larger piece of it is young people saying no, and young Jews saying no. This is not in our name. I think this is a fundamental shift taking place because of this war, because of this destruction of Gaza and this wholesale slaughter of Palestinians and Gaza. There’s something really different about this moment and it could affect this election. I’d like to hear your analysis about where all that is. Go ahead, Anna, you want to start again?
Anna Evans-Goldstein:
Yeah. The first thing that came to mind while you were talking is that I think that a lot of our elected leaders are using the same playbook that they used when they tried to get into the Iraq war and it’s not working anymore. I think people went through that experience and they understand the propaganda and the tools that are being utilized against them to sway their opinion. And we just have access to the truth. We have access to all of the video and all of the photos and all of the in real time news that’s been coming out of Gaza. And it’s horrifying. And so people, they’re tired of it and there’s no way to hide it or pull the wool over people’s eyes. And so there’s sort of no other choice. I mean, I’ve been a pro-Palestine activist for a very long time.
This is just absolutely astronomical in terms of how many people are aware of what’s going on, have done their education, have looked into things, are talking to people about it. Even five years ago, people would sort of shy away from discussing Israel Palestine because it seemed too complicated. It’s not complicated. It’s very simple. And I think that people are actually understanding that now, especially because of the wave of organizing that’s happened in this country around state violence here. People are aware and they understand what’s going on because they’ve experienced it.
Marc Steiner:
This campaign you’re involved in, where do you think it will take us politically at this moment? And B, coming back to what we were just talking about here, which is the profound effect this Gaza war is having on this country. I mean, more than I’ve ever seen before when it came to Israel Palestine. I’m curious where you politically all think all this is taking us because it’s coming to a crescendo.
Ryan Harvey:
I think going back to this first question, there’s something really important that the Biden administration and other people in party leadership need to understand. It’s important for us to understand it too. This whole wave of protest, and I was part of the anti-Iraq war movement. This is more unpopular than the Iraq war, according to the polls. George Bush got reelected in the middle of the Iraq war.
That movement never had this kind of ability to put in a presidential election to be part of that conversation. Yes, it’s true. We’re seeing the videos, all of this. Yes, it’s true. The level of destruction is astronomical for sure, but this isn’t a blip. What has changed is that these young people on these college campuses, that’s the Iraq war generation. Lyle fought in Afghanistan, I lost good friends in Iraq. I lost more good friends when they came home from Iraq, from suicide. And from Afghanistan. This is a generation that was born and raised in war and economic crisis, and they’re the generation that brought us the Occupy Movement and the modern immigrant rights movement. Black Lives Matter. This is a whole, and they see these connections. These aren’t the folks on the campuses and us, we’re not just, we just started caring about Palestine. We care about a whole slate of very progressive issues because that’s been our experience in the world, and it’s what we want from our government.
It’s what we want from our country. It’s what we want in life. And the idea, if there’s people in power banking on the idea that people are going to forget about this by November, this is not going away. This is a cultural, political shift in the United States and in the world, and we want a political shift in the US government. And we thought we were going towards that the first few years of Biden. There was some hopeful things. There was some progress. There was some real, like Lyle was talking about, there was a real coalition. And not even to mention the climate activists who’ve been very much a part of the protests around Palestine. This is a generational shift. We’re here. It’s not going away. You can’t ignore it. That’s a huge, very important lesson for these folks to learn. It’s not the world from 20 years ago. It’s the world today, its different and it’s a significant factor.
Marc Steiner:
Neil, you want to jump in on that?
Lyle Rubin:
Yeah, I mean, I would just emphasize that, I mean, everything that Anne and Ryan have said is absolutely true, particularly when it comes to the generational shift. But I think it even goes beyond young people at this point. I mean, as someone who’s paid attention very much to veteran affairs and military family life. I mean, there’s just so many military families across the country whose lives have profoundly changed as a result of the war on terror. And a lot of them are therefore keened in to the flaws and really horrors of US foreign policy.
I mean, there was a major study that came out, I believe from the University of Michigan after the 2016 election, that showed that one of the reasons Trump might have won in the Midwest was that you had a lot of military families and people connected to the military that found Trump’s, it ended up being a false message, but he had an anti-war kind of rhetoric. And there are a lot of people in the Midwest who are very connected to the military industrial complex in one way or another that were moved by that. So yes, I think young people are certainly leading the charge, but I think it goes beyond just the youth.
Marc Steiner:
I just want to, this campaign will be going on in the Maryland primary coming up and in primaries around the country. And as people who have kind of devoted their time to working this campaign and making it work here in this state, but connected to the country, where do you think it’s going to take us? Where do you think this campaign is going to take this battle around the war in Gaza and the coming election? What’s your analysis of where this takes us?
Ryan Harvey:
Back to what I was saying before about the fact that there’s a progressive movement. It’s real, it’s large. And where I see this campaign going and all of these uncommitted campaigns, they’re not separate from the other protests that are happening. It’s all part of the same thing. And we see that when we talk to each other. This is not just about stopping what Israel’s doing right now to the Palestinians. It’s also about fighting for control and influence of this very popular group of people in the US who want our government to be different. And I think the question as to whether is it going to be Biden or Trump, I think there’s another very important question there, which is what’s the Democratic Party going to look like and what should it look like? And this is a fight about that, and it’s a very important fight because this has been happening…
I mean, a lot of these, I’m 40, right? My whole life has been defined in part by the Democratic Party talking about things and then not following through on them, making promises they don’t fulfill. Talking about these values, but then the corporate money speaks a lot louder, and you get what you get. And then it blew up in our faces when Trump was going around the country talking about the bad trade deals, talking about the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis and all of this. Democrats need to be worrying about policy, not about chasing the Republican rhetoric around it. You heard it a few weeks ago. Trump, the crowd behind him started chanting, “Genocide Joe,” and what did he say? “They’re not wrong.”
If he smells that that’s popular when campaign time comes around, I guarantee you he will run on being critical of Biden’s handling of this and criticizing him for being a murderer. If that’s going to get him elected, he will. And the Democrats are going to go, “Oh, we thought being tough, we thought sending the cops into the campuses and being no criticism of Israel was going to win us these people.” That’s not how the game works. And they’re playing a game and we’re not, right? We’re talking about real, we want fundamental changes in the US government. That’s what it’s about.
Marc Steiner:
And I think to kind of wrap things up here a little bit, Anna and Lyle, just picking up on what Ryan was saying, I mean, it seems to me that this war in Gaza is one of the most critical moments we face in modern history. Something is deeply shifting because of this war. You can see the momentum in this country, younger generations of Jews and others in this country saying no. And so you’ve all been involved in this stuff for a while.
So I’m curious where you think this takes us. What do you think is going to be, what are the possibilities where this could take us because of war in Gaza? It could lead to this neo-fascist state under Trump. It could lead to the Democrats kind of imploding, and it could be a disaster all through the Middle East. I mean, this is a very serious moment we’re facing. So I’d like to get your kind of thoughts on where you think it takes us. What’s your analysis and where it tells us? And let me start this time, go over to Neil and then coming to Anna. I mean, Lyle, excuse me.
Lyle Rubin:
No problem. So I think one of the interesting things that we’ve seen in recent months, and particularly in recent weeks, is a number of labor unions standing up in solidarity with Palestine. You have the UAW that’s released multiple statements now, not just calling for a ceasefire, but also defending all the students that are getting beat up by cops and relating their own experience on the picket line getting beat up by cops with the students that are getting beat up. One of the first labor leaders to come out against Israeli action in Gaza was a Jewish anti-Zionist, the head of the, I believe, the postal workers union.
Ryan Harvey:
The APWU.
Lyle Rubin:
Yeah. Yeah. So I think there’s a lot of potential for broader coalition building in the years ahead. A kind of broad, if not maybe anti-imperialist front, then at least a broad kind of more progressive foreign policy front that I haven’t seen my entire lifetime. And I agree with you, Marc, that the major concern right now is just making sure that Trump and the neo-fascists don’t take power of the government and effectively preclude those types of possibilities. So I think we have to play two different games at the same time. One, we have to be very pragmatic and very focused about making sure that the far right doesn’t gain the kind of power that they potentially can gain. But we also have to look in a more forward-thinking way about what we want this country to actually look like in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years.
Anna Evans-Goldstein:
Yeah, I just put a star next to both things that Lyle and Ryan said. Yes, I am scared by the potential prospect of the rise of the far right in this country. And that is a scary place that we could potentially go. But we’re in a scary place now. We are already in a scary place, and we have been for some time. And I think that the sort of more optimistic and positive view that I like to move with is that what we’re building right now is just the most broad-based coalition of progressive organizers, activists, voters, citizens, non-citizens in this country that we’ve ever seen. The Greater Baltimore residents for ceasefire letter that Ryan mentioned earlier, had the most broad based sign-ons from organizations that never would’ve worked together before then. You have people working together now that have never organized together, people kind of crossing into a realm that they’ve not been before with each other. And I just see that happening more and more. And I think that that’s really exciting. And I think that that actually can take us to a really positive place.
Ryan Harvey:
And something I wanted to say, an important thing, if Trump gets re-elected, we’re the ones that are going to be facing that. These people in this movement, if there’s another Charlottesville, it’s going to be these people that are the ones that are there. Some of them were there, some of us were out in the streets facing the Proud Boys when they were marching in the buildup to January 6th. That’s who these protests are. It’s these young people. It’s diverse, real diversity. These people are at serious risk if Trump becomes the president. So we care extremely about that, of course. And we feel very, very strongly that the course that Biden’s going right now is the course that leads to a Trump re-election.
Marc Steiner:
I do thank the three of you, and Anna, the positive note you brought us, is really important for us to hear because it is building. And I think that the three of you putting all your efforts and literally your bodies on the line at times to stop what’s going on, both in terms of what’s happening in Gaza and for a better America. And I do appreciate the work you’re doing. It warms the cockles of an old activist’s heart, just to see the next generation really kind of standing up and organizing and saying, “There’s a different way to do this.” So we’ll see what happens in the primaries coming with the uncommitted vote. It’ll be here in Maryland, be across the country, and that will take people to the DNC, I’m sure, inside and outside. And we’ll be covering that as well. And I want to thank all three of you for being with us here today at the Steiner Show, Anna Evans-Goldstein, pleasure to going back and forth and helping put this together. Appreciate that time. Lyle Rubin, pleasure to meet you. And Ryan Harvey, always good to see you.
Ryan Harvey:
Of course.
Marc Steiner:
So thanks to all three of you for being with us.
Ryan Harvey:
Thanks, Marc.
Lyle Rubin:
Thank you.
Anna Evans-Goldstein:
Thank you very much.
Marc Steiner:
And thank you once again for joining us today, all of you and our guests. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the show and editing this program and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. So please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll write to you right back. Once again, thank you to Anna Evans-Goldstein, Lyle Rubin, Ryan Harvey for the work they’re doing and for joining us today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
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