Tom Morello didn’t vote for Kamala Harris. This was a controversial revelation for many, though most people simply wondered “who’s Tom Morello?” Morello is a musician who played for the bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. His background is compelling: His mother was American activist Mary Morello, who founded in 1987 the anti-censorship group Parents for Rock and Rap that stood in opposition to Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center. His father was Ngethe Njoroge, a Kenyan journalist and diplomat who died in 2023. Njoroge was involved in the Mau Mau Uprising and served as Kenya's first ambassador to the United Nations. (Morello’s paternal great-uncle, Jomo Kenyatta, was the first elected president of Kenya.)
Morello has openly protested the Trump regime, including hosting an anti-Trump music fest where he had “Fuck ICE” on his guitar, but he apparently couldn’t bring himself to vote for the person who could’ve prevented a second Trump presidency. When asked during a Rolling Stone interview if he’d voted for Harris, Morello said, “I certainly did not … Did not. I couldn’t do it.”
His reasons were, somewhat predictably, Harris’s position on Gaza, which was objectively better than Donald Trump’s, and his overall contempt for the “corporate controlled, money controlled electoral system,” which is sort of the one we have. I personally live in reality and thus vote in that reality’s America.
Left-wing activist Jordan Uhl argued on social media that Tom Morello not voting for Kamala Harris doesn’t really matter because Morello lives in California, a state Harris won anyway.
“How about you explain how Tom Morello leaving President blank in a state where Harris won by 3.2 million votes had any impact?” Uhl wrote. “How would Tom Morello voting for Harris in California made a difference here?”
It actually did make a difference, as Harris’s performance in California was the worst for a Democratic candidate since 2004, the last time that a Democratic presidential nominee didn’t at least win the popular vote. Harris lost the Electoral College because she narrowly lost the vital swing states, but Trump was able to thump his chest and claim a mandate from his slim popular vote margin. (This also had far too many Democrats cowering.) So, Democrats running up the score in solid-blue states does matter very much.
Uhl is also defending Morello’s choice from a practical position, but Morello makes clear that he abstained for supposed moral reasons. Thus, he likely would have refused to vote for Harris even if he lived in Michigan. Yet, not voting for Harris to stop Trump is in no way morally defensible. The devastation and death Trump has caused is undeniable and not at all shocking. The only moral action was voting for Harris, who was hardly the “lesser evil.” It’s not like you had to choose between Donald Trump and temporarily lucid Sarah Palin.
Morello insists that Democrats are the true problem because they apparently aren’t morally pure enough. However, America is (still) a democracy and Democrats need votes from more than just those who rage against the machine. Compromise is a necessary function of living in an adult society. Besides, we’re choosing elected officials not Jesus.
I don’t support “vote shaming” people who didn’t support Harris. That’s not constructive, either. But I do caution against a political nihilism that insists Democrats are no better or even different than Republicans and that the entire electoral system is irredeemably corrupt. This only benefits Republicans.
The PlayTyperGuy is supported by paid subscribers. Please become one!
Prior to the 1996 presidential election, comedian George Carlin admitted that he didn’t vote or otherwise involve himself in politics, which he considered pointless.
“Two reasons I don’t vote. First of all, it’s meaningless. This country was bought and sold and paid for a long time ago. This shit they shuffle around every four years? It doesn’t mean a fucking thing.
And secondly, I don’t vote because I believe if you vote you have no right to complain. People like to twist that around, I know. They say, ‘Well, if you don’t vote you have no right to complain.’ But where’s the logic in that?
If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people and they get into office and screw everything up, well, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem. You voted them in. You have no right to complain.
I, on the other hand … who did not vote…who did not vote…who, in fact, did not even leave the house on Election Day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain as loud as I want about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with.
So, I know that a little later on this year you’re gunna have another one of those really swell presidential elections that you like so much. You enjoy yourselves; it’ll be a lot of fun. I’m sure as soon as the election is over your country will improve immediately.
As for me, I’ll be home on that day, doing essentially the same thing as you. The only difference is, when I get finished masturbating, I’m gonna have a little something to show for it, folks.”
I enjoy Carlin’s work, but this perspective — “I can complain because I didn’t vote” — is not sophisticated. It’s juvenile, which is why hip college kids always repeat it.
On October 27 1996, a week before the presidential election Carlin skipped, The Simpsons aired its seventh Halloween special featuring the classic political satire “Citizen Kang.”
Alien conquerers Kang (Harry Shearer) and Kodos (Dan Castellaneta) randomly abduct Homer Simpson (Castellaneta) and explain their diabolical plot to replace America’s leader and thus rule the world. Homer points out that current President Bill Clinton is running for re-election and Americans might possibly replace him with his Republican opponent, Bob Dole. (This requires more suspension of disbelief than the aliens who speak English, as Clinton had maintained a comfortable 15- to-17-point lead over Dole in the polls for months. Americans were less politically polarized and insane back then.)
Kang and Kodos decide to cover their bases and abduct both Dole (Shearer) and Clinton (the late Phil Hartman). They have no trouble offering up nonsensical political platitudes for their supporters. Kang, posing as Dole, vows, “The politics of failure have failed. We need to make them work again.” Kodos, prosing as Clinton, tells rally goers, “My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball. But tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!”
“Citizen Kang” seemingly embraces much of Carlin’s political nihilism. Kodos, posing as Dole, tells hack journalist Kent Brockman, “It makes no difference which one of us you vote for. Either way, your species is doomed! Doomed!” which Brockman cluelessly describes as a “refreshing frank response.” (Yes, that’s eerily close to how the real world media covers Trump.)
Homer frees the real Clinton and Dole but accidentally kills them because he’s Homer. When he exposes Kang and Kodos’s true alien forms to the public, they insist it’s too late to stop them: “It’s true. We are aliens, but what are you going to do about it? It’s a two-party system, you have to vote for one of us!” Someone in the crowd suggests voting for a third-party candidate, one who’s not a bloodthirsty alien menace, but Kang mocks this idea, “Go ahead! Throw your vote away!”
Thus, Americans willingly elect Kang (The Simpsons really thought Dole had a shot) and end up enslaved. Homer smugly tells a complaining Marge (Julie Kavner), “Don’t blame me! I voted for Kodos.” This was a reference to a common right-wing expression after Clinton was first elected in 1992: “Don’t blame me! I voted for Bush” showed up on bumper stickers, buttons, and T-shirts. Of course, the punchline for “Citizen Kang” is that Homer actually believes voting for Kodos would’ve made a difference. He still doesn’t understand that the aliens offered a false choice and their positions were truly interchangeable. That isn’t the case with the Democratic Party, even at their worst. If you want to stop MAGA, you’ll have to vote for Democrats (or non-MAGA independents in red states). Not voting isn’t the sophisticated choice. It’s nihilistic. Refusing to support Harris in 2024 or the inevitably imperfect Democratic nominee in 2028 isn’t believing in a better tomorrow. It’s refusing to help create one.
I suspect frequently the ‘both parties are the same’ thing is a lazy kind of see I am too sophisticated performative hipness. I’m way too cool for school… Or to vote… Or presumably to wash… Or to do any of the things we collectively have to do as a community to get along together and make it work together.
I’m not entirely unsympathetic to people who get cynical about systems that have become unresponsive, filled with the corrupt. That’s easy to do, but it’s basically saying swimming is tiring when the current is pulling me out to sea so fuck it gonna stop swimming and see if I can breathe water. Yeah that’s a good plan. That’ll show them.
So yes, I vote.
And no one I have ever voted for didn’t stand for the odd thing I didn’t, didn’t say the odd thing I disagreed with. That’s just how life is. Don’t make perfect the enemy of doing something. Your candidate is your instrument. It will always be a somewhat imperfect instrument from the point of view of virtually everyone using them, but still, job to do, work with what you can find.
Vote. Protest. Donate. Volunteer. Engage. Do things with other people. I’m basically an alien and inclined to want solitude and I manage to hold my nose and do these things because that’s just how the world is. Fucking hell the rest of you can.
good one, Stephen. the nihilist argument is also part of the classic "I don't have to vote bc I live in a blue state," which I used to hear often in New York City. or applied differently, "I don't have to vote bc I live in a red state so my vote doesn't matter." they were always so smug about it, insult to injury.