The Nation: “Kamala Harris Does Not Deserve The Nation’s Endorsement”

Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the vice president’s ceremonial office at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, on July 25, 2024. (Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty Images)

The Biden administration’s action, and inaction, in Gaza—and her support for those policies—should have been enough to disqualify her.

On September 23, The Nation endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. “Of course we endorse Harris over Trump,” the unsigned editorial reads. “But we also endorse Harris in her own right, as an experienced and capable leader with a vision for America’s future…that represents a clear advance on Democratic nominees of the past half century.” The endorsement goes on to cite the magazine’s abolitionist founders—“both visionary radicals and deeply practical politicians”—as touchstones for the decision to support Harris.

We, The Nation’s current interns, find this endorsement unearned and disappointing. We have a different interpretation of the magazine’s abolitionist legacy, one that says a publication committed to justice must refrain from endorsing a person signing off on genocide. We do not support Donald Trump, but to champion Harris at this moment is to ignore the atrocities that are being carried out with weapons supplied by the Biden-Harris administration.

The Nation’s endorsement notes that on foreign policy the “positive case [for Harris] is harder to make,” adding that “she has failed so far to offer anything more substantive to the millions of Americans…desperate for an end to America’s unconditional support for Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.” Yet it goes on to endorse her anyway—implying that domestic concerns are somehow more important. We disagree. On the grounds of Gaza alone, Harris should not have received The Nation’s endorsement.

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Read the full article by the Fall 2024 Nation Interns (Thomas Birmingham, Xenia Gonikberg, Kelly Hui, Samaa Khullar, and Grayson Scott). This counter-endorsement, written in a short time span, received praise online and within the office.