From the “dark cloud” of Vietnam that caused the Democrats’ defeat in 1968 to Gaza in Kamala Harris’s current campaign

“Welcome to the belly of the beast.” Waleed Shahid welcomes this way, with reference to the headquarters of the US federal government, Washington DC, which has the power to continue to facilitate or not the weapons with which Israel has been carrying out genocide in Gaza for more than a Used to be. Year. Waleed Shahid is a Democratic strategist who most recently joined the Uncommitted National Movement – ​​which does not support the Democratic nomination of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris because of their support for Israel – and has been a spokesperson for the Justice Democrats for six years , when he played a key role in the launch of the Green New Deal campaign and the election of progressive representatives from the left wing of the Democratic Party such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and Summer Lee. Shahid was a senior advisor to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election campaign and worked for Bernie Sanders in 2016.

With barely a week left until the US presidential elections, Shahid reflects on the major element the Democratic community is going through: the Israeli massacre in Gaza. “For over a year, there has been a coalition of progressive Democrats, Muslim Democrats, and young Arabs who have been pushing for a change in White House policy on sending weapons to Israel,” Shahid explains. “In the last year, neither Not by Joe Biden and not by Kamala Harris. “There is a lot of frustration among core voters in the Democratic Party, and it affects Vice President Harris deeply because it reduces enthusiasm for her campaign among the communities that formed Biden’s coalition in 2020 and now Harris “We are not putting forward his candidature.”