In this encore edition of our three-part series, Democratic Socialist JP Lyninger sits down with freelance writer Charlie Cy to discuss his stances on several of the electrically charged national and international issues that are influencing the 2024 presidential election and dividing our nation.
Author’s Note: Undoubtedly, this final installment – that touches on the sincerity of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign proposals . . . DJT as “the boogeyman” . . . the complicated logic of interminably voting for the lesser of two evils in a two-party system . . . the war in Gaza (which JP unapologetically refers to as a “genocide”) . . . and the curtailment of speech on college campuses – will be the most provocative segment in our series. But it’s also the most telling. Whatever you may think about JP’s positions below, one thing is clear: he’s not infected with the disease of equivocation that plagues so many of our politicians. With that in mind, we started this conversation with his quote on transparency, which I want to return to, to open this final chapter:
“My answer doesn’t change depending on who I’m talking to. It doesn’t matter what room I’m in or what size room. You can’t try to make change by trying to obfuscate what you think or hide your beliefs. And so, I’ve always tried to be extremely upfront about: these are the problems that we have; these are the things that I want to try to do to fix them.” – JP Lyninger
Kamala Harris’ Economic Agenda – Big Tech and Wall Street Grin – Dems Ignore Calls for Primary at DNC – Who is Harris? – You Don’t Control Voters, You Campaign for Their Vote
Charlie Cy: Kamala Harris finally came out with an economic platform last month [now two months ago]. It ranges from combatting grocery store price gouging to rent control. Do you believe she believes in these policies and will act on them, or do you think it’s a hollow campaign promise?
JP Lyninger: First of all, I think there are always shell games in politics about what you’re actually doing—like hiding the ball.
But let’s take it at face value and say that we’re going to fight for these things. That’s not the coalition she’s building. Right? Her appeals are to the Right. She wants to bring in “Never Trump” Republicans and that’s the messaging of her campaign.
It’s just like what I talked about with my campaign. You can’t run one way and then swing for the fences once you’re in office. It won’t work. So, if her appeals are all to Republicans who don’t want these policies, then I don’t believe that she can make it happen, because they’re going to call that bluff. Again, the money is very, very powerful in politics, and they don’t want rent control. They don’t want to stop price gouging.
And so, there’s going to be [excuses made to cover for their inaction, like,] “Oh, but Kristen Sinema!” “Oh, but Republicans control the Senate!” “Oh, but the parliamentarian!” And we’re right back here.
Charlie Cy: It seemed like Wall Street was almost excited when they heard that she was going to be next in line—they weren’t too concerned by her nomination . . .
JP Lyninger: Tech is excited. She’s from California. She has a good relationship with gig economy and tech and crypto [industries]. I’ve seen lots of people talking about, “This is a chance to get someone who really understands what we need to deregulate crypto.”
And people are talking about us having a strategic financial reserve of Bitcoins and stuff like that. That’s insane.
Also, Big Business doesn’t want disruption in the fabric of society. They don’t want Donald Trump. They want the nice steady hand. And people that could read polling all knew that Joe Biden was in big, big trouble. That the majority of people had come to the conclusion that he was too old well before people were willing to acknowledge it. And, that he was going to lose to Donald Trump. And people felt so bad about it that it was hurting the electoral prospects up and down the ballot. It’s demotivating. It’s demobilizing.
And people felt very frustrated, like the car is on fire and no one is at the wheel. And so, I’m not surprised that Wall Street is much happier with Kamala Harris, the candidate. Most people are.
Charlie Cy: Are you happier?
JP Lyninger: Yes. I publicly said before other people were willing to say it. Joe Biden should step down. He should not be the nominee. I think it would have been a lot better, because here’s the thing: People knew. People on the inside knew. And we could have had a primary. We could have had real democratic decision making.
Charlie Cy: That was another interesting thing. Party elders, at first, weren’t ready to hand Harris the nomination after Biden stepped down. Barack Obama, for example, he in so-many-words said, “I’m not going to wade in on this.” But then the party quickly congealed around her. They could’ve gone to the convention. With that said, I don’t know how you could have skipped over her. But still, there was no Democratic process. What did you think about that?
JP Lyninger: I think no matter what process you had she was always the likely outcome. But to not even have that fig leaf of a primary at the convention. I do think that’s a problem.
I think that for a long time her campaign didn’t realize some of those problems that were manifesting. There was polling that came out that said people wanted to know more about her and were frustrated that she wasn’t putting out policy.
And again, the response was to scold voters, rather than to sit back and say, “Well, actually, this was a person who dropped out before Iowa in 2020, who no one has ever voted for, and people do want to know this person better before we make her president.”
I think that’s a legitimate impulse. And even if you think that voters should just get in line and accept Donald Trump is worse, and this is the nominee we’ve got—we’ve just got to vote for her. Well, even if you feel that way, guess what? You don’t control the voters.
And if the voters say, “This is what I need in order to feel comfortable voting for her.” That’s what campaigning is. You have to go talk to the voters. And if voters say, “I’ll vote for you if you tell me more about your policy.” You better go tell them about policy. That’s on you as the candidate. Those are the people’s vote you’re trying to earn. That’s the relationship. And to treat voters like they owe you, not the other way around, you do that at your own peril.
Tactical Voting – The Boogeyman Is No Spring Chicken – Republican Realignment – Dick Cheney – Dead Iraqis – Defeat the One Unreasonable Person – Rockefeller Republicans
Charlie Cy: Earlier you said, you “kept voting” [even after you’d thrown in the towel, and given up on the idea of getting into politics during the early Obama years, which led you to feeling some level of political disillusionment]. I’m going to go on a tangent and then come back to where we were. I want to discuss the idea of always voting for the lesser of two evils. Is that something that you ascribe to?
JP Lyninger: Tactical voting is real. There are a lot of things to weigh. But I do think that the idea that we should always be committed to the lesser of two evils . . . look at where it’s gotten us. I don’t think things are on a very good track. And, also, from the inside perspective, if that’s always your strategy of how you’re going to motivate your voting base, eventually this boogeyman goes away.
Eventually, Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee. He’s no spring chicken. He’ll be dead one day. Maybe it takes two electoral losses, but eventually he’s not the Republican nominee, and the Republican party will realign itself back towards a more business-Republican Mitch McConnell-wing of the Republican party. And then what do you do when the next nominee for president from the Republican party is a John Kasich type?
Because right now, you’ve got the Democratic nominee saying, “Hey, Dick Cheney’s endorsed me.” That to me is playing with fire in an electoral sense, beyond the moral sense, because Dick Cheney is a war criminal and there’s a million dead people in Iraq, and it will take a century for our economy to recover from the war crimes of the Bush administration.
But even setting that aside, when your appeal is, “Hey, listen, we’re all reasonable people here, there’s just this one unreasonable person, and let’s defeat the unreasonable person.” Well, now you have said these people are reasonable. And four years . . . eight years . . . whenever from now, when it’s a different kind of election, I think that the Democratic party is currently sowing some seeds for a rude awakening one November when all of the sudden people start voting like there are Rockefeller Republicans on the ticket. And the problem with that is, they won’t even be [Rockefeller Republicans because that’s not who they are or will be in the future].
It’s frustrating to me. And I think that there is a problem from the voter’s perspective, when you say that voting for the lesser of two evils is just what we have to do every time. We just have to accept the parameters of the system, accept the horizon of what’s possible. Well, for one, you’re constantly limiting that horizon. You’re pulling back. You’re in a prevent defense. And then all of the electoral pressure on the candidates is from the Right. And so, they, [the Left], are going to say, “Well, I’m going to defend my Right flank.” And they’re going to move Right. And we’ve seen that consistently. It’s very frustrating to me.
And it’s such a big deal about how we have let, especially on economic policy, the Right make these decisions for us in this country because of those blinders.
Going back to talking about the Bush administration and the economic consequences—the majority of my adult life the United States was at war. I told my kid the other day, “You have no idea the amount of wealth the United States had when I was growing up.” We have austerity budgets at every level in this government now. And the mindset is that’s going to continue forever.
And part of that is an economic consequence of how we set more money on fire in Iraq and Afghanistan than you can possibly imagine. And with the militarization of the federal government and then our local governments through selling military weapons to police departments, this is where we put all our money. And now that bill is going to be due for the rest of our lives. And if we don’t make changes about that, it’s going to happen again, because nobody learned their lesson.
Gaza Genocide – Ceasefire Resolution – The Conservative Estimate: 40,000 Dead – Reagan Flexes U.S. Muscle to Stop Israeli Bombing: “I didn’t know I had that kind of power!”
Charlie Cy: Do you want to talk about Gaza?
JP Lyninger: Absolutely. I’m not afraid to talk about it. Anytime that someone asks me to speak at an antiwar rally, a Palestinian solidarity rally, I will attend. It’s genocide. It’s ethnic cleansing. And again, you can’t hide what you think about things. I was very involved with the effort to get the ceasefire resolution before the local Metro Council. Again, these weren’t secrets.
Charlie Cy: How did that go?
JP Lyninger: We passed it out of committee but ended up withdrawing it at the council level because the Palestinian organizers asked us to pull it because it wasn’t going to pass. Because what was going to pass . . . they were going strip it, in an amendment, and turn it into something painfully toothless. And people said, “No! We’re going to take the win of it coming out of committee and continue organizing and fighting.”
But it’s a genocide, and it’s paid for with our tax dollars. We send the bombs that are killing women and children. The conservative estimate is 40,000 dead [now a month later 42,600]. The real number is much higher. Especially when you start looking at not just people killed by munitions, but death by disease, death by famine. It’s terrible, and we’re paying for it.
We could stop it. There’s that famous story of the bombing campaign that Israel was doing in Lebanon in the eighties and Reagan picks up the phone and says, “This is a genocide. This is a holocaust.” And the response was, I think I know something about that word. But, within the hour, the bombing stopped. And Reagan, says, “I didn’t know I had that kind of power.” We have that kind of power. If the United States removed our financial support, if we conditioned aid even, and said no more military aid, no more aid for Israel until the offensive in Gaza stops, it would stop. There is no way for it to continue without our support. And so, to me, that’s a moral obligation to make it stop.
Single Issue Voter: Gaza – Swing State Hypothetical – Canvassing Michigan – How does a genocide matter less? – “I’ve met Americans” – We Have a Term for Illegal Deaths – Zombie Solution – Israeli Settlements – What is a State?
Charlie Cy: What do you say to the voter, where this [Gaza] is their singular issue? I know Kentucky is not a great test case scenario. But let’s pretend Kentucky is a swing state, for example, and this issue was prioritized as the top concern for a voter. No matter their identity—someone said to you, “You know, I don’t want to vote for Trump. But I also don’t think Harris is going to do any better in Gaza. And I don’t want to do that.” How do you speak to that voter?
JP Lyninger: I did speak to voters like that. I went up to Michigan a couple of times in the past year canvassing in the area outside of Detroit. This is a real issue.
I mean first-order, if you’re talking to someone who literally sees their family, friends and people who they know personally, who are currently experiencing a genocide, how do you tell that person that this is just one issue among many? You can’t tell that person that. And again, you don’t control voters.
There is a refusal, by the Democratic party, by the Harris campaign, by the Biden administration, to meet the concerns of these people. It’s all, “the threat of Donald Trump.”
Charlie Cy: But it’s a hell of a gun held to your head though, isn’t it?
JP Lyninger: Yes. Right. To me, it goes back to that idea about the current world order requiring racism. How do you say that what happens here matters more?
How do you say that whatever barometer swing on policy in the United States that would happen under a Donald Trump administration versus a Kamala Harris administration, how does a genocide matter less? How do those people’s lives not matter?
And it’s frustrating because there’s been huge generational shifts on perception of Israel and Palestine, primarily driven by people now who can get the news firsthand and have a much better understanding of what conditions are like for the Palestinian people. What the oppression and the ethnic cleansing and apartheid looks like.
It didn’t start on October 7. And even decrying civilian deaths, civilian casualties, war crimes, even decrying those things, the answer is not indiscriminate death and destruction among the civilian population.
And you can’t say, “Oh, I would care about this issue if only the Palestinians had been more peaceful.”
Because, first, you can’t tell me that Americans, if they were experiencing what the Palestinians would experience, would have a pacifist response. I’ve met Americans.
But second, there were attempts in Gaza, there were the protests at the border a few years ago, where there were massive civilian casualties at peaceful protests. Snipers from the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] admitted to deliberately targeting people’s knees to maim them for life. People were killed. The UN reviewed and found all but one death. I can’t remember what the total number was—a significant number of civilian deaths at these protests and determined all but one were non-security concerns and therefore illegal.
We have a term for illegal deaths. Those are murders. They murdered people that tried to protest peacefully at the border in Gaza.
And then we have, again, these performative solutions offered by people in power in the United States. People talk about a “two-state solution.” Well, if that was ever possible, that’s a zombie. We have had decades of Netanyahu in power deliberately making sure that a two-state solution will never happen. Because a two-state solution requires Palestinian control of the West Bank. And now you’ve got Israeli settlements, illegal Israeli settlements that again, we allow, and we financially support these illegal settlements in the West Bank.
And you can’t have a two-state solution with Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights. And again, what do people mean by a two-state solution? Do you mean a Palestinian state with its own military, its own sovereign power? Anytime someone says “two-state solution,” that should be the immediate follow-up from our media. Is that what you mean?
And if that’s not what you mean, what is a state? What’s a two-state solution?
“A liberal secular Israel that is not ethno-nationalist is not on the table” – Zionist Project is making “Jews less safe in America” – Wife’s Hanukkah Dress Anecdote – Identity Politics and the Politics of Authenticity
Charlie Cy: A vassal state?
JP Lyninger: Right. Where Israel has military control and occupation. What you mean is Israel has control of what is acceptable internal politics of that “Palestinian state,” quote-unquote. That’s not going to work. And it gets at the real heart of the problem, which is you have to talk about a two-state solution because a liberal secular Israel that is not ethno-nationalist is not on the table.
It’s wild to me the difference of what you’re allowed to talk about in Israel versus what you’re allowed to talk about in America about this problem. [Due to] the demographics in Israel. If you said, “Refugees should be allowed to resettle into their homes or anywhere.” And you said, “the Palestinian population should have full legal rights.” Well, people in Israel would say, “That’s insane. That’s suicidal because then we’re not going to be a Jewish state anymore.”
And then you have this response from the United States of, “We need a Jewish state. Jews aren’t safe, anywhere except for Israel.” I think that says something pretty terrible about your beliefs about America—that only a Zionist project gives a safe place for Jews. That’s saying Jews can’t be safe in America.
And in fact, I believe what’s happening now makes Jews less safe in America. My wife is Jewish. This past Hanukkah, she got this Hanukkah dress online that had a dreidel and Chinese takeout and the Star of David on it. And she got it, and she was very excited about it, and then she wore it out and she said, “Oh, I’m actually really nervous wearing something like this for the first time in my life.” And she feels very strongly that it’s the fault of this ethno-nationalist project.
If you say that “Zionism is necessary for Jewish safety,” and if you say that “Anti-Zionist Jews are actually antisemitic, that they’re not really Jews,” which is something people say, then you are tying Jewish identity to what’s happening in Gaza. People have a negative opinion about what’s happening in Gaza. You’re inflaming antisemitism.
It’s antisemitic to say all Jews believe one thing. And on any other topic, there would be zero fight about how this is an antisemitic thing to say. But to say on this one topic, “All Jews must believe this one thing, and that Jewish identity is a Venn diagram that’s a perfect circle with Zionism”—that is antisemitic, and it’s dangerous.
Pediatrics and “The Children” – “Hamas! Hamas! Hamas!” – The Only Solution Is Political – Sinn Féin and Northern Ireland Analogy
Charlie Cy: Have there been any complications with your views versus your wife’s views on this issue, or are you two simpatico?
JP Lyninger: No. My wife is in med school at UofL. She went back to school. And no matter what she does, it’s going to be in pediatrics. One time someone tried to ask her this line of questioning and she started crying and she said, “How can you not look at the children? And not say it has to stop.”
It’s hard, knowing what’s happening. And we’re back on that topic: What do you say to a person who says, “I can’t continue like this”? They say, “I can’t vote for someone who’s allowing this to happen.” Knowing what’s happening to these people, and seeing it expand. Right? It’s gearing up in the West Bank now.
It’s: “Hamas! Hamas! Hamas!” Hamas isn’t in control of the West Bank. But there are military raids. There are people taking these prisoners. We use the word “hostages.” Which again, we talk a lot about the hostages. We’re killing the hostages. The bombing is killing hostages. When there are deals offered for hostages, it keeps not happening because it’s not really about the hostages.
And the only solution is political. The only solution is a permanent end to the offensive in Gaza. The word “ceasefire” got coopted, and it turned into any temporary cessation that people could say, “Well, I’m for a ceasefire.”
What people mean is: We want the United States to use its financial leverage to demand that Israel stop the military offensive. Because the only other answer is the only acceptable solution: The final endpoint of the military offensive in Gaza is [to end] the leveling of Gaza, the displacement of all the people, and permanent Israeli occupation. And then we go back to: What two-state would that be? The only solution is political. The killing has to stop.
Charlie Cy: Are you optimistic this could, can, will happen?
JP Lyninger: I mean, one day. I read a really compelling piece, back in the winter—I want to say it was in The Nation. I’ll look it up. Where they talked about from a long view, the political question has already been won in a lot of ways. That even a military victory for Israel at this point is a political loss.
If you look at other violent liberation movements in the world, Sinn Féin, the IRA, they’re a political party now. Now, you go to Ireland for a state visit, you go shake hands in Northern Ireland with people who were carrying out bombings and violence in the streets.
If there are going to be a Palestinian people, Hamas is a political organization, Hamas is a political party . . .
Charlie Cy: What do you say—I know that people on the other side of this issue are going to immediately jump on a statement like that. They’re going to say: “They, [Hamas], are a straight up terrorist organization.” How do you respond to that?
JP Lyninger: Again, so is the IRA. You have to contend with political demands. Even if you assassinate every leader of Hamas. Let’s say that you can wave a magic wand and every single person who had anything to do with October 7 is removed from the equation. Well, what Israel has done has created a bunch of new militants in Palestine. Okay. And so those people you could either say, “Now we have to kill all the Palestinians,” or you can say “We have to contend with the political needs.” At some point, there’s a political solution or everybody dies.
That’s what I’m trying to say. And I’m not trying to say that what Hamas did was good. And I’m not trying to say that people should feel good about sitting down at a table with people who did those things.
People have grown up – when people tried to talk on October 7 about a collective guilt of the Palestinians in Gaza because they voted Hamas in with a minority [of the population] – there are adults now who were not born when that happened.
What kind of collective guilt is that? And again, Israel had policies where they wanted Hamas in control of Gaza for various reasons. They felt that that was better for Israel to have a Gaza controlled by Hamas. And at the end of the day, unless all of those people are gone, you eventually have to talk to someone who identifies themselves as Hamas about political solutions. And a political solution is the only way.
Free Speech and Student Movement – Need for University Transparency – National Impulse: Arrest Students – “The Russians aren’t coming to Ann Arbor”
Charlie Cy: Speech around this issue feels very complicated. There are real threats to livelihoods and other types of threats in various arenas if you weigh in on this topic [specifically when defending Palestinians’ humanity]. Look at college campuses for example. It feels like a very fraught issue, just to communicate about it. Any thoughts on that?
JP Lyninger: I think that one of the most important fights that the student movement had in the sixties and seventies was centered on free speech. And it’s extremely upsetting to me to see us roll back those protections for our students.
I’m proud to be a UofL alum, and I’m very disappointed to see that the university is targeting student speech. Limiting the way that students write messages in chalk. And stuff like that.
Charlie Cy: That’s now banned. Is that correct?
JP Lyninger: Yes. How can you be afraid of your own students’ speech? I would love to see the university meet with these kids and talk to them about what their concerns are.
About how the university’s endowment is vested. About whether their tuition, whether the fees they pay to the administration, are going to things that they find morally abhorrent. I think students are right to ask those questions and they’re right to have those concerns. And that the moral thing for the university is to say, “yes” or “no.”
You can say: “Yes, we have money in Israel.” “Yes, we have money in Israeli companies.” “Yes, we have money in Israeli bonds.” A lot of money in the United States is in Israeli bonds. And you can say, “Yes. We’ve done that and we frankly think it’s right,” or “We think it’s okay,” or even, “We are just too afraid to make it a political issue and pull that money out.”
Whatever. But be honest. Tell these students the truth. They have a right to know if their money is invested that way—we do a lot to tie identity to universities, especially here. Like I said, my little sister’s first words were, “Go Cards!” UofL has mattered to my family my entire life, well before I was ever the first person in my family to attend a four-year university and go to UofL. Well before that, we were UofL people.
So, if you want to engender that kind of identification with the university, if you want your students to be like, “We are Cardinals. UofL really matters to us.” That’s a pretty kitchen table topic. Is our money tied to Israel? Is our money tied to this genocide? People have the right to ask that question. And the impulse to shut the question down . . .
Look at what’s happening nationally: arrest students. The University of Michigan just asked to double the amount of weaponry on campus. Ballistic rounds. These aren’t for outside agitators. They are not worried that the University of Michigan is about to be invaded. The Russians aren’t coming to Ann Arbor. When you talk about increasing physical security. When you talk about having these, quote-unquote, “less lethal rounds,” increasing your munitions stockpiles at a university, that’s about the students. That’s messed up.
This concludes our three-part conversation with JP Lyninger, the Democratic Socialist running unopposed in November’s general election for Louisville’s District Six Metro Council seat.
This article appears in LEO Weekly presents Readers’ Choice 2024.