IN THE 2000 US presidential election, a rare opportunity was presented to progressive Americans to vote their conscience. It came in the candidacy of Ralph Nader, the long-time consumer advocate and anti-nuclear campaigner, responsible for, among other things, ensuring seat belts were installed in every car, thus saving millions of lives. Nader ran in 2000 as a third party candidate, representing the Green Party.

But when the Republican presidential nominee, George W Bush, won Florida by the narrowest of margins over his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, delivering him the presidency, Nader was blamed. Many in the Democratic Party still bear a grudge and won’t take his phone calls.

As it turned out, Bush collected more votes from registered Democrats in Florida than Nader’s entire tally in the state. If you were going to ask “what were you thinking” and assign blame, start with them.

Bush, who served two terms, came to be considered by many as a war criminal after leading the US invasion of Iraq on two false premises: to avenge the September 11 attacks (neither the Iraqi government nor its citizens were involved); and to root out weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (there were none).

However, even Bush is enjoying a revisionist rehabilitation when contrasted with the dictatorial leanings of past US president Donald Trump, positioned to be the almost certain Republican nominee facing incumbent Democrat Joe Biden in the November 2024 presidential election.

So, here we are again, with a similar dilemma of conscience. The spoiler this time could be maverick independent, Robert Kennedy Jnr, who is as likely to collect up right-wing conspiracy theorists as disaffected lefties and is therefore seen as a threat to both sides. This could neutralise his impact, but Democrats seem especially worried and have organised a Super Pac called “Citizens to Save Our Republic” to dissuade voters from supporting a third party candidate.

The Green Party, which has never won a seat in the US House or Senate, already lost its candidate when progressive intellectual Cornel West ditched his affiliation to run as an independent. But his campaign is all but invisible.

Instead, for left progressives, it could come down to a bitter choice between voting for Biden or staying home.

Bitter, because Biden is making it more and more difficult by the day for progressive Americans to support him, due almost entirely to his position on — and response to — Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people.

That support began to erode with the repellent October 18 optic of Biden hugging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Anger further grew as the Biden administration continued to support — and arm — the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians, refused to endorse the call for a ceasefire, and, more recently, launched bombing raids against Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria.

It comes as a surprise therefore to find Nader himself, who has railed for years against the two-party system, advocating for Biden — while not officially endorsing him. In an interview last September with the Washington Post, the still fiery Nader, who turns 90 on February 27, expressed fears about the drift toward fascism in the Republican Party, also known as the GOP.

“I know the difference between fascism and autocracy, and I’ll take autocracy any time,” Nader told the Post. “Fascism is what the GOP is the architecture of, and autocracy is what the Democrats are practitioners of. But autocracy leaves an opening. They don’t suppress votes. They don’t suppress free speech.”

Who will prevail in November may largely hang on whether progressives will back Biden or, pricked by conscience, boycott him, risking something worse instead — a second Trump presidency and a likely sharp right turn toward fascism. And it may also depend on whether Israel’s war in Gaza is over by then or whether the US has continued to stoke it or even provoked a regional conflagration involving Iran.

“The anger at Biden’s support for this assault on Gaza is really just incandescent,” said Matt Duss during an interview on the progressive news programme, Democracy Now! Duss is executive vice-president at the Centre for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders.

Duss further warned that there are “some groups of Democratic voters who simply cannot bring themselves to pull the lever or check the box for a president who is supporting this.”

Linda Pentz Gunter, a US-based writer, is the founder of the non-profit Beyond Nuclear (BeyondNuclear.org).