A<\/span>s the presidential election finally arrives, questions of electoral tactics and strategy have dominated debates within the U.S. Left. A review of recent arguments put forward by socialists calling for a vote for Biden shows that most of them pivot around the exceptional character<\/a> of this election and focus on the threat of Trump’s authoritarian drive<\/a>, with marginal references to the issue of U.S. imperialism.<\/p>\n There are three tactics, common in the most circulated of these arguments, used in the approach to whether and how to address the issue of the U.S. role as the dominant imperial and military superpower. Often, U.S. empire and the management of the imperial state are simply left out of the equation altogether. Alternatively, there is merely a passing reference in a classic argument in favor of the lesser evil. The third tactic, addressed at the end of this article, seeks to mitigate Biden\u2019s uncontested \u201cevil\u201d by placing him on the side of democracy against authoritarianism.<\/p>\n For the first and most common approach, the issue of imperialism is not addressed at all. For an example, see Nation<\/em> editor Katrina vanden Heuvel<\/a>\u2019s opinion piece last week in the Washington Post<\/em>. The Nation<\/em> itself ran an article signed by dozens of ex-members of the mid-1960s era Students for a Democratic Society<\/a> that was equally silent. In the same vein, former \u201cNew Communist Movement\u201d radical Max Elbaum<\/a> barely addresses the issue, except to assuage concerns based on an unsupported claim that a \u201cshift\u201d to the Left is underway around questions of foreign policy. And beyond a passing reference to Trump\u2019s nuclear policy, a letter in ZNet<\/a> signed by \u201c55 radicals\u201d calling to vote for and then fight Biden, contains no assessment of the role of the U.S. empire in the world. Of the current generation of the \u201cnew new Left,\u201d a more oblique letter in support of a Biden vote from current leading members of DSA<\/a> remains equally mute.<\/p>\n