To keep voting blue/red no matter is how you create the very situation we are in. Punishing politicians is how you get them to work for you and not for themselves and pacs.
Young voters not voting in primaries is how we got into this situation.
You want politicians who represent you? Gotta vote in primaries! But the elderly, who are a smaller slice of the population, absolutely shit kick the youth in terms of voting in primaries.
Want change? Gotta vote even when it’s not trending on social media.
That’s great! Keep it up! Encourage others!
The problem with democracy is even when you and I do the right stuff, it’s all about encouraging those millions of others. And too many millions of younger voters don’t have your decency/notion of the body politic/whatever your reasons for voting are.
Party leadership has control over primaries and don’t have any legal responsibility to have them be fair or even have them at all.
Whew! Good thing you’ve got an excuse for everything, otherwise you might actually have to do something other than play-act at being a radical on social media.
If you don’t vote in them it doesn’t matter.
If the most vocal young voters had actually shown up for Sanders, who as far as I can tell, offered pretty much everything progressives could realistically ask for, well, we’d be in a very different position.
But, elderly people outvoted the youth ans went centrist Clinton.
Edit: a word
Not voting is not “punishing” anyone, it’s simply abdicating your own power. Political parties aren’t businesses you can punish by boycotting their products.
Parties represent the views of those who support them by some combination of getting involved, organizing, donating, and most importantly voting in BOTH the primaries (for the one who best represents you) and the general for whoever won the primary even if it wasn’t your primary choice. To wield power you have to win elections. To win you have to please those who will vote for you and if your base won’t vote for you, you have to turn to the middle and right to get votes. If your base would show up for you, you could safely move left and still win (republicans always show up and vote for the R, so their party has moved more and more right).
Look what happened after Dobbs. Dem candidates used to be afraid to alienate moderates/conservatives by even mentioning abortion because they needed to get some of those voters to win, but when democrats got motivated by Dobbs and actually turned out for Dem candidates, they immediately stood up loudly for abortion rights and other rights as well, once they knew their base would show up for them. If the Dem base would continue to show up, the party would move more left on the issues, since they’d know they can win with their base and don’t have to worry about alienating conservatives.
I didn’t say anything about not voting. I think people should vote in a strategic way however. And that means at times you need to vote on the other side or back a different politician.
I do agree that voting in primaries is important. I think there are also things that we can do to help move away from this corrupt system. For example, having ranked choice voting.
I do think that a big problem is that people aren’t willing to sacrifice some comfort in the short term for long term gain. If voting temporarily for red because blue isn’t listening to you or being corrupt then when they lose they’ll learn to listen to you next time. If not them, then someone else. People don’t do this and will vote red or blue no matter what which results in shit politicians.
Which why we need a voting system that can end the duopoly without enormous sacrifice. Ranked Choice Voting can do that. If really hate the duopoly, you have no excuse not to join us and get RCV implemented everywhere. Check out FairVote for more info and to locate movements near you.
