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I'm a leftist. If Dems want my vote they can move left, if they don't want my vote they can nominate Biden & not move left, but I'm not remotely fucking obligated to support them if they do that. I've got one vote, & I can't afford 10k a plate fundraisers so its my only leverage.
It's wild how god damn complicated of a concept this seems to be to moderate party loyalists.
If I vote for a moderate Dem because "I have to or else" and then the Dem doesn't magically move left, what do I have to try and convince them? My singular vote. But if the Dem is owed that vote in perpetuity because "or else" what incentive do they have to listen?
It still blows my mind to see people in the wild who honestly think Democrats are owed the left's vote no matter how moderate or conservative they are.
Like since i'm not a millionaire donor the only avenue to convincing a politician to do something I want is through my vote. But if the Democrat is always owed my vote by default since they aren't the Republican, what incentive does the Democrat have to try and get my vote?
Oh yeah, I could not vote for them! That way if they want my vote next time they have to move lef- oh now my mentions are full of angry West Wing fans with Hillary Clinton avatars telling me I don't give a shit about civil rights.
So I can either vote against my interests or 'throw my vote away' and my family was as poor under Clinton/Bush as it was under Obama/Trump then I guess I may as well not vote since it doesn't matter and oh look now we have 40% of the country not voting. This is all working great!
Better keep doing this same thing over and over again until the world melts.
lmao at any eternally tedious brain genius who thinks a socialist agrees with Joe Biden on 90% of things.
Unless that 10% we disagree on includes economic policy, the entirety of the party's leadership/strategy, & the party's complicity in propping up the endless funneling of resources into war and the 90% is Being Less Racist Than Republicans it's, uh, not an accurate measurement.
As far as I can tell, most of the really really loyalist types don't actually have any steady politics to agree on anyway. The only unwavering beliefs they have are A) never criticize moderate Democrats and B) Dems didn't make mistakes from 2010-2016, the voters did.
Oh and fucking just endless hatred of Bernie Sanders.
I can't get over how many of these people think Sanders is the Real Problem between the millennial left and the party apparatus. Like if he kicked the bucket tomorrow we'd all decide "oh guess I didn't want economic justice after all, Tom Carper and Chuck Schumer are awesome now"
I almost feel bad for Bernie Sanders because dude is seriously just a proxy at this point.
The donor-loyalists use their hatred of him as a cover for their actual opposition to progressive economic policy and the leftists only defend him so much because they know if the Dems won't accept center-left ass Bernie Sanders they won't accept anything actually transformative.
Not denying that there aren't actually tons of people who legitimately love Bernie Sanders, but I know just anecdotally from the lefties I know that everyone would rather him be the right wing of the Democratic party as opposed to the left wing of it.
I don't know where I'm going with any of this, it just really raises my hackles anytime I see some leadership loyalist lanyard fucker like Tom Watson or Markos or Neera Tanden get real cavalier about other peoples votes.
As soon as they started going all in on the "lol all these fucking bros think a politician should be CONSISTENT and TRUSTWORTHY and needs to EARN their vote with CONCRETE POLICY, fucking morons" I knew I was probably never going to reliably vote Democrat ever again.
"Blue no matter who" is truly the markest bullshit in the world. Why would you openly admit you are giving away your leverage like that? Why would you reward a party that has run itself into the ground with that level of loyalty?
This goes the same for all the moderate libs who say they will vote for Bernie if he wins the nom too. I mean, they are lying through their fucking teeth but its the same idea. Nobody should vote for anybody because they feel obligated to, that is a net negative for democracy.
My hot take theory for the reason loyalists turn into screaming weirdos when you push back against the idea Dems are just flat out owed your vote if you are to the left of the GOP is because they know deep down their garbage moderate policies won't win without that obligation.
I don't give a shit if the anti-leftist liberals turn into Schultz Stans in 2020 because I have confidence that a campaign that pairs full economic justice with already progressive social stances would activate apathetic voters and repair the Obama coalition Clinton lost.
I don't think moderates have that same confidence in their policies resonating and considering how they still want to screech endlessly at people who don't kowtow their vote to every Biden or Beto that slithers along I think my theory has weight,
The irony is that a lefty 'populist' campaign chasing non-voters and Obama-Trump voters through bold concrete economic policy would need Third Way Dems less than a moderate campaign chasing Bush and Romney voters through means tested incrementalism would need the millennial left.
And the former wouldn't need to pander to moderate Republicans at all, where as the latter would need to make doing so a huge part of its strategy. Which did not work out very well the last time it was tried, long long ago in the forgotten year of 2016.
Sorry, didn't mean to Eric Garland everybody's feeds up. I don't have any pithy ending to this shit. Vote for whoever the fuck you want, don't vote for people you don't agree with, and fuck anybody that tells you that you are obligated to vote for anyone for any reason.
Here have some joshi
