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this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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Not voting (in your election)
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If leftists vote for Democrats, Democrats take their votes for granted, and move right to attract more of the center.
They've been doing it at least since Clinton.
I don't believe voting matters. I believe the system is rigged.
And, if you believe voting matters, if you believe political parties actually respond to their constituents, you cannot write Democrats a blank check for your vote.
Centrists and swing voters have enormous leverage with the Democrat Party, because the Democrats know they're willing to vote Republican, and the Democrats have to work to keep them.
Leftists and liberals who vote for Democrats by default, because the Republicans are worse, have no leverage with the Democratic Party at all, because the Democrats take their votes for granted. I mean, what are they going to do, vote Republican?
(Think Arab American, and especially Palestinian American, voters in 2024. The Democrats thought they could support the war in Gaza unconditionally and not lose any votes in the United States, because what are Palestinian Americans going to do, vote Republican?)
(Turns out, yes, they would. Because when the party in power shows they don't give a single shit about you or your family, you vote for the party out of power, whoever it is.)
If you believe your vote matters (I don't, to be clear, but this is a thought experiment) you have to be willing to withhold it. The only way to get leftist policies is to tell the Democratic Party "give me leftist policies or I stay home in November" and fucking mean it.
If you make a lot of noise demanding leftist policies, and then you vote for whatever neoliberal capitalist the Democrats put on the ballot, the Democrats know you're all talk and your demand for leftist policies can be safely ignored.
Which is, ultimately, one of the drivers behind the ratchet effect. Because conservative Democrats will cross the aisle and vote Republican, and leftists won't, and that tells the Democratic Party very clearly which of those groups they need to appeal to.
Or, you know, like, actively organize, fundraise and lobby like every effective political group does...
You just came out and said it. The way to be effective in American democracy is to collect money (fundraise) and bribe politicians with it (lobby).
We are in yet another K-shaped "recovery". The 10% are getting richer. The 0.01% are getting much richer much faster. And 90% of Americans are seeing their real income go down and struggling more and more just to keep themselves housed and fed.
And being "effective" means asking those struggling Americans to sacrifice what little disposable income they have, so we can give that money to some of the richest and most powerful politicians in the world, in the futile hope that we can outbid Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and purchase policies that help us instead of them?
And you want to tell me the system works?
Yes. That is representative democracy.
Organize with others who align with you politically (or with whom you can form a coalition), rally the voters around your cause, fundraise to support your message, convince other voters to align with you, and bolster sympathetic candidates, and then lobby to persuade other candidates who need support that there are voters who will champion them if they take a your position.
Nobody said it was easy. It's a republic, if you can keep it.
A system that requires the poor and working class to constantly fight an uneven battle against the wealthy just to survive? Where you can have a hundred thousand people working day and night for decades and still have less lobbying power than Elon Musk can direct with a five minute phone call? With rules rigged top to bottom in favor of the rich and men with guns standing by to enforce those rigged rules?
If that's a Republic, what the fuck is the point of keeping it?
... Because historically when republics fail, all of the things you are complaining about typically get worse. Less accountability, less political and economic equality, and more rule by insiders with guns.
The solution to those is more democracy, not pretending nihilism is insight.
Want the problems you call out to change for the better? Convince a few nonvoters to vote.
Or organize an alternative system and let the old one burn.
Good luck organizing, champ. Remember to stop, drop and roll once you realize you're on fire.
It's gonna burn either way.
https://youtu.be/b_29yvYpf4w?t=17
Nihilists don't try to build a new society. You're confusing "nihilism" for "being able to read history books and IPCC reports."
Yeah, you know what, you’re riiiight. What’s the point of maintaining the republic when the heat death of the universe is inevitable?
You’re certainly not just pivoting here and pretending that being able to read history/climate science somehow makes present political struggle irrelevant, while ignoring the fact that if you refuse to build power within the current system because you are busy fantasizing about your future “new system,” what you are actually doing is ceding the existing one to the right.
That would be bad faith and something a person who has read up on history could never say with a straight face.
Liberalism is one hell of a drug, isn't it? I don't need to convince you. You're free to die with this system, if that's what you want. I'm gonna keep trying to build something that doesn't constantly commit genocide with all the other folks who don't want to die.
Weird how “only us, only together” in theory becomes “anyone who disagrees with me can and wants to 'die with this system'” in practice.
Real serious collective politics there. Stunning way to build a movement.
No, but if you're completely incapable of believing anything but liberalism then there isn't any way to help you. The system has been a zombie for a long time, there's no saving it. I'm doing what I can, but that doesn't include saving people who are actively fighting against being saved.
Good luck with your fight. I'm gonna spend my energy doing something useful.
Edit: actually, I see that your whole thing is just wasting everyone's time. I hope you get a life.
Well, the edit did save me some work.
You chose to keep replying (including to announce you'll be off "doing something useful"), then come back just to tack on a personal insult and blame me for wasting your time. That is a pretty revealing model of the politics: grand plans for a new system, zero patience for the people you would need to build it with, and somehow even your own choices are someone else’s fault.
If everyone outside your circle is a zombie, a liberal, or too far gone to bother with, you won’t build a movement. You’ll build a clubhouse.
And a clubhouse is fine. It just is not going to replace a system you keep evading a real contest with.
But if this is how you practice politics, you clearly do not need my help wasting your own time.
What happens then is that the DNC spends their propaganda budget fighting the left, then blames the left for forcing them to have less propaganda budget left over to fight the GOP and causing them to lose. See Bernie Sanders.
If you want a left-wing candidate to win, you have to beat the DNC and the GOP. That's possible, see Mamdani, but anything less than total victory means the GOP wins because the DNC broke itself and you.
This is perfectly reasonable political strategy from the DNC. The DNC is closer to the GOP than to leftists so naturally they prefer to break themselves to fight leftists rather than submit to leftists to fight the GOP.
DNC members do not oppose “the left” as an electorate boogeyman. It opposes leftists when they act like an internal rival power center who come in shitting on Dems in office, demanding full control of the party, and acting like that should count as coalition building when it really hurts every vulnerable DNC member from the center leftward.
That does not mean the DNC is secretly closer to the GOP than to its own left flank; that claim is political anti-fanfic. Bernie lost, both times, because party insiders lined up against him and because he failed to win a broad enough coalition. I say this as someone who campaigned for him in 2016 and 2020 and have close friends who worked on his 2020 campaign in the PNW and then across the US.
And Mamdani, like AOC before him, undercut your case. They are evidence that the party establishment will adapt and move leftward, when you win inside Democratic primaries. It's called proving your electability. And as those progressive dems (and, hell, even democratic socialists) win races, build a durable voter base, and work with the party as a coalition, they'll find themselves with more internal influence.
“The DNC and GOP are basically the same" is defeatist slop. The Democratic coalition is a battlefield, and the left either gets strong enough to win on that field (either winning outright or through coalition building), or it resigns itself to irrelevance, because there is no serious alternative on the table.