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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...
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.