And as far as listening to protesters, I implore you to go dig into how Obama and Biden dealt with protests in the U.S. We couldn't even push Democrats to reconsider their support for a goddamn genocide. What makes you think we can move them on issues even less resoundingly clear-cut?
Obama? Bruh. That was a political lifetime ago. I honestly don’t think any Democrat who runs believes that an Obama political playbook (or a Biden one for that matter) will work.
Again, I’m share your frustrations. I want to do better than Newsom & I will actively work up through the primaries to do that - as I have done since 2015. But we keep comin up short. So saying “well this person shares 70% of my values but fuck them because it’s not 100% gets us MAGA every time.
And when you cast a 3rd party vote (or don’t vote at all), you create an environment that gets someone elect who shares 0% of your values. Bernie to Trump voters in 2016; non-voters for Biden. Stein voters in 2024.
This isn’t the responsibility of the voters, it’s the responsibility of the politicians. If they can’t provide a candidate people are willing to vote for, they’ll lose elections. 100,000,000 people don’t vote. The winner gets ~70,000,000 votes. The real winner is apathy, and there are reasons.
When polled, the reason many if not most nonvoters give is “both parties are the same” or “it’s not going to matter anyway”—because for millions of Americans that’s largely true, things suck for them no matter who’s in charge. There’s a way to motivate them and it’s up to Democrats to do that.
Relying on “people will vote even though they hate the candidate” is a pretty fucked-up and stupid strategy. It’s like saying “the refs will award me points even if I don’t score, because I’m the better person. And if they don’t, then it’s THEIR fault the asshole team won.” Bizarre.
It’s not even a matter of my own personal preference here, though I personally won’t vote for a candidate who opposes trans rights and supports genocide and oppresses homeless people. The reality is that it’s unpopular to voters at large to cosplay as Republicans. It’s electorally unviable.
In 2024 the biggest factor for Harris was voters in the biggest cities—the progressive bastions—in swing states. The takeaway there is that Democrats are alienating their own base and not picking up any more centrist and right-wing voters as a result. It’s not up to voters to solve that.
Meanwhile, I’m not willing to sacrifice any more people or values. I’ve done that in election after election and all I’ve gotten is derision and scorn. The fact that top Democrats won’t even endorse Mamdani, one of the most popular politicians, speaks volumes about hopes for transforming the party.
The only thing that could possibly work is if we all band together and say “we will not support this. We will not vote for this.” If we go “let’s try for a better candidate but we’ll vote for whoever they run,” why would that change anything? We’ll just get another terrible candidate.
I think we’re also not considering the widely gerrymandered maps that are going to make it even harder for a candidate with niche support to get elected.
So yes. Let’s work to get a good candidate who aligns with most of our values. But if we fail to do that and a candidate who shares 60-70% of our values is the nom - and no 3rd party vote has a logical chance to win - I say take 60-70% of a match over a 0% match. This doesn’t seem like a hard choice
Oh - and again - I appreciate the good faith dialog from you. No sarcasm. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to Twitter.