Vote when it's not trending? That sounds boring and hard!
Vote for the change you want to see.
The Republican party got remade because trumpists showed up and outvoted the party elites. No reason it can't happen for the Left except for laziness and apathy.
If all the progressives furious about the state of affairs now had shown up for Sanders in 2016, I doubt we'd be in this hellish timeline. Sadly, he needed the young progressive vote to show up.
My state has one of the very last primaries, after the outcome is already decided. I did vote for Bernie in 2016 and 2020, but it meant nothing because he had already dropped out of the race by then.
Expecting to change the system from within is laughably naive. We still can't pass legislation to replace the electoral college, 24 years after Al Gore got cheated.
Shouting down people who try to talk about real problems with "Well then I guess you should've voted!" is obnoxiously unhelpful. Bitch, I fucking did vote, and the problem is still here, so what now?
"I voted and things are STILL bad? I was promised everything would change if I voted!"
I'm responding to this. I know you can't just promise that everything will change through voting alone. So why is this whole thread just you shouting down those of us who feel rightfully disenfranchised about it?
Yes, one vote doesn't change anything, especially not in a country of 300 million.
But getting a lot of people to vote does change things.
If you're actually so childish as to believe "well, I voted so everything should be fixed", holy damn, adulthood is going to be difficult.
Not getting your way even though you cast a vote is normal. Not getting our way when progressives outvote the moderates, well, that'd be a different story but so far it hasn't happened because we don't show up in sufficient numbers to win.
Frankly, I've seen a lot of stupid "the Dems are evil too" nonsense here, I've seen a lot of complaints about the parties being the same and other nonsense.
The point of this meme and thread is to remind people that the choice between Harris and trump is entirely because the progressive wing doesn't show up to vote in the primaries while the moderates do. Some do vote but not enough. And frankly, if you break it down by demographic, it's the youth/young middle age that don't show up and get crushed by the elderly who vote.
BUT amidst all the complaints, I never see anyone say "damn, if only more of us had voted in the primaries." And if we had, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Far from it. There are a lot more factors at play that prop our two party system up, and allow the people in power in those parties to put their thumb on the scale in order to favor their candidates.