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.

  • TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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    23 days ago

    Not saying money is the sole decider, but it helps. Also the difference between what you can donate to a candidate (like $3000) and what you can donate to the DNC (like $40000) is… quite large. Like 12x the amount of money… Kamala does not have 12x the amount of money as trump.

    Also, you really think there’s just like… two blocks of voters in the primaries… and they’re exactly equal in number, and exactly spread evenly between all states and districts? Progressive/leftist/whatever you wanna call the “far left” makes up a fairly small amount, but one that literally turns out in higher percent than any other voting block. It does not mean they outnumber EVERYONE ELSE COMBINED.

    https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/05/americans-at-the-ends-of-the-ideological-spectrum-are-the-most-active-in-national-politics/

    Here’s some data from Pew Research on it. You can look for some others they’ve done on similar stuff.

    • Lauchs@lemmy.worldOP
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      22 days ago

      Appreciate the Pew link! I’d note thought that it talks about the general election, not primaries.

      If the progressives don’t outnumber the moderates and centrists even within the Democratic party, then that seems a pretty good indication that American politics is roughly in line with American attitudes, which would mean democracy is working as it should.

      Here’s the thing, Sanders got 43% of the primary vote iirc and Clinton got 55. This happened, despite the middle age and elderly voters showing up in significantly larger numbers than the young, presumably progressive ones. If the young voters had shown up and their vote patterns held, Sanders would likely have had a comfortable win.