beatrice_otter | On voting and the long haul.

A lot of people on the left don't like the Democrats because the vast majority of Dems aren't left, they're solidly center, and there aren't any true leftists you can vote for. And it's really discouraging when you have a choice between someone you don't like and don't agree with or someone who's actively evil. It's not exciting or happy-making to choose from the lesser of two evils, especially when that's the choice every election.

(This post, by the way, is not for people who are the victim of voter-suppression tactics who can't vote for one reason or another; this is a post for people who can vote and choose not to.)

Here's the thing. If we ever want there to be actual leftist politicians in the US, if we want to move the Democrats to the left or create a new leftist party that actually is large enough to get shit done on a national level, then we have to vote now, reliably, every election, even if it's only for the lesser of two evils.

Politicians don't give a crap about what citizens want. They care deeply about what voters want.

Let me say that again: Politicians don't give a crap about what citizens want. They care deeply about what voters want.

This is not because all politicians are evil or whatever. This is because even the most ideologically pure person ever can only accomplish anything in politics if they get elected. And then get re-elected. The only politicians who ever get anything of note done during their first term in office are executives--Presidents, Governors, Mayors, etc.--and even then, how much they can get done depends more on what legislators have been elected than on the executive themself. A President can't pass any laws if they don't have a congress willing to work with them.

As for legislators (such as US Congresspeople, state legislators, city council members), there's only a tiny chance you're going to get anything on you agenda accomplished your first term. Why? Because you are only one person, and legislatures have a lot of people ... and the larger the scale, the more people there are. Things get done when a) there are a lot of people who agree with you, and b) you know enough people and have enough experience with them to figure out what agreements you can make. To get things done, you have to be able to go to people and go "hey, I'll vote for your bill if you vote for mine." Or, "hey, if you change [specific bad section of a bill], I will change [specific section of this other bill]." Pretty much nothing gets through without some form of compromise; in order to enact your agenda, you need enough supporters who agree with you that you can minimize the compromises, and you also need enough experience with the specific people whose support you'll need that you can figure out how to get them on your side, and what compromises you can make that will not gut your basic aims. None of this is easy. None of it can be done without building relationships with other politicians. Nobody has the connections to do this sort of thing their first term in the legislature, not on any large scale.

The other thing is, what bills get brought out for a vote depends largely on what various committees decide. If you get on the right committees, you have a lot better chance of getting your ideas into bills that will actually pass. And most of those committees, the members are decided by seniority and connections within the party. If you are a political newbie, you're not going to get on the big, important committees. You're only going to get the positions of power within the legislature once you've been in the legislature long enough that your fellow legislators know you and trust you, and know you're going to be here for the long haul (in other words, that you're not just a one-term wonder who's going to be beaten in the next election). Which, again, does not happen to first-term legislators. Or even second-term legislators. If you want to influence what bills die in committee and which make it out to get voted on, if you want to influence how the committees shape the important bills, you have to get re-elected. Often multiple times.

Which means that if you care about actually accomplishing anything, you have to court the people who actually vote. Reliably. Every election. Not just "if there's a candidate I particularly like." If all you care about is grandstanding, getting on a platform and talking about what should be done, sure, you can ignore what the vote-every-election people think. You may even get elected once or twice! But you're not going to have the staying power to actually get shit done.

And white middle-class leftists (i.e. the ones who are most likely to be ABLE to vote, the leftists least likely to face voter suppression) do not vote reliably.

With out a reliable voting base, there's little point for leftist people to try to get elected, and there's little reason for centrist Dems to listen to leftists. It's not going to help them get re-elected, and therefore it's not going to help them accomplish anything they want to accomplish. The only way to truly push the Dems left (or create a leftist party that creates meaningful change in the US) is to have a voting bloc that votes reliably, every election, even if the only choice is "which is the lesser of two evils." If there is a reliable leftist voting bloc, you will get more leftist politicians elected, and they will stick around long enough to actually get shit done, and also the existing centrist Dems will move to the left.

This has happened multiple times in US history. A group starts voting regularly, reliably, every election, and the political dialogue starts swinging their way. The politicians that get elected become less hostile to that group. This is why voter suppression has such a long history! Because voting matters, and it matters deeply. When people vote in every election, they change the political landscape. It doesn't happen in one election. It happens over time once they've proved they're a reliable bloc that will vote in every election.