Decisions are made by those who show up. It’s as simple as that. It really is the very least you SHOULD do as a functional adult.
I get how not everyone wants to be active on campaigns, can donate, etc. But voting itself should definitely be a given. Same goes for small elections; if you don’t vote, someone else will decide for you. And you might not like what they decide.
Show the fuck up and vote.
I prefer “Pokemon Go To The Polls”, myself.
Either way, I’m not sure where OP’s “40 Million Registered Democrats” are coming from. Obama set a high water mark for Dem turnout in 2008 with 69M votes and still managed to carry out a win four years later with 65.9M votes. Hillary pulled in 65.8M votes four years after that. She just racked them in the wrong states this time around and lost to a guy who hit his own GOP high watermark of 62.9M.
Then, in 2020, the country implemented a temporary state of national mail-in voting. Turnout surged enormously. Republicans brought in 74M votes! Enough to win in a landslide in virtually any other year. But still not enough to beat the Dem 81M vote haul. An absolutely historic turnout by either party, all thanks to a change in the mechanism used to submit ballots.
But even using these very temporary figures, I have no idea where you’re finding a full 105.8M Democrats to vote for your candidate, relative to 2016. Set aside how much our antiquated and archaic machine-voting system suppresses turnout. Set aside the deliberate disenfranchisement by determined State Secretaries in democracy-hostile states and districts. Set aside voter disenfranchisement and intimidation, misinformation and scammy robocalls. Tell me which rock these 40M Democrats are hiding under.
And when you do, make sure there’s not another 40M Republicans hiding right alongside them. Because we played this game in Texas for nearly a decade. And what we discovered was a large surplus of lackadaisical conservatives, who came out to swamp the state in 2022. So much for simply being a “non-voting” state.
Never even fucking mind all the “Obama to Trump” voters who showed up in 2016 absolutely revolted by the ghoul Democrats put up as Obama’s replacement.
I’ve shown up every year since 2000 and other people keep making the decisions anyway because the people I vote for lose so goddamn always.
My friends and a lot of my coworkers I were Bernie supporters in 2016 – donated, attended events, etc. I made sure I was registered to vote and strongly encouraged my friends to as well. Talking to them after the primary was depressing as fuck … most of them didn’t vote, and had the lamest excuses you could imagine. It was eye opening.
Alright: whatever. Great work guys, now we get to vote for Hillary, since it was going to be either her or Trump as president. Shockingly almost none of the aforementioned friends/coworkers voted for her, and several that admitted they couldn’t get off their asses to vote for him in the primary complained about how it was “stolen” from Bernie.
It was hard not slapping the shit out of them.
I can definitely understand the disillusionment of the Bernie Bros at that time. I was reaaaaally hoping he’d win the nomination.
Even as a European that whole situation really irked me. Especially the rhetoric of it being ‘Hillary’s turn’. Yes, she had a lot of political experience, but this is not an ‘it’s my turn!’ type of position. And Bernie getting shoved aside unceremoniously because it was ‘her turn’ didn’t do the Democrats any favors in the actual voting.
A lot of Bernie supporters had a post-Bernie hangover and got frustrated enough to check out of the political process. It sucks, but I understand. Let’s hope they’ll at least vote this time.
More Bernie voters voted for Clinton in 2016 than Clinton voters voted for Obama in 2008. They had a whole group called PUMA:
We [were] protesting the 2008 Presidential election because we refuse to support a nominee who was selected by the leadership rather than elected by the voters.
I get people who voted for him in the primary being upset.
It’s the people that didn’t out of sheer laziness or willful incompetence complaining I have no compassion or patience for – the number of those I knew of was shocking to me. Calling them “morons” is being charitable.
Did you live in a state that was closely decided for Trump over Hillary? Because, if not, the apathy of your friends likely made no difference.
If only 5% more of TX registered voters went to the polls and voted Hillary, she would have won TX.
Voter apathy is a big deal.
Those people are still crooning about how counting the ballots is stealing the election and ignoring the will of the people to this day.
You have to drag these people by the hair to the ballot box even for the candidate they themselves support and they wonder why everyone else doesn’t just do the revolution for them.
