this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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I voted for Gary Johnson because Hillary sounded awful in 2016 and I 1000x regret it. Fuck this system for making me choose between bad and worse, but yes obviously I have to choose bad over worse.
Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 by a nearly 3 million vote margin, I don't think you need to feel any regret over your one vote going to someone else you actually wanted to vote for.
Also, even if she'd lost the popular vote too, it ain't the voters fault that the DNC keeps deliberately sabotaging the good candidates in their primaries to give us turds.
I appreciate the sentiment but I think my regret is more tied to the fact that I very much fell for the white supremacist men’s rights activism and homophobic rhetoric of the time, and me voting for Gary Johnson over Hillary feels like a symptom of that fact as well, and I deeply regret falling for that bullshit.
Like it or not, Clinton destroyed sanders. The DNC definitely showed a bias for her, but by no stretch of the imagination was he sabotaged. This narrative is the same BS that trump supporters spew that the media was unfair to trump which is part of the reason he lost.
The reality is that sanders just doesn't (unfortunately) represent the average Democrat. People like Clinton and Biden do.
There's actual evidence of sabotage tho, such as Hillary getting early access to debate questions, Shadow company (not even kidding they actually fucking named themselves that, look it up) being run by DNC members being in charge of tabulating voting in some states, and more.
They were even taken to court for it and admitted to some wrong doing, but nothing could be done since apparently the DNC is a private entity and no laws are broken. Legally they can screw over any candidate they want.
That's kind of a circular logic though; the DNC alienates voters who don't like their blessed candidates. If they didn't do that, and more leftist candidates like Sanders were welcomed, then the "average Democrat" might look a bit different.
You know there are other offices than president right?
You want a further left president, you're going to need to show that a lot of people want a further left president, by having a lot of further left politicians in state and local offices.
You don't just jump right to the Whitehouse. The presidents politics are a reflection of the politics of the whole party, not the other way around. IDK if you watched the GOP primary debates in 2016, but it was very much an "everybody sucks here" kind of event. Each candidate might have been a little more reasonable on one of two smaller issues, but all in all they were much the same. The only thing different Trump had was charisma and campaign stamina.
No reason you can't vote for more progressive candidates for presidential primaries, but there's no sense in holding such a grudge when the party outlier loses. It's kinda obvious from the get-go that that's going to happen. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with voting for a loser, and a popular loser can easily land a cabinet position where they could still have a very significant voice.
I've seen the Democratic Party put its thumb on the scale for centrists at the congressional level: Henry Cuellar. I've seen them pull the rug out from under progressives who manage to win the primary, also at the congressional level: Michelle Vallejo.
Progressives cannot do as you describe when the party shuts them out at the lower levels as well.