timemachineyeah
drives me up a wall living in a very very red district, like "no democrat is ever going to win any local election, let alone a real leftist" district, like "our school board members ran on who was the most anti-mask" red, like "I pass white supremacist signs on the way to buy weed" red
and being in the local leftist community and the guy who runs the anarchist book club and the lady who helps keep the warming shelters open and the people who marched on city hall when a local business was getting death threats for having a drag show are all members of a discord and we get on this discord and have frank discussions about how best to vote
the people who do the protests and the mutual aid and all the real work
going "okay, they're both fascists, but this one lacks ambition and seems happy to just glide in the position" or "they both suck, but this one can be reasoned with if you frame it patriotically enough" like we don't even have a democrat to vote for. we know what a vote is. we know what we hope accomplish with it. we know what it can do, and we know what it can't.
and going from those discussions to here where people think that your vote is some kind of fucking??? enabling maneuver??? as if someone isn't going to end up in that seat regardless of what you do???
we didn't build this system, we just live in it. we're just trying to survive. a vote isn't a statement of your values, it's not an endorsement, it's not a marriage contract, it's a strategic play you make to keep alive.
the biggest mistake I see leftists making is overestimating their own popularity. "well but everyone would be leftist if they just-" no, stop, 1) you can't possibly know that 2) everyone will not just
I just want to counter with, I actually reached out to a progressive election group that's supposed to help left leaning people get elected into local office positions after being confused by some of the requirements of getting on the ballot and was straight up told I was not wealthy enough to even consider running.
That unless I had a wealthy parent or a church group that I could collect more funds from, I shouldn't even bother but just donate to them to get someone better and wealthier elected in my place.
When your barrier to entry isn't even just knowledge of the system, and having networking to assist you but literally the amount of money in your bank account, the concept of running against the people who will not only crush you and your campaign but likely hurt your non political career and livelihood of earned capital, then doing so becomes less of an option.
I then supported a person I agreed with for a Legal position who was literally a public defender and he lost to a guy who played football in college with no history in law or civil service.
It might be easy to run a campaign and I might have a slightly more skewed representation as I am closer to a larger city but when even the left side is looking at how mucho ey they can make on running campaigns and not how likely they are to help shift policy then we are royally fucked on the concept of representation by the people.