Doing It On Purpose

I swear that Salon.com is trying to throw the election and it has been for a while now.  First it was this drivel about how Hillary is worthless because selecting Supreme Court justices doesn't matter, then it was why you shouldn't vote for Hillary even if she's the Democratic nominee, then it was why Hillary Clinton is basically Dick Cheney, and today we have why we should let the Republicans burn the country down in order to issue in a liberal paradise.

Rowing in behind Clinton only justifies the establishment logic — “just feed the lefties a few scraps in the primary, wax poetic about the Republican bogeyman in the general, and they’ll shut up.” Progressives would be giving something quite important — their votes — for a party that hides behind fear-based arguments to maintain intimate ties with Wall Street while ignoring its supposed base.

But consider this: What if we didn’t vote, and Hillary lost as a result? Like it or not, that makes a profound statement. It would likely force the Democratic party to move left on economic issues and, fearing another schism, throw its weight behind a far more progressive candidate in 2020. Bernie Sanders himself says that we need a political revolution to enact real change, and if progressives plan to build a lasting movement in America, it has to start with making our voices heard on a national scale. Sending a message to the party that we won’t be placated by politicians who stand in the regressive center is one hell of an opening salvo.

If progressives like myself still believed that the party could right the ship of state without our intervention, perhaps this would be a very different discussion. But that’s not happening — since Bill Clinton, Democrats in Washington have slipped to the right one heartbreaking concession at a time, and the voters are the only ones who can stop that inertia. If we want the party to move left, we have to turn the ponderous ship around and drag it there ourselves.

There’s an analogy here to the far-right conservative movement, which has become so influential in the Republican party that establishment candidates are finding no traction in their own circus of a primary contest. Unlike progressives, the conservative far right has realized the extent of its power — they had a certain psychological advantage in the early days, propelled as they were by religious fervor — and for Sanders supporters to do the same, it’s imperative that we don’t capitulate to the Democratic party’s big money wing. If we do, we’ll never be taken seriously.

We have to lose in order to win!

Well see, we tried that in 2010 and 2014 and all that did was give even more of the country to the actual Tea Party at both the federal and state level.  Giving them the White House and letting the GOP scorch the country may push the Democrats to the left, sure.

It'll also destroy the place in the meantime.

See, here's what I don't get, do you know how the Tea Party keeps winning?

They actually vote.  Our side's brilliant idea is to not vote.

If you can't see where the problem is, then you're even more lost than I thought.  And I'm beginning to think Salon is doing this on purpose by having a bunch of white Bernie Bros talk America into   Feeling The Berning Country.

Anyone who advocates not voting is wrong, period.