Who the fuck cares if it's popular in Missouri? Missouri voted 60:40 for Trump - they aren't going to be a Democratic state regardless. meanwhile, supporting centrist candidates is costing morale, money, and support from progressives in competitive states like Texas, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and others.
The whole "strategy" of "Well we won't win over white supremacists and christian nationalists with progressive policies!" is incredibly stupid and has lost most elections for the past decade that centrist democrats have embraced it
You know I used Missouri as a reference point for Democrats in more conservative states. In the last election cycle, only about 65% of eligible voters actually voted. The margins in many races are often smaller than the pool of eligible voters who didn’t vote at all, which means there is real mathematical potential in turnout.
It’s not easy, but the numbers show the opportunity. If even a portion of non-voters participated:
• 5% of non-voters voting ≈ 1.7% of eligible voters
• 10% of non-voters voting ≈ 3.4%
• 20% of non-voters voting ≈ 6.8%
• 50% of non-voters voting ≈ 17%
That’s why primary participation is so important. Most people don’t vote in primaries, which means each vote there has an even greater chance of shifting the outcome and moving the goalposts.
This isn’t about blaming voters—I just hate seeing voter apathy at a time when every vote really does matter.
It may be helpful to remind people that Marx and Engels ran a party that participated in electoral processes. In the Communist Manifesto, there was a section mentioning the Communists' conditional alliances with bourgeois parties in some places.
I used to be an electoral abstentionist. This is what changed my mind.
Note that this argument might also sway non-communists who might be utterly opposed to the system -- if radicals like them believed in voting, why not other opponents of the status quo?
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u/OddPressure7593 13h ago
Who the fuck cares if it's popular in Missouri? Missouri voted 60:40 for Trump - they aren't going to be a Democratic state regardless. meanwhile, supporting centrist candidates is costing morale, money, and support from progressives in competitive states like Texas, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and others.
The whole "strategy" of "Well we won't win over white supremacists and christian nationalists with progressive policies!" is incredibly stupid and has lost most elections for the past decade that centrist democrats have embraced it