In the next couple days/weeks I expect we’ll see a lot of diaries and discussion about what Clinton (no Sanders! no DWS! no Jeff Weaver! BBB! Bobswern!) needs to do to unify the party/mollify the political revolution.
I want to address a specific concept that I think underlies a lot of the miscommunication currently happening between those who call for Team Sanders to join the party in defeating trump and those who call for Team Clinton to offer more enticements to those who hesitate to support her.
There is no political power in not voting. (In case you missed it in the title of this diary.)
If you stay home in November you will not send a message to the Democrats about the power of progressive politics and the political revolution. (Or at least you wont send the message you meant to send.)
Every election cycle, politicians fan out across the country; populists, pragmatists, establishment, outsiders, etc. All of them seek to appeal to voters. The people who vote. And those who win, who take office and enact policy, they do so with a mind to the people who voted them into office.
What happens when a large block of people don’t vote? Let’s say, hypothetically, 20% of Sanders’ supporters don’t show up in the general election. What signal does that send? It sends the signal that support for Sanders’ policies and platform is much smaller than anyone had thought. Conversely, it sends the signal that other segments of the left are more important to the Democratic party.
I understand the impulse of those who ended up on the losing side of the primary to say that they will withhold their vote from the winner. It’s natural when we get so wrapped up in our candidates and the emotion of the contest to take defeat personally. I think, for the most part, those who are saying now they wont vote for Clinton are A) in safely blue states and/or B) will come around.
But if you are one of those people who is currently thinking that a vote for Clinton is abandoning your principles, I wish you would reconsider. Consider instead that a vote for Clinton is a vote that demonstrates the strength of the progressive wing of the Democratic party.
I know that many people are thinking that voting for Jill Stein or another candidate is a better way of expressing that strength. If 15% of the vote goes to the Green/Libertarian party wont the politicians have to respect that more than if I vote for them?
The simple answer is “No”. And it comes down, basically, to influence with the people that win the election. If you vote Green and the Democrat wins, the Democrat wont have any reason to court your vote in the future, because he/she didn’t need your vote to win. (If you vote Green and the Democrat loses, then congratulations you’ve just helped to elect a Republican.)
A second point I would like to make here, beyond that voting matters (and not voting doesn’t), is that withholding your vote from Clinton is likely to have the opposite effect of what you think.
Clinton’s politics is centered directly in the middle of the group of people who support her and who she sees as vital to her chances in the general election. That group includes (but is not limited to) women, minorities, and older people. And that informs her policy agenda and her public persona.
If you want her to move right, then attack her from the left.
If you want to move her to the left, then support her from the left.
Simple as that.