I'm another person who was deeply jaded after the Obama years. I guess I ate up the messaging and thought things might be a little different, but those 8 years were just a parade of disappointments.
As time went on I became more angry at myself for being such an easy mark. I don't know how I feel about electoralism generally, but the intense drive to not get scammed again is pretty strong. As much as I hate everything that is happening now with Biden's do-nothing admin, knowing that I didn't get invested in his campaign at all has really been a comfort. I'd rather piss away my vote for the Greens than give my votes to these ghouls who have nothing but contempt for me.
For me there’s a bunch of reasons why I no longer wish to consider myself a member of the Democratic Party, but two big ones stand out:
1) after the embarrassment of 2016, the same failing party leaders remained in charge. A historically bad election result and we don’t get some fresh blood? Show me another business, group, or team that doesn’t change directions and bring on new leaders after they hit rock bottom.
2) the utter contempt that the Democratic Party has for the folks that don’t rally behind their candidates simply because they are an ever-so-small improvement over their Republican counterparts. I haven’t been happy with the candidates and I’m told “well you need to vote for them because if not you’re helping the other side”. So I do. And what I get is a mix of losing campaigns, winning campaigns with unfulfilled promises, and more uninspiring candidates.
I see myself in a lot of these stories. I was enthusiastic for Obama in 08, voted but wasn't happy in 2012, and Bernie or bust since 2016. It's like, what do the democrats do? Certainly nothing that I want done, and a lot that I don't.
Bernie opened my eyes in a lot of ways that it's the Democratic machinery stopping popular stuff from getting done, not the GOP.
I lost faith when, in 2016, they left Bernie behind, campaigned on watered-down versions of his policy proposals, then lose. I said goodbye fully in 2020 when, as if it were a shakespearean tragedy, it happened again.
My beliefs are far left, but I don't feel like participating in politics anymore because its a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.
In 1992 I was excited about this Bill Clinton fella. Finally! A Democrat who could win stuff! I was also fifteen.
I grew up watching the effects of the "New Democrats'" slide rightwards, and it bummed me out. It seemed inevitable, though. It was just a thing that happened. It was politics. What can you do? You only had two options, after all. Oh, sometimes there was a third one, but everyone said Perot had handed the election to Clinton, and everyone said Nader had handed it to Bush... neither of those things was true, but they were what we heard, and I was too young to disbelieve 'em.
I watched George W. Bush win election, the second Bush I'd seen elected. I saw the great "liberal lions" of Congress retire or die and be replaced with Republicans, or Democrats who said nice liberal things but then voted like Republicans (so what, I wondered, was the difference?). There were wars. Everyone was on board the war train. In 2001 I was driving home from work every night and listening to the BBC on the radio, and thank god our local NPR station aired the BBC because frankly *even the NPR programming* was too pro-war for my liking. We sent troops to Iraq and it was then and remains now a profoundly stupid idea.
I saw Obama run. God, it really felt transformational. It really felt like this could mean something. The realization that it didn't was pretty crushing. Remember how he was gonna close Guantanamo Bay on day one of his Presidency? Remember how he left office eight years later without having done it?
I was pretty checked out of politics at that point. I was sad about it, but I could at least take heart that I lived in Massachusetts, maybe the safest blue state of them all, so my vote - in Presidential election terms, at least - was about as inconsequential as it gets. Like a lot of people, I watched a bunch of The West Wing. "Boy, it'd be nice if things worked this way," I thought, knowing they didn't and not realizing how many Dems were watching and convincing themselves that it did. That the Bartlett Administration was their ideal Presidency despite the fact that we watched them lose basically every major policy fight they ever got in. The speeches were nice, and everything was decorous, and that was what they really wanted.
I felt like a damn alien, realizing that.
See, I'd always been pretty left-wing. I'd identify myself as a social democrat, I think. I'm pretty hazy on some of the fine grain of Lefty Categories, so I'm not a hundred percent certain that's accurate, but it's what I'm sticking with. And when Bernie ran in 2016, I felt like this was finally it. Finally a chance to reconnect with politics and start to hear some voices like mine again.
Well, we know how THAT turned out, didn't we? Hell, I got more hate for supporting Sanders in 2016 (and again in 2020, for that matter) from Democrats - the people who were, at least nominally, on my side - than I ever got from Republicans. More than a few of my "independent" friends (read: they always vote Republican but they don't want to call themselves Republicans because Massachusetts) told me if Bernie had been the nominee they would have voted for him - "I'd vote for a Democrat for the first time in my life," one told me, which boggled my mind a bit - but to most of my nominal allies in the Democratic party I was suddenly The Enemy.
I left the party in 2020, right after Super Tuesday. The Democratic Party had made its choice, it had chosen not to embrace the values I've always held. And, you know, that's fine. That's their right. They get to make that decision. But once they do, they don't get to count on my support and they don't get to count on my vote.
I don't think I've moved to the left, honestly. Oh, I've learned more about the left, gotten more active in leftist circles, begun educating myself about socialism beyond the "well the Russians are bad okay" propaganda I grew up with in the '80s (though I confess, I still kinda love the movie Red Dawn). I suppose you could make a case that as I have learned and grown I have moved leftwards.
But I don't think that's what happened. 'Cause for my entire life, I have watched the Democrats move RIGHT. I've only "moved left" in relation to them; in reality, I haven't moved much at all. They're the ones who left me behind. In their desperate desire to pick up the "Reagan Democrat" vote and appeal to the center, they left me behind.
Joe Biden is the first Democratic nominee for President I didn't bother casting a vote for. Now, maybe that was a little easier for me, because I live in true-blue Massachusetts; if I was in Michigan or something, I might have had to struggle with it more. But as it stands, he's the first one I said "nope, not gonna happen, I need to be able to look at myself in a damn mirror tomorrow" for.
And honestly? It feels good. It feels really good, because at least now when Biden continues to disappoint - just like every other Democratic President in my living memory - at least this time I know I'm not getting stabbed in the back. I never turned my back on this one, so he's gotta stab me in the front.
You wouldn't think that makes a difference. But it does.
Bernie really set me on the path left of the Dems, he highlights everything wrong with the party by virtue of usually being the desenting voice. His campaign, his policies really reminded me what was wrong with everything in the US
Hello everyone—thanks for joining the conversation.
For those of you with iPhones, I'd like to welcome you to share your stories on my Callin show tomorrow at 4pm EST. Download the app, find and follow me and subscribe to The Flashpoint show, and "call in" with your comments.
It sounds stupid when I summarize it like this, but there’s a direct through line from Bernie’s 2013 appearance on Bill Maher to the 2016 primary that made me realize that the Democrats are full of shit. I was 19 at the time, and hearing him talk about the issues in a way I almost never heard left an impression on me, but I still thought “oh, good thing we have that guy on our team, the Democrats, who are the good guys!” rather than asking myself why I never heard other Democrats talking like him. I mean, I was a true believer in the party. But then 3 years later that guy with the crazy hair that I really liked on Maher that one time popped up again in the Democratic primary. Seeing the outright hostile reception he got from almost all the Dem leaders and media that I trusted, followed by the leaked Podesta emails and the HRC campaign repeatedly stepping on rakes in the general completely shattered any illusions I had about the Democratic party. Now I’m a socialist and miserable but happy that I have a much healthier view of politics now
Joe Biden is ending the student loan pause which puts him to the right of Trump. Joe says he can’t raise the minimum wage despite having a majority because of the “parliamentarian”. He killed 7 kids in Afghanistan with a drone strike. He can’t even pass a watered down bill to slightly raise taxes on billionaires. He’s keeping the genocidal Trump sanctions against Cuba in place. He increased the Pentagon budget by 25 billion dollars. He’s engaging in Cold War rhetoric. Why the hell should I ever vote for a democrat again? Bernie was the last chance for this country. I hope liberals enjoy fascism. That’s what will happen as a result of their failures.
I started off a reactionary/ Republican growing up. Over time I realized that my own field of study would lead me to making horrible choices in career path, which made me depressed. In 2016 I voted for Hillary because I couldn’t stand trump.
Over time I became more left wing seeing the horrible stuff trump did, but the democratic inability to care about these problems is what drove me into Marxism. Seeing how much the democrats wanted to wage Cold War II on China, seeing how they’d waste so much money on war, seeing how little the government and corporate power cared about people; it drove me into reading about Lenin
Back then I pretty much saw BHO for what he was, but I thought that was good enough. (Not quite--- I didn't imagine that he would double down and ratify as bipartisan pretty much all of W's security state abuses and then proceed to expand them.) I know a lot of younger people including some very dear friends who bought the "yes we can" rhetoric and thought Obama was going to lead a revolution or something--- and to be honest, by 2009 we absolutely needed at least something on the level of the New Deal if one wanted to forestall any more radical and perhaps dangerous political reactions. (I'm dumb, took me until c. 2013 but better late than never I guess.) Every one of these kids hates the Democratic Party with the heat of a thousand suns now, most of them even before the gratuitous kicks in the teeth in the '16 and '20 primaries. None of them have gone MAGA or anything--- they hate Trump and the Rs even more, but it's a matter of degree. Most have them have checked out of electoral politics entirely, either out of rage and despair or because thinking (perhaps not wrongly) that other forms of political action are at least not a waste of time and effort. The all-out establishment efforts to crush Sanders last year and 5 years ago really poisoned the well for good with a lot of young people, and not by any means just privileged white kids. Talking about tens of millions of young adults who don't just think the Democrats are ineffectual and cowardly but actively hate them.
My first election was 2000 - I was interested in Nader but immediately told by adults around me that voting for him would be betraying my values, so in literally every election after I voted straight-ticket Dem. I remember actually trying to campaign for Kerry while thinking about how little I liked him or wanted him, but he was "better" than the rest.
Obama was the big turning point for me, though. I genuinely thought he'd close gitmo. I really, really thought he would. All that momentum in his election, all that excitement I felt over the possibility of maybe a Dem actually coming close to inhabiting my true values - it disappeared so fast.
I'm just so tired of always being told I have to vote for people who have nothing but contempt for me and for my values because to vote for any candidate who DOES share my values is "throwing away" my vote. My favorite moment this past election? Cointoss between being asked if I wanted a rapist to win (they meant Trump; my rebuttal was that I believed Reade) or being told that, as a trans person, if I didn't vote Biden I was voting against my security/safety. As if Biden cares. Harris has demonstrably harmed the trans community, but whatever. Just because Trump is worse doesn't mean the Dem options are remotely palatble to me.
I voted for Obama in '08 but by '12 I could see he was lying about being progressive and just governed like a conservative, and I gave my vote to the Green Party that year. Democrats are just a bunch of do-nothings who refuse to actually fight for the principles they claim to stand for. I was especially frustrated when all the candidates besides Bernie dropped out of the primary to support Biden, the worst and most conservative option, just because he won one southern state when he'd practically been last in all the previous states. They're all just working together to stop progressives and get the most conservative option possible elected. They never accomplish anything when in office besides supporting big business and continuing wars. They're not really any different from Republicans.
My first election was 2000 which was a pretty formative experience. Unfortunately I thought the Dems wanted to beat the GOP as much as I did, so when they didn't put up much of a fight after the hinky stuff in OH in '04 (and the media complicity in deep-sixing Howard Dean), the jaded attitude took root a little more. When Dems won Congress in '06 & immediately took impeachment off the table, my enthusiasm took another hit. (Do the Dems even have the guts to fight for anything? I thought. Doesn't look like it!)
In '08 I had the sense that Obama was a fast-talking faker but what were the alternatives? Hillary's racist campaign made me give him a bigger benefit of the doubt than he eventually deserved. After '08 I tuned out politics, though I still voted party ticket every 2 years while souring on Obama because of bank bailouts, trying to cut social security, adopting Romneycare, etc. In '16 I was unenthusiastic about HRC but I voted for her because Trump sucked so bad. After Clinton whiffed that layup, I started reading about the evolution (devolution?) of the Democratic Party from the 1970s onward - thanks, Thomas Frank! - and really had my eyes fully pried open. I still vote in local elections but the national/federal level Dems can go pound sand. If there's any value in electoralism, it's on the local level where Obama completely screwed the pooch during his years in office. I did vote for Biden in '20 but my only motive was to see that if by chance he won a massive popular vote margin, but lost the electoral college, would the Dems fight for it. Seeing how the Administration has carried itself, they'd have totally rolled, even if they had 10 million more votes.
My material conditions haven't changed a bit since Bill Clinton. IDK if it's some low-obligation lower middle class sweet spot I inhabit (school loans paid off in the early 00s, no kids, single, grow a lot of my own food, cultivation of self-sufficiency in as many areas as possible to save $$) but I haven't felt more or less secure in 2 decades. It's been a mediocre hum of getting by comfortably but still worried about finances or a crisis that could wipe out everything in a flash. It's been the only personal bright spot of a rather grim political trajectory on the macro level.
Yet despite my relative comfort compared to so many people, I'm still mad that the Dems are such obvious shills & sellouts & cowards in light of the very VERY obvious progression of the GOP into fascist wannabees just waiting to pull the trigger on full authoritarianism. At this point, seeing what I've seen, I can only assume they would rather have a subordinate position in the halls of power than try to be power players for the good of the electorate. There is absolutely no excuse for their self-sabotaging actions since 2010. The "bUt ThE pArLeMeNtArIaN!" was the last straw & the Manchinema wrestling heel duo - giving cover to a bunch of other Dems - has been such a farce. Safe to say I loathe Dem leadership and all they stand for. That they could coalesce hard & fast to kneecap Bernie spoke volumes. VOLUMES. When they want to get shit done, they do. And what they want to get done is crush any leftward momentum on the big issues. Giving lip service to idpol pablum is just about as far as they'll go because it costs them nothing.
The "bitter Bernie bro" narrative is the establishment cop-out so they don't have to self-reflect at all. I've been watching them roll over for 20 years and go out of their way to prop up an increasingly insane Republican party that wants to go scorched earth on the country & the planet. They've proven they will do their damndest to enable that shit ("wE nEeD a StRoNg RePuBlIcAn PaRtY") so why should I vote for that? The fact that the Dem leadership remains the same despite colossal failures speaks so loudly about their priorities. Minority power within rotten institutions is an acceptable situation to them, not sticking their necks out to improve or rebuild those institutions.
I was more or less a proud Democrat through 2016 or so. I don’t like to admit this, but I didn’t even support Sanders in 2016.
I moved sharply to the left during the Trump years and became an avid Bernie supporter in 2020. I was crushed to see Democrats mock me and repeat right wing talking points regarding student loan debt cancellation, universal healthcare, police reform, etc. I did end up voting for Biden, against my better judgement.
In the past year I have grown increasingly disgusted with The Democratic Party and their more outspoken supporters. They are committing political malpractice as we march towards fascism. I am now firmly anti-capitalist.
I am fortunate to be relatively financially stable, but resuming student loan payments will make my life materially worse.
I now feel that electoral politics will not save us from the mess we are in. I most likely will not vote in upcoming elections. If I do, it will be third party or a write in vote. Democrats are not on my side.
I'm another person who was deeply jaded after the Obama years. I guess I ate up the messaging and thought things might be a little different, but those 8 years were just a parade of disappointments.
As time went on I became more angry at myself for being such an easy mark. I don't know how I feel about electoralism generally, but the intense drive to not get scammed again is pretty strong. As much as I hate everything that is happening now with Biden's do-nothing admin, knowing that I didn't get invested in his campaign at all has really been a comfort. I'd rather piss away my vote for the Greens than give my votes to these ghouls who have nothing but contempt for me.
For me there’s a bunch of reasons why I no longer wish to consider myself a member of the Democratic Party, but two big ones stand out:
1) after the embarrassment of 2016, the same failing party leaders remained in charge. A historically bad election result and we don’t get some fresh blood? Show me another business, group, or team that doesn’t change directions and bring on new leaders after they hit rock bottom.
2) the utter contempt that the Democratic Party has for the folks that don’t rally behind their candidates simply because they are an ever-so-small improvement over their Republican counterparts. I haven’t been happy with the candidates and I’m told “well you need to vote for them because if not you’re helping the other side”. So I do. And what I get is a mix of losing campaigns, winning campaigns with unfulfilled promises, and more uninspiring candidates.
I see myself in a lot of these stories. I was enthusiastic for Obama in 08, voted but wasn't happy in 2012, and Bernie or bust since 2016. It's like, what do the democrats do? Certainly nothing that I want done, and a lot that I don't.
Bernie opened my eyes in a lot of ways that it's the Democratic machinery stopping popular stuff from getting done, not the GOP.
I lost faith when, in 2016, they left Bernie behind, campaigned on watered-down versions of his policy proposals, then lose. I said goodbye fully in 2020 when, as if it were a shakespearean tragedy, it happened again.
My beliefs are far left, but I don't feel like participating in politics anymore because its a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.
In 1992 I was excited about this Bill Clinton fella. Finally! A Democrat who could win stuff! I was also fifteen.
I grew up watching the effects of the "New Democrats'" slide rightwards, and it bummed me out. It seemed inevitable, though. It was just a thing that happened. It was politics. What can you do? You only had two options, after all. Oh, sometimes there was a third one, but everyone said Perot had handed the election to Clinton, and everyone said Nader had handed it to Bush... neither of those things was true, but they were what we heard, and I was too young to disbelieve 'em.
I watched George W. Bush win election, the second Bush I'd seen elected. I saw the great "liberal lions" of Congress retire or die and be replaced with Republicans, or Democrats who said nice liberal things but then voted like Republicans (so what, I wondered, was the difference?). There were wars. Everyone was on board the war train. In 2001 I was driving home from work every night and listening to the BBC on the radio, and thank god our local NPR station aired the BBC because frankly *even the NPR programming* was too pro-war for my liking. We sent troops to Iraq and it was then and remains now a profoundly stupid idea.
I saw Obama run. God, it really felt transformational. It really felt like this could mean something. The realization that it didn't was pretty crushing. Remember how he was gonna close Guantanamo Bay on day one of his Presidency? Remember how he left office eight years later without having done it?
I was pretty checked out of politics at that point. I was sad about it, but I could at least take heart that I lived in Massachusetts, maybe the safest blue state of them all, so my vote - in Presidential election terms, at least - was about as inconsequential as it gets. Like a lot of people, I watched a bunch of The West Wing. "Boy, it'd be nice if things worked this way," I thought, knowing they didn't and not realizing how many Dems were watching and convincing themselves that it did. That the Bartlett Administration was their ideal Presidency despite the fact that we watched them lose basically every major policy fight they ever got in. The speeches were nice, and everything was decorous, and that was what they really wanted.
I felt like a damn alien, realizing that.
See, I'd always been pretty left-wing. I'd identify myself as a social democrat, I think. I'm pretty hazy on some of the fine grain of Lefty Categories, so I'm not a hundred percent certain that's accurate, but it's what I'm sticking with. And when Bernie ran in 2016, I felt like this was finally it. Finally a chance to reconnect with politics and start to hear some voices like mine again.
Well, we know how THAT turned out, didn't we? Hell, I got more hate for supporting Sanders in 2016 (and again in 2020, for that matter) from Democrats - the people who were, at least nominally, on my side - than I ever got from Republicans. More than a few of my "independent" friends (read: they always vote Republican but they don't want to call themselves Republicans because Massachusetts) told me if Bernie had been the nominee they would have voted for him - "I'd vote for a Democrat for the first time in my life," one told me, which boggled my mind a bit - but to most of my nominal allies in the Democratic party I was suddenly The Enemy.
I left the party in 2020, right after Super Tuesday. The Democratic Party had made its choice, it had chosen not to embrace the values I've always held. And, you know, that's fine. That's their right. They get to make that decision. But once they do, they don't get to count on my support and they don't get to count on my vote.
I don't think I've moved to the left, honestly. Oh, I've learned more about the left, gotten more active in leftist circles, begun educating myself about socialism beyond the "well the Russians are bad okay" propaganda I grew up with in the '80s (though I confess, I still kinda love the movie Red Dawn). I suppose you could make a case that as I have learned and grown I have moved leftwards.
But I don't think that's what happened. 'Cause for my entire life, I have watched the Democrats move RIGHT. I've only "moved left" in relation to them; in reality, I haven't moved much at all. They're the ones who left me behind. In their desperate desire to pick up the "Reagan Democrat" vote and appeal to the center, they left me behind.
Joe Biden is the first Democratic nominee for President I didn't bother casting a vote for. Now, maybe that was a little easier for me, because I live in true-blue Massachusetts; if I was in Michigan or something, I might have had to struggle with it more. But as it stands, he's the first one I said "nope, not gonna happen, I need to be able to look at myself in a damn mirror tomorrow" for.
And honestly? It feels good. It feels really good, because at least now when Biden continues to disappoint - just like every other Democratic President in my living memory - at least this time I know I'm not getting stabbed in the back. I never turned my back on this one, so he's gotta stab me in the front.
You wouldn't think that makes a difference. But it does.
Bernie really set me on the path left of the Dems, he highlights everything wrong with the party by virtue of usually being the desenting voice. His campaign, his policies really reminded me what was wrong with everything in the US
Hello everyone—thanks for joining the conversation.
For those of you with iPhones, I'd like to welcome you to share your stories on my Callin show tomorrow at 4pm EST. Download the app, find and follow me and subscribe to The Flashpoint show, and "call in" with your comments.
Here's the link, hope to see you all there.
https://callin.com/?link=OdRIGyvqAy
To help me get a count, if you're going to participate please sound off in the comments—thanks!
It sounds stupid when I summarize it like this, but there’s a direct through line from Bernie’s 2013 appearance on Bill Maher to the 2016 primary that made me realize that the Democrats are full of shit. I was 19 at the time, and hearing him talk about the issues in a way I almost never heard left an impression on me, but I still thought “oh, good thing we have that guy on our team, the Democrats, who are the good guys!” rather than asking myself why I never heard other Democrats talking like him. I mean, I was a true believer in the party. But then 3 years later that guy with the crazy hair that I really liked on Maher that one time popped up again in the Democratic primary. Seeing the outright hostile reception he got from almost all the Dem leaders and media that I trusted, followed by the leaked Podesta emails and the HRC campaign repeatedly stepping on rakes in the general completely shattered any illusions I had about the Democratic party. Now I’m a socialist and miserable but happy that I have a much healthier view of politics now
Joe Biden is ending the student loan pause which puts him to the right of Trump. Joe says he can’t raise the minimum wage despite having a majority because of the “parliamentarian”. He killed 7 kids in Afghanistan with a drone strike. He can’t even pass a watered down bill to slightly raise taxes on billionaires. He’s keeping the genocidal Trump sanctions against Cuba in place. He increased the Pentagon budget by 25 billion dollars. He’s engaging in Cold War rhetoric. Why the hell should I ever vote for a democrat again? Bernie was the last chance for this country. I hope liberals enjoy fascism. That’s what will happen as a result of their failures.
I started off a reactionary/ Republican growing up. Over time I realized that my own field of study would lead me to making horrible choices in career path, which made me depressed. In 2016 I voted for Hillary because I couldn’t stand trump.
Over time I became more left wing seeing the horrible stuff trump did, but the democratic inability to care about these problems is what drove me into Marxism. Seeing how much the democrats wanted to wage Cold War II on China, seeing how they’d waste so much money on war, seeing how little the government and corporate power cared about people; it drove me into reading about Lenin
Back then I pretty much saw BHO for what he was, but I thought that was good enough. (Not quite--- I didn't imagine that he would double down and ratify as bipartisan pretty much all of W's security state abuses and then proceed to expand them.) I know a lot of younger people including some very dear friends who bought the "yes we can" rhetoric and thought Obama was going to lead a revolution or something--- and to be honest, by 2009 we absolutely needed at least something on the level of the New Deal if one wanted to forestall any more radical and perhaps dangerous political reactions. (I'm dumb, took me until c. 2013 but better late than never I guess.) Every one of these kids hates the Democratic Party with the heat of a thousand suns now, most of them even before the gratuitous kicks in the teeth in the '16 and '20 primaries. None of them have gone MAGA or anything--- they hate Trump and the Rs even more, but it's a matter of degree. Most have them have checked out of electoral politics entirely, either out of rage and despair or because thinking (perhaps not wrongly) that other forms of political action are at least not a waste of time and effort. The all-out establishment efforts to crush Sanders last year and 5 years ago really poisoned the well for good with a lot of young people, and not by any means just privileged white kids. Talking about tens of millions of young adults who don't just think the Democrats are ineffectual and cowardly but actively hate them.
My first election was 2000 - I was interested in Nader but immediately told by adults around me that voting for him would be betraying my values, so in literally every election after I voted straight-ticket Dem. I remember actually trying to campaign for Kerry while thinking about how little I liked him or wanted him, but he was "better" than the rest.
Obama was the big turning point for me, though. I genuinely thought he'd close gitmo. I really, really thought he would. All that momentum in his election, all that excitement I felt over the possibility of maybe a Dem actually coming close to inhabiting my true values - it disappeared so fast.
I'm just so tired of always being told I have to vote for people who have nothing but contempt for me and for my values because to vote for any candidate who DOES share my values is "throwing away" my vote. My favorite moment this past election? Cointoss between being asked if I wanted a rapist to win (they meant Trump; my rebuttal was that I believed Reade) or being told that, as a trans person, if I didn't vote Biden I was voting against my security/safety. As if Biden cares. Harris has demonstrably harmed the trans community, but whatever. Just because Trump is worse doesn't mean the Dem options are remotely palatble to me.
Voted for Obama twice. Watched as my life got materially worse each time. Watched the Dems railroad Bernie and the socialist movement.
Voted Biden because of course we all did to get the orange turd out. Just once would like to vote for a candidate I actually like and support.
I voted for Obama in '08 but by '12 I could see he was lying about being progressive and just governed like a conservative, and I gave my vote to the Green Party that year. Democrats are just a bunch of do-nothings who refuse to actually fight for the principles they claim to stand for. I was especially frustrated when all the candidates besides Bernie dropped out of the primary to support Biden, the worst and most conservative option, just because he won one southern state when he'd practically been last in all the previous states. They're all just working together to stop progressives and get the most conservative option possible elected. They never accomplish anything when in office besides supporting big business and continuing wars. They're not really any different from Republicans.
My first election was 2000 which was a pretty formative experience. Unfortunately I thought the Dems wanted to beat the GOP as much as I did, so when they didn't put up much of a fight after the hinky stuff in OH in '04 (and the media complicity in deep-sixing Howard Dean), the jaded attitude took root a little more. When Dems won Congress in '06 & immediately took impeachment off the table, my enthusiasm took another hit. (Do the Dems even have the guts to fight for anything? I thought. Doesn't look like it!)
In '08 I had the sense that Obama was a fast-talking faker but what were the alternatives? Hillary's racist campaign made me give him a bigger benefit of the doubt than he eventually deserved. After '08 I tuned out politics, though I still voted party ticket every 2 years while souring on Obama because of bank bailouts, trying to cut social security, adopting Romneycare, etc. In '16 I was unenthusiastic about HRC but I voted for her because Trump sucked so bad. After Clinton whiffed that layup, I started reading about the evolution (devolution?) of the Democratic Party from the 1970s onward - thanks, Thomas Frank! - and really had my eyes fully pried open. I still vote in local elections but the national/federal level Dems can go pound sand. If there's any value in electoralism, it's on the local level where Obama completely screwed the pooch during his years in office. I did vote for Biden in '20 but my only motive was to see that if by chance he won a massive popular vote margin, but lost the electoral college, would the Dems fight for it. Seeing how the Administration has carried itself, they'd have totally rolled, even if they had 10 million more votes.
My material conditions haven't changed a bit since Bill Clinton. IDK if it's some low-obligation lower middle class sweet spot I inhabit (school loans paid off in the early 00s, no kids, single, grow a lot of my own food, cultivation of self-sufficiency in as many areas as possible to save $$) but I haven't felt more or less secure in 2 decades. It's been a mediocre hum of getting by comfortably but still worried about finances or a crisis that could wipe out everything in a flash. It's been the only personal bright spot of a rather grim political trajectory on the macro level.
Yet despite my relative comfort compared to so many people, I'm still mad that the Dems are such obvious shills & sellouts & cowards in light of the very VERY obvious progression of the GOP into fascist wannabees just waiting to pull the trigger on full authoritarianism. At this point, seeing what I've seen, I can only assume they would rather have a subordinate position in the halls of power than try to be power players for the good of the electorate. There is absolutely no excuse for their self-sabotaging actions since 2010. The "bUt ThE pArLeMeNtArIaN!" was the last straw & the Manchinema wrestling heel duo - giving cover to a bunch of other Dems - has been such a farce. Safe to say I loathe Dem leadership and all they stand for. That they could coalesce hard & fast to kneecap Bernie spoke volumes. VOLUMES. When they want to get shit done, they do. And what they want to get done is crush any leftward momentum on the big issues. Giving lip service to idpol pablum is just about as far as they'll go because it costs them nothing.
The "bitter Bernie bro" narrative is the establishment cop-out so they don't have to self-reflect at all. I've been watching them roll over for 20 years and go out of their way to prop up an increasingly insane Republican party that wants to go scorched earth on the country & the planet. They've proven they will do their damndest to enable that shit ("wE nEeD a StRoNg RePuBlIcAn PaRtY") so why should I vote for that? The fact that the Dem leadership remains the same despite colossal failures speaks so loudly about their priorities. Minority power within rotten institutions is an acceptable situation to them, not sticking their necks out to improve or rebuild those institutions.
I was more or less a proud Democrat through 2016 or so. I don’t like to admit this, but I didn’t even support Sanders in 2016.
I moved sharply to the left during the Trump years and became an avid Bernie supporter in 2020. I was crushed to see Democrats mock me and repeat right wing talking points regarding student loan debt cancellation, universal healthcare, police reform, etc. I did end up voting for Biden, against my better judgement.
In the past year I have grown increasingly disgusted with The Democratic Party and their more outspoken supporters. They are committing political malpractice as we march towards fascism. I am now firmly anti-capitalist.
I am fortunate to be relatively financially stable, but resuming student loan payments will make my life materially worse.
I now feel that electoral politics will not save us from the mess we are in. I most likely will not vote in upcoming elections. If I do, it will be third party or a write in vote. Democrats are not on my side.