I think we should take a moment and reflect on the concept of voting. I will throw the usual guilt trip out there that a lot of people put their lives on the line to defend the idea of democracy under the flag of this country (Revolution, 1812, Civil War, WWI, WWII, notice I left out a lot of other wars, and of course there are critiques of the ones I included) and we should honor those sacrifices. Really, we should. People have literally died for you to have the right to vote. Taking it for granted is a gigantic fuck you to those (mostly) men who died in the mud for your right to vote.
Patriotic appeal aside, if you care about politics you vote. Not voting is an abdication of your only direct power in the political system. Any time I hear about any political group anywhere around the globe saying they are boycotting elections I think they gave up. They aren’t willing to fight for power, they have resigned themselves to being ineffectual outsiders.
In our system voting is so much more than the presidential race. Every party in every race looks at the participation in past races to determine how they run this race this year in this particular city, town, county, state, or federal election. The more Democrats that come out to vote each and every election, no matter the candidate, the more the party will listen to the voters. The fact that we won two presidential elections in a row with substantial margins gives a socialist a legitimate shot at capturing the Democratic nomination. Even if he doesn’t get it, the primary totals he’s getting lay out the groundwork for campaigns in the future. Every vote counts, in way more levels than who wins any single race. Margins matter. We want to drive up margins in our safe areas to create space for more leftist alternatives and also make margins smaller in Republican areas to make them worry more about the general election than the primary. It doesn’t matter if your candidate loses the primary, the real enemy is the Republicans.
As I mentioned, it works down ballot too. The potential candidates who are looking at running in races in the next four years are going to look at the presidential vote count in their individual districts, but also the vote counts in all the races up and down the ballot. The vote totals are what they care about. They don’t care about the non voters. Every vote counts and every vote is counted multiple times by the people we denigrate as the establishment. Not even money matters more to the establishment than votes. And nothing is going to move the establishment to the left other than votes for Democrats or alternatives to their left. Staying home will do absolutely nothing to advance the left. I live in a city in Upstate New York where I feel completely comfortable voting Green consistently and will do so in the fall. I always vote for the most left wing candidate I possibly can in every election (with local exceptions). I always vote, no matter who is running.
It doesn’t matter if you are on the West Coast and the networks have already called the national election. I doesn’t matter if you know your state house candidate is going to lose 80-20. It doesn’t matter if you write in every race on your ballot. Every vote counts.