It pains me to read diary after diary and comment after comment from folks here predicting the impending doom of our democracy with a sense of awe and surprise. Yes, certain aspects of the doom are very real and I understand we have to do our best to motivate the resistance, but we knew this was going to happen. It's absolutely no surprise. We knew this entire crazed Trump agenda was going to happen and we let it happen.
Democracy dies in a two-party system when voters from the party representing the minority vote with discipline in every federal, state and local election while voters from the party representing the majority don’t and thereby cede the political stage to the minority.
None of of the Obamacare sabotage, none of the RWNJ judges, none of the tax cuts for the wealthy, none of the anti-immigration executive orders, etc. happen if progressives in the U.S. vote with discipline. None of it.
We just had an election which pitted the most progressive major-party nominee for President in modern history (it’s not even close) against a racist, fascist, xenophobic, narcissistic, homophobic, sexually-assaulting twit who, if elected, represented an existential threat to our democracy. The election was unprecedented in this respect. Yet, in an election in which the continued existence of our democracy was at stake, hundreds of thousands of progressives protest-voted or refused to vote at all based on the ludicrous notion that our candidate was somehow rendered equivalent to the racist, fascist, xenophobic, narcissistic, homophobic, sexually-assaulting twit who, if elected, represented an existential threat to our democracy, because our candidate was not progressively pure. These purists easily swung the election in PA, WI and MI, with tens of thousands of progressive voters in each of those states either protest voting or not voting at all.
None of what is happening is a surprise. We all knew the consequences of losing in 2016. It’s time we quit acting like victims. We are the cause of this. And it will only get worse — much, much worse — unless and until we realize that the path to power rests with voting with discipline in every federal, state and local election in every election cycle. It’s the only solution. It’s the only way out of this mess.
THE SINGLE GREATEST ISSUE FACING THE WORLD —AND NOT JUST THIS GREAT NATION — IS THE FACT THAT PROGRESSIVES IN THE U.S. ARE NOT DISCIPLINED VOTERS AND THEREBY CEDE POWER TO THE UNHINGED GOP. IT IS THE ISSUE THAT SUPERSEDES ALL ISSUES.