And the party people should stop shrieking about them

Correct. Voting for Democrats, even imperfect ones, will encourage politicians to try to appeal more to the left.

Imagine if we could keep the Senate and improve the balance in the House (or maybe even take it, I'm not sure if that's numerically possible). That would send a message to Republicans, who are already mellowing on things like SSM.

Every election I have ever voted in which included votes for national office also had ballot issues as well as local candidates to be considered. I've never even heard of anyone not voting because they were waiting for a perfect candidate. Frankly, I've never met anyone stupid enough to think any politician is much better than mediocre much less to seek perfection.
I always hear this unsupported theory you present. It is always presented as you present it, without any supporting data.
Do you have any supporting data to prove your assertion is not just hot air and assumption packaged up neatly into a Party dividing mechanism?

for every time a gun nut/pro-lifer/anti-gay marriage activist/neo-Confederate quoted that line...

But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan


Sid

And no, digging up one DUer who once ranted about "not bothering to vote" doesn't alter that fact at all.

And there is this, on Common Dreams, a progressive site:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5649770

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025651558#post1

(ie: never)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=439&topic_id=1779365



Sid

For ten years the author has been promised by first Senator Obama, and then President Obama, and by extension the Democratic Party that they would support action on Immigration. During that time, they have not once lived up to the promise. Yet, every couple years they come back asking for support from the Hispanic community. Please vote for us, we'll do it this time I swear.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/09/09/obama-broke-his-promise-latinos-maybe-we-should-sit-election-out

How many times have people on this board, op eds in news papers, pundits on TV practically begged the Democratic Party to govern on principle. A principle other than win the election I should say. How many times has that happened? You can't promise action time and time again and not deliver and still expect people to march in lockstep to support you. President Obama was a community organizer. He knows the position he's put the leaders in, by refusing to take action and follow through with his promises time and time again.

Let's say you and I are part of a five hundred person advocacy group. We endorse a politician because the politician promises action on our issue. Every election for ten years we do the same thing, we tell our members to go out and vote because this guy is going to give us what we want this time. Do you think our members will remain members if we don't deliver on our promises? How long before they stop listening to us as we fritter away our standing supporting someone who is not keeping their promise to us? How big of a fool would you look like turning to your followers and giving the same speech you've given since 2004 about supporting a politician who has never done a thing to help your cause?

Carmen Velasquez is furious, angry at being tricked, angry at being misled. There may be many excuses to justify it, but she is unwilling to put her name on the endorsement because since 2004, nothing to fulfil the promise that this time, it will be different has happened.



SO who is to blame for losing those voters? Read the article who is to blame for the disillusionment, the feelings of betrayal that are so poignantly written? That article is a wife leaving her serial adulterer husband. That letter is a boyfriend breaking up with a lover who has been unfaithful. So who do we blame? The wife that left the man who betrayed her, or the man who betrayed the wife? Who do we blame here? The supporters who are walking away from politicians who have not followed through with promises? Or do we blame the politician who hasn't followed through.

The sad part is that if President Obama had taken action in the spring, we would have her support, and the support of probably 80% of the latino vote. Instead, we're chasing the racist vote while whispering that the victims of racism have to endure just a little longer, perhaps late November, maybe in January after the last of the runoff elections happen. It will happen this time, I swear.

Every.single.day.

to smear progressive voters. So for the 5th time I'll post the evidence against this blatant lie...and once again our resident conservodems spreading this lie will make believe this post doesn't exist:

Did liberals really stay home and cause the 2010 rout?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/06/1003805/-Did-liberals-really-stay-home-and-cause-the-2010-rout
“So I went back to the exit polls and the picture I see shows nothing like that. If you are a proponent of this claim, I challenge you for empirical proof that some set of activist liberals "took their ball and went home" or whatever metaphor you prefer to make Obama's leftward critics appear childish and immature. Inside, the evidence I found that shows this just ain't so.”

http://blogforarizona.net/do-progressives-even-sit-out-elections-the-numbers-say-no/
“As you can see, Democrats did slightly better with liberals in 2010 than in 2006. Had there really been a collective we’re-sitting-out-the-election-to-spite-Obama pout going on, then there should have been a sharp drop in the liberal participation percentage. Yet notice the 9% in moderate voter participation and the concomitant 10% increase in conservative turnout. Republicans were pumped for that election but their turnout tends to be higher in midterms anyway. Millions of moderate voters either flipped to conservative or stayed home in 2010.”

“As you can see, all the Democratic groups dropped, but the liberal Democrats dropped least of all”

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/progressive-movement/news/2012/11/08/44348/the-return-of-the-obama-coalition/
Ideology. Liberals were 25 percent of voters in 2012, up from 22 percent in 2008. Since 1992 the percent of liberals among presidential voters has varied in a narrow band between 20 percent and 22 percent, so the figure for this year is quite unusual. Conservatives, at 35 percent, were up one point from the 2008 level, but down a massive 7 points since 2010.
Ideology. Obama received less support in 2012 from all ideology groups, though the drop-offs were not particularly sharp in any group. He received 86 percent support from liberals (89 percent in 2008), 56 percent from moderates (60 percent in 2008), and 17 percent from conservatives (20 percent in 2008).

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5649770

The article is directed at Latinos, not Progressives.

Further, I am unclear what your position is here. Do you believe what you wrote in this OP will encourage Latinos (or Progressives) to vote? Or are you saying that we should ignore them because they don't count? Or what exactly?

not to worry about them -- to concentrate on getting the votes of those who DO show up at the polls.

And Latinos are, by and large, a progressive voting group. They voted heavily for Democrats in the last election. I wonder who is behind efforts to get them not to vote anymore?

There is OP after OP -- all by the same little clique-- insinuating that progressives don't vote. It's comical if you think we believe all of you just happened to come up with this "concern" simultaneously.

"you can fool some people some times...
but you can't fool all the people all the time"
Bob Marley, O.M.

are coming from.

If our dem party has been completely co-opted by the third way (which is funded by repugs) we should be thinking about what to do about that. The answer is not to "stop voting" - but it may involve thinking about who we should be supporting.

I have never sat out an election and don't plan on starting now.
But it's hard to vote with a barf bag in one hand, holding your nose with the other and clenching a stylus between your teeth to vote.

That makes no sense.

but I don't expect one of the 150% cheerleaders to get that.

I would never do that.

If you have two candidates and you think both are evil, you shouldn't vote for either of them.

....because some anonymous posters on a message board will jump on you if you don't?

HAHAHAHAHAHA

1) don't vote for somebody if you think they're evil.
2) don't vote because some anonymous posters on a message board told you to.

You'll often be in a situation where it's clear that the winner will be somebody who's pretty bad. Nothing you can do will change that. Nevertheless, among all those candidates whom you label "evil" or "pretty bad" or whatever, there can be significant differences. I don't like Ted Cruz and I don't like Joe Lieberman, but if they were running against each other for something, I'd vote for Lieberman. After we set aside all the right-wing stuff they agree on, there remain significant areas in which Lieberman is to the left of Cruz.

Dividing the Party with this sort of thing without offering strong statistical support for the assertions made, which are both of intent and of motivation for that intention, is not something I take lightly.

Things that make you go hmmmm...?

Both Democratic and Republican politicians prefer closely divided government as long as their own seats are reasonably safe, it keeps the drama factor up and the need to actually do what you say you are going to do to a minimum. "We're sorry we can't get you what you want but those other guys over there are being completely unreasonable". (not to say that they're not being "unreasonable&quot

Plus of course the added bonus of a handy scapegoat to blame for any Democratic "losses" that conveniently the Republicans also really really hate so they won't do a thing to defend either.

Any time I see that argument floated, it's an instant fail.

or against us. Not voting is against us. Complaining about a Democratic candidates is against us. There is no other way now. For us or against us.

There have been post to this thread where some have posted "I will not vote for______" and when the election ballot has two choices or a write in and one decides "the D did or did not do something" so they decide not to mark a candidate then a candidate who may be further from their views will get the benefit of the better candidate not getting a vote. I don't see where any group has been pointed out but if a group is guilty of these tactics with elections having results should not complain about who is elected. If you split the DNC and none of our issues will ever get attention.

To do less, to not vote, would be giving them what they want, and reinforces the attitude and belief of the current beltway and media that our views are not shared by most Americans. If we don't vote, they win and that is not a cliché...

Candidate "A" wins by a lot
Candidate "A" wins by a little
Candidates Tie
Candidate "A" loses by a little
Candidate "A" loses by a lot

In 4 out of 5 outcomes, Candidate "A" is viewed favorably. Example:

If Candidate "A" is a blue dog, the blue dog will be encouraged to run again, the party will be encouraged to run more blue dogs, and progressive values will be diminished.

If candidate "A" is a real liberal, that 4 in 5 works in favor of progressives and progressive politics.

With that in mind, why would I ever vote for a blue dog?

Must be close to election time again. Just like clockwork.

and I'm not confused about where they are coming from.

The same group rec cing the threads year after year.

and they keep losing elections.

My vote is important to me, and a candidate has to earn it.

What's that about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

are going to wait for a viable candidate that is truly progressive they are never going to vote again.

I'm trying to remember what philosopher once said that he'd rather have his enemies hating him than laughing at him. It was the scenario that plagued Republicans in 2012 when their presidential candidates were fodder for comedians. In spite of everything, the Democrat platform still appeals more to the general electorate, which is why Republicans have to backtrack on the promises they make their base and try and moderate their message for Independents and undecided voters. Republicans today are voting in a race to the most extreme candidates. We can argue about electing the most progressive candidates and how moderating our message is pulling the party to the center-right, but a big part of the problem is that many of our attempts at passing progressive programs have been blocked by hard-right conservatives. Sure, we've also seen programs implemented by Democrats in congress and a Democrat president that outrage us, but the lesser of two evils still being evil is actually something we can often work with. It can mean the difference between the greater evil passing legislation that gets rid of minimum wage laws or the lesser evil blocking their attempts or passing laws that increase it in certain sectors of employment.

that can be used to label a wide variety of political positions.


Democrats who are to the left of the center-right neo-liberal status quo don't sit out elections. Not in the significant numbers that the current faux horror would suggest. That's just a strategy for setting up scape-goats when the supposedly "electable" candidates don't win. And it's a convenient way to keep what really happens stuffed under the rug...they vote outside the party.

Political gods and goddesses forbid that rank and file Democrats should actually nominate and support candidates that the disenfranchised will turn out to vote for.

Perhaps they just have different values than you. Some people care very much about certain issues, such as abortion, marriage equality, social security, or war. To expect someone to budge on a core issue, such as abortion, isn't fair, in my opinion.

...the voting booth in years that don't have the drama and personality-driven coverage of a presidential election? Because that's where the big drop-off in turnout lies, not exasperated lefties.

But I think we're going to show up and fool everyone ......

I hope I hope I hope I hope

even though we were voting for the lesser of two evils.