I caucused for him in 2016 and it was pretty depressing how many people wouldn’t vote for him “because he’s so far behind”. First, who gives a fuck? It’s a primary, vote for the candidate you actually want. Second, he wasn’t really behind. He was behind when including the superdelegates who have only gone against the popular vote one time in all of history. Had Bernie had the popular vote at the end of the polling period, all of the supers would have cast votes for Sanders. But you can’t explain this to people. Sure, you can tell them, but they aren’t going to actually listen, hear, and comprehend what you’re saying. All they know is they want to vote for the winning candidate, because of course primaries are a sporting event and only being on the winning team matters. I lost a lot of faith in people in 2016, and I haven’t really regained any of it since. Matter of fact, I’ve lost considerably more faith since.
I can sort of understand their reasoning – I’m with you in that I don’t agree with it and think it’s self defeating, but I can see how they could arrive at that conclusion.
What really killed me is how many of my friends and colleagues that hard-core loved Bernie Sanders didn’t vote because they either “forgot” to, didn’t register to vote after being slammed with reminders to, didn’t bother to look up when/where to vote, or just couldn’t be fucked to make the effort. Even after countless hours talking about how great he is, posting on social media, and even donating to his campaign.
I caucused for him in 2016 and it was pretty depressing how many people wouldn’t vote for him “because he’s so far behind”. First, who gives a fuck? It’s a primary, vote for the candidate you actually want. Second, he wasn’t really behind. He was behind when including the superdelegates who have only gone against the popular vote one time in all of history. Had Bernie had the popular vote at the end of the polling period, all of the supers would have cast votes for Sanders. But you can’t explain this to people. Sure, you can tell them, but they aren’t going to actually listen, hear, and comprehend what you’re saying. All they know is they want to vote for the winning candidate, because of course primaries are a sporting event and only being on the winning team matters. I lost a lot of faith in people in 2016, and I haven’t really regained any of it since. Matter of fact, I’ve lost considerably more faith since.
I can sort of understand their reasoning – I’m with you in that I don’t agree with it and think it’s self defeating, but I can see how they could arrive at that conclusion.
What really killed me is how many of my friends and colleagues that hard-core loved Bernie Sanders didn’t vote because they either “forgot” to, didn’t register to vote after being slammed with reminders to, didn’t bother to look up when/where to vote, or just couldn’t be fucked to make the effort. Even after countless hours talking about how great he is, posting on social media, and even donating to his campaign.
That is devastating. It’ll be a real tragedy if democracy dies to apathy, after so many people literally died to give it to us.