Vote when it's not trending? That sounds boring and hard!
Vote for the change you want to see.
The Republican party got remade because trumpists showed up and outvoted the party elites. No reason it can't happen for the Left except for laziness and apathy.
If all the progressives furious about the state of affairs now had shown up for Sanders in 2016, I doubt we'd be in this hellish timeline. Sadly, he needed the young progressive vote to show up.
Harris and Biden were on the ballot in 2020, as were more progressive candidates. As usual, more moderates and centrists did the boring grown up work of showing up and voting in the primaries and thus, Biden won.
Progressives actually had a huge showing in the 2020 primaries. That's why Bernie won all almost all of the states leading up to Super Tuesday. But wouldn't you know it, something AMAZING happened and ALL of the moderate Democrats dropped out of the race within a single 24 hour span and every single one of them endorsed Joe Biden as they dropped out. BUT another progressive candidate, Elizabeth Warren "decided" to stay in the race when everyone else was dropping out and she hadn't won a single fucking contest. So the progressive vote was split between two candidates (heavily favoring Bernie), but ultimately giving Biden a number of victories on Super Tuesday thereby changing the entire outlook of the rest of the primary in favor of Biden.
But if you look at those vote counts, progressives ABSOLUTELY showed up, but the Spoiler Effect is very real. And it seems the DNC was up to their old tricks trying to shove a candidate down our throats that we didn't want.
Also, don't try to side-step the bullshit of this year's primaries by acting like we got our choice back in 2020 because Biden & Harris were both in THOSE primaries. You know damn well that people were calling for an actual primary in THIS election, they were ignored, Biden became the candidate, and that obviously went completely perfectly. Then we had a fair amount of anxiety about what would happen, and the DNC just got to ordain another candidate of their choosing.
I sincerely hope it works out for us, but the DNC won't have anyone to blame but themselves. Just kidding, they'll definitely blame progressives if they lose again. They always will.
So you voted for Trump because the Democrats didn't have a primary late into the election season, when the sitting president tapped out cuz old and their VP tapped in? That's wild. I recommend you read up on American political history when it comes to what the whole purpose of the VP is.
That super cool one with Dean Philips and Marianne Williamson. But frankly there wasn't really a ready pool of willing candidates, and there still isn't.
The very public V.P. courtship process was sort of the de facto primary we got. Or the closest thing to it.
I would need to know what US state [if any] you are registerer to vote in to look up what your primary options were. And how you might have used it best to state an opinion.
In NJ:
We did have the uncommited option (got 9%, nearly the rest to Biden at the time, you could have also written in any other elegable person) However we also had a senate race:
In the democratic primary senator race, the results were (aprox)
9% for Lawrence Hamm
16% for Patricia Campos-Medina
75% for Andy Kim
If you want the US to be less involved with the Netanyahu government Kim was the worse of the three.
And this decision (ie who will be in the senate, driving laws) makes a huge difference in the party wide policy, that is the primary policy Biden (now Harris) is following.. Since the president is inherently a centrist roll. (Ie center of those the people elect, this can of course shift left/right/up/down/ect with the electorate)
Is the system perfect no.. (but posts on instant runnoff voting, or ranked choice will make the post a book, and they are not yet the system in play, last these systems would really only help reiterate the signal the primaries give.. It would be still someone in the center of the electorate at the top.. And if we are lucky more parties)