The D Stands for Democrat, Not Default

It seems like a good time to remind everyone that those of us who post about (argue about) U.S. politics on Facebook and elsewhere on the internet are nowhere near a majority of voters. We are a small subset. Most people are not politically literate. This is intentional, because politicians couldn’t have gotten away with as much as they have if the populace understood how our “democracy” works.

I’ve seen people I care about and respect start in on the vote shaming. Not just for 2020, but for 2016.

Here’s a reminder that the D behind a candidate’s name does not stand for Default, it stands for the Democratic Party, which is not a governmental entity. The political parties are private entities with their own rules and bylaws.

And although I’ve been a registered Democrat my entire adult life, it’s time to come to terms with the fact that the only thing the Democrats have ever truly stood for is gaining or retaining political power in their pseudo-struggle with the Republicans.

As the Republicans have gotten objectively more evil, the Democrats could have chosen to do what their marketing makes people think they do: help regular people like us, those who post about politics on social media as well as those who don’t. But they didn’t. They realized they could get away with more and more evil, as long as they were still the lesser.

The world is on fire — some places literally. If Obama’s hope hadn’t been a false one, people might actually think their vote matters. Voting for Obama didn’t make things better for a lot of people, something I didn’t notice in those “glory years” but every politician's misdeeds emerge after they leave office, even the ones we thought were “the good ones.”

Many of us were bullied for wanting Bernie in 2016 even if we voted for Hillary. We were blamed for not being enthusiastic in our support. (You wouldn’t have been either if you’d witnessed what went on behind the scenes at the convention.) Others were bullied because they voted third-party or stayed home. “Vote Blue No Matter Who” is toxic, and doesn’t even make sense when more Americans are independent voters not belonging to any major party.

The D doesn’t stand for default.

No one is to blame for Hillary’s loss in 2016 except for the party that propped up an already unpopular candidate. Republicans hated her. Loads of Democrats hated her for flawed patriarchal BS related to her husband, while others among the politically literate (like me) despised her policies and her voting record. For the record, I’d voted for her three times as my Senator and in the 2008 primary, before I learned all of the terrible things. (No, I never screamed about Benghazi, but I was calling out her enthusiastic support for the 1994 Crime Bill, and for hawkishness in places like Yemen and Venezuela.)

A presidential candidate has to earn the votes of the people. They are not owed anything. No matter what any of the PR folks at the campaigns would like you to believe, elected officials are public servants. Sure, if you’ve bothered to read this far, you knew what a trash fire the 2016 election is and why beating Trump was so important. (Hey, hindsight’s 2020. Pun intended.) But Hillary couldn’t inspire enough people to vote for her against perhaps the worst presidential candidate in the entirety of our country’s history.

We might make up 5–10% of voters. (Not even out of the whole electorate, of actual voters. Feel free to correct me if you have real data concerning how many voters make an effort to educate themselves about politics.) The people who decide elections are the ones who watch network news. Sure, our votes are part of the collective, but the people you’re alienating with your vote shaming wouldn’t have changed the outcome in 2016, and won’t change it in 2020. The people who will make a difference are all those who will just stay home because they don’t understand how important their vote can be, and they’ve been given no one to inspire them to cast a ballot.

Come on…Joe Biden? Joe “don’t ask me what my policies are or I’ll tell you to just vote for Trump instead” Biden? Joe “nothing with fundamentally change” Biden?

The average voter is unaware of how tenuous our position as a democracy really is. They don’t understand the Supreme Court or how Ginsberg’s death could affect our government for decades to come. So stop harassing people who also want to save our country, and start demanding better from the party you belong to who are banking on how bad “the other guy” is and always will be so they can get away with never fulfilling a single promise to their voters — always blaming the other party and never having to be accountable for pandering to their donors and throwing actual voters under the bus.

Yeah, I’m begrudgingly voting for Biden for complicated reasons. But in 2024, if Biden hasn’t reversed the damage caused by Trump — or if he makes them worse— I will not be voting for the Democrats. I’ll be changing my party affiliation and voting third party…with a clear conscience. The party was warned: Fuck around and find out.