The way I look at it, it’s not about spite, it’s about not contributing to the problem. If this was a choice made entirely in a vacuum where the choices were dropped from the sky with no history and there were no future elections, and you could absolutely only choose between them and nothing else, then fine, choose the dems since I guess they will technically be “less bad.”

The problem is the choice isn’t made in a vacuum. There’s a reason we have the choices that are presented to us in elections because this is a repeated game where past results affect later games. We keep getting worse and worse options from either party because they know people don’t have a real choice. As long as the dems are anywhere before the line, even if they’re shockingly close, then people will have to pick them. So they move right up to that line because they won’t be punished for it. In turn, Republicans have the space to move further right now that the overton window has shifted.

The DNC feels free to rig primaries, which are supposedly where we’re allowed to have input without risking a Republican winning, because they know that the outcome won’t change people’s votes, or even if it does, they don’t seem to care THAT much about winning as long as actual leftists lose.

Repeat until we have Democrats who are anti-immigration, pro-war, pro-police, pro-surveillance, and pro-corporate and Republicans who have just taken their mask off. And this even trickles down to the base somewhat. How the hell does California vote to keep literal slavery around and still conceive of itself as liberal?

Also, this is less a strategic point and more of a moral one, but I take issue with the idea of the Dems being “better” as a given. Better for who? They’re not better for the people they’re helping to bomb. Why should their priorities not matter? How can you quantify their suffering against different kinds of suffering for other groups? “But the Republicans will do the same, so it’s a wash, you shouldn’t consider that.” Meaning we’ve taken their issue off the table. It’s no longer in the realm of politics because we’ve just accepted that it’s fated to happen. It shouldn’t matter to us.

“But you can apply pressure once they’re in office, the Dems will be more receptive.” How exactly will you pressure people who you’ve told you will unconditionally vote for and won’t act against outside the system? And are they more receptive? They didn’t stop supplying Israel. They never raised the minimum wage or got people healthcare. They never did anything to codify Roe V Wade or to sure up the courts against corruption. Plus once you spent all this political capital putting them in power, how many liberals or even progressives are going to meaningfully push back against them? Libs will go back to thinking everything is fine and a lot of progressives will just think they should try to “hold them accountable.” Whatever that means.

Of course, merely not voting isn’t sufficient to affect change, but I think putting all this emphasis on voting is doing harm to the effort to get people to get organized in other ways. It distracts them and it makes it seem like your principles don’t really matter. “If you are so adamant about supporting the people working against my interests, can you really be by ally? Do you really care about me?”