I've seen a lot of posts criticizing terminally-online leftists for thinking that not voting will somehow send the Deomcratic party to the left instead of to the center, and while that is true
I haven't seen many pointing out that voting actually works for progressive causes.
Joe Biden moved to the left significantly on climate because the left wing of the party wanted to work with him. The centrists in the party, like Joe Manchin, frustratingly dragged their heels on everything because they weren't that interested in getting things done. But the leftists in the party, like Bernie and AOC, actually engaged in talks and compromises and pulled Biden much, much farther left on climate than where he started. A lot of great green policy came out of the last four years!
There was even a Pod Save America interview a few months ago where one of Biden's cabinet members (very diplomatically) confirmed that the leftwing of the party was so much better to work with than centrists like Joe Manchin. (Probably because leftists actually care about the things they talk about and want to do things besides go to fancy Washington parties and stay in congress for a million years.)
So, I really cannot stress enough that actually showing up and working with people actually does pay off for your cause. You can do more for the things you care about when you are at the table. Your vote actually does create the change you are seeking, even when you are voting for someone who is not 100% aligned with you.
I was going to make my own post about this but might as well do it here:
Obama was the lesser evil in 2008 and 2012.
He did not at first support marriage equality (which I realize might be weird for people who weren't alive back then, but marriage equality was not a popular opinion until extremely recently), but did eventually come out in support of it after a few years in office (and because Biden voiced his support of it and kind of backed him into a corner, lol). He did not lead a national marriage equality initiative or anything, but he did not defend laws like the Defense of Marriage Act (which didn't allow the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages even if it was legal in the state they lived in), allowing it to be struck down. He nominated Supreme Court justices who later voted to recognize marriage equality nationally.
What was the alternative? Well, up until Obama was elected, a sizeable contingent of Republicans wanted to amend the Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage nationwide. Governments in multiple states refused to recognize valid marriages performed in other states that did allow them. California alone allowed and then undid marriage equality multiple times (anyone else remember Proposition 8?).
He got the ACA passed. It was not Medicaid for All or pure single-payer like the leftists wanted: the ACA was based on MassHealth, which was instituted in Massachusetts under Mitt Romney, a Republican. There were a lot of concessions to Republicans in it, even though they ended up opposing it anyway. But it prohibited insurance companies from denying coverage to people for pre-existing conditions and allowed people to stay on their parents' health insurance until they turned 26, which was a huge fucking deal.
What was the alternative? Well, do y'all remember that the Republicans spent most of the Trump administration trying to "repeal and replace" the ACA, and were only stopped because John McCain voted to keep it while dying of brain cancer? And that even up until the end of his term, Trump was saying he had a great plan to replace Obamacare, and repeatedly said even up to the last moment that it was going to come out "within two weeks" (it never did), and then handed Lesley Stahl a big binder full of papers and said that was his comprehensive healthcare plan (it was not)? And how Trump just said in his debate with Harris that "he has concepts of a plan" to replace the ACA?
He did not give sweeping amnesty to undocumented immigrants or disband ICE. But he supported DREAMers through an executive action called DACA, which Trump immediately attempted to undo and Biden redid when he got in office (a lawsuit challenging this just had oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court twenty fucking days ago). He did not mass deport millions of people (Trump has repeatedly said that he will on Day 1). He had guidelines for prioritizing certain deportations over low-level ones (deporting a murderer was more important than deporting a shoplifter). Every immigration lawyer I've spoken to has said that it was much easier to negotiate with ICE attorneys under Obama than it was Trump, because ICE under Obama was at least willing to negotiate at all. Under Trump, everything the immigration defense attorneys asked for, no matter how slight, was unilaterally opposed with no negotiation.
He did not end the war in Afghanistan or close Guantanamo Bay. In fact, the use of drones to kill people in multiple foreign countries was expanded tenfold under Obama. But he, along with several other countries, put together and negotiated the Iran Nuclear Deal, an extremely important foreign policy victory that Trump immediately fucking undid the second he was in power.
Electing Obama didn't just hold the status quo: things significantly improved for minorities in a shitload of ways. Not nearly as much as I think I or anyone else here would like, but it wasn't just stopping the drift rightward, it was turning the tide to the left.
Harris isn't going to be the sweeping herald of leftism we'd want her to be. But at least things can improve, which they will not under Trump. They will be worse.
