Glenn Greenwald writes that Democratic voters need to stop letting Democrats take their votes for granted:
One thing is for certain: right now, the Democratic Party is absolutely correct in its assessment that kicking its base is good politics. Why is that? Because they know that they have inculcated their base with sufficient levels of fear and hatred of the GOP, so that no matter how often the Party kicks its base, no matter how often Party leaders break their promises and betray their ostensible values, the base will loyally and dutifully support the Party and its leaders (at least in presidential elections; there is a good case that the Democrats got crushed in 2010 in large part because their base was so unenthusiastic).
I think this is a misdiagnosis of the problem. Democrats are less liberal than Republicans are conservative because there are fewer self-identified liberals in America. Democrats rely more on the votes of moderates, and so they can't afford to be as strident ideologically.
The other thing is that never in history has liberals abstaining from a vote led to a more progressive government. When liberals decided Al Gore was too much like George W. Bush they voted for Ralph Nader or they stayed home. Either way, the U.S. ended up with an economic collapse, an unnecessary war, and an imperial executive branch that shows no signs of abating now that the White House has changed hands. As Greenwald notes, the Democratic base didn't show up strongly in 2010 either, and now liberals are fighting to keep Medicare and Medicaid from being abolished. Family planning for poor and working-class women is on the chopping block, while Republicans are attempting to tax reproductive health benefits out of private insurance entirely. Liberals may ultimately come back to the Democrats, but this isn't merely out of blind loyalty or because they're easily manipulated by cheap Democratic fearmongering. It's because the consequences of Republican dominance are anything but abstract.
Look, the civil-liberties left just isn't a big part of the base. What you have to hope for is that the president that gets elected staffs his administration with people who care enough about the rule of law to make sure it gets followed. The last administration didn't do that, and this one got rid of the people who did.
Anyway, I'm not sure what the answer to this is, but I'm fairly certain that abstaining from voting isn't it. Life hands you a lot of hard choices and few easy ones, and the latter are rarely important.
*Sorry, I somehow got the day time stamp wrong on this post.
