You are making ‘harm reduction’ and an ‘anti-litmus testing’ arguments. There are merits to both, but let me explain how my positions have shifted in recent years. I hope that you and the Democratic Party are interested.
It is very clear to me that 40 years of harm reduction voting hasn’t worked at all. The party has only lurched rightward at every juncture and refuses to meaningfully mount opposition to fascism.
There are some issues that are so egregiously simple and important, that they serve as good measures of how an official will operate while in office. Genocide is an example of this. If you are willing to even just play footsie with that policy, you cannot be trusted on anything else, full stop.
As I said before, it is incumbent upon us to get better people nominated. But the party needs to understand that me (and perhaps others) are no longer willing to move to them (that is, compromise to suit their conservative ideology). They have to start coming to me/us. You will probably say that a (small-d) democratic party’s positions are dictated by who we nominate and elect, so I should be focusing my efforts on driving better nominations. I get it. But it is also true that this party has a very strong corporate-captured leadership that regularly puts its thumb on that democratic process. That is who I am addressing with these comments.
I have followed and advocated for the practice you are describing for 40 years. I was literally making phone calls for Dukakis before I was old enough to vote. I say these things into emphasize my next point to you any anyone in party leadership that might hear my words.
You have already lost me. I’m not doing it anymore. You have to convince me that you’re worthy of my support through POLICY. Nothing you say about political dynamics is going to sway me anymore. I’m done with it. Now, maybe I’m an aberration. But, if the reporting on the DNC post mortem on the Harris campaign is accurate, I don’t think that is the case.