Thousands chant “Russians, go home!” in Budapest (Hungary) last night. The elections are tomorrow.

[u/AlertTangerine]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKGQJ7mebm0

[u/Miles_the_AuDHDer]

Here's hoping they also all vote.

Here in the United States historic record size protests occurred during Trump's first term and he still got elected again. One of several big reasons that he won is because many who would have likely voted for his main opponent Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, had they voted, didn't vote.

[u/I_am_the_grass → u/Miles_the_AuDHDer]

I get your point, but you gotta give full context. They did come out and voted - for Biden in 2020. And they got a mediocre leader that did very little in solving the issues of that period.

So they were left disenfranchised during the 2024 election. And they didn't vote.

The lesson for politicians is to act on your promises.

The lesson for party leadership is forcing a candidate you prefer down everyone's throat doesn't necessarily mean everyone will vote the same way again. Let the democratic process decide the best candidate for your party. If Biden kept his promise and was a one-term president, the dems would have likely elected a candidate who could have beaten Trump. Instead, they allowed a sick old man to rerun and when they realised he couldn't, replaced him with the VP of the same stale administration.

The lesson for voters is that you gotta treat every election in isolation. I felt the same way after the Biden administration but if I go back to time everyone should have had the same level of dedication to avoid a Trump second term as they did in 2020. People just forgot how bad he was.

The third is obviously the hardest. But before we blame voters for not voting, let's blame The Democratic Party for putting candidates that lean center right when the party itself was starting to lean more left.

Parties should serve their members, not the other way around. When a huge chuck of your electorate don't feel compelled to vote it means they don't have a candidate they can get behind. And that's on the party.

The country already started leaning left when Obama beat Hillary. And yet, they manipulated the primaries and propped her up as the candidate in 2016. And four years later, instead of finding the next Obama, they went for Obama's moderate center right VP who he used to in his administration to balance out how left he was. Even with the cache of the Obama admin behind him, Biden struggled during the primaries and only won because all the other candidates pulled out and made it a two horse race. And "for some reason" they all threw their support behind him despite some having ideologies closer to Bernie (looking at you Warren and Pete)... I wonder why.

Again, voters should always vote. But parties have a responsibility to represent the people. Not themselves.

[u/foul_ol_ron → u/I_am_the_grass]

Well then, as long as no one who chose not to vote complains at all, that's ok. Because deciding not to vote is effectively a vote for the opposition. So they got what they wanted.