#apologies for the political posting. its the american election so i get one freebie. please forgive me.

[penultimate-step]

My one contribution to the US election discourse is that in the future, I think people of all political affiliations should probably prioritize swaying public opinion more.

I think discussion about using the voting system to push candidates further left, either through voting compromise candidates or through withholding votes to try and force the candidates to listen to their left advocates, are somewhat misguided. In the past the administration has barely budged on many of these issues, so I am skeptical that "push them left" works quite in that manner. However I think part of the reason this is ineffective is that they are aware that for however many people protest it is never going to be an unignorable part of their base.

But people who argue for more direct action face the same problem - any organized movement for non-vote based political change that attempts to oppose the government will need massive popular support if it hopes to succeed. Done by a small minority they will simply be suppressed.

I don't know, I generally find most of this discourse as fundamentally kind of glossing over the fact that a great deal of the US citizenry is opposed to leftist policies. And as someone who supports many of these policies that does depress me. But I think at some point we do have to grapple with the fact that there isn't really a bureaucratic or military way to avoid the problem of 80% of the country being opposed to what we want to do. This is perhaps the root issue here, that we must address. Regardless on if we're discussing electoral or non-electoral solutions I generally think a campaign of educating, convincing, and adjustment to public opinion is a prerequisite to broader change.