Political capital is spent and earned via appearance. If you vote for a bad bill, it is on you. If you refuse to vote for a good bill, it is on you. Both actions take political capital away.
The opposite earns political capital. Take the recent fuckup where 11 democrats decided to attend an Israel-first rally instead of voting to bring the Hegseth impeachment vote to the floor. Those 11 dems essentially fucked themselves. Permanently. They lost all political capital they have, and harmed the democratic party as a whole.
Just because they chose to miss the vote. They weren’t going to make a difference, realistically, but guess what, the appearance of corruption and compliance is far worse than making a useless vote.
To the relatively few citizens that pay attention and keep tabs, sure. For the large majority of voters, that’s not the case - short attention spans rule.
That’s the thing, we don’t need them to have long attention spans. The DSA has proven that Dem on Dem attack ads work, and that the centrist/neoliberal establishment has no actual response for them. Simply having political ads and town halls where you list the failures of democrat incumbents is enough to get them out of office.
The only problem is republicans are likely to also key into this for 2028.
Political capital is spent and earned via appearance. If you vote for a bad bill, it is on you. If you refuse to vote for a good bill, it is on you. Both actions take political capital away.
The opposite earns political capital. Take the recent fuckup where 11 democrats decided to attend an Israel-first rally instead of voting to bring the Hegseth impeachment vote to the floor. Those 11 dems essentially fucked themselves. Permanently. They lost all political capital they have, and harmed the democratic party as a whole.
Just because they chose to miss the vote. They weren’t going to make a difference, realistically, but guess what, the appearance of corruption and compliance is far worse than making a useless vote.
To the relatively few citizens that pay attention and keep tabs, sure. For the large majority of voters, that’s not the case - short attention spans rule.
That’s the thing, we don’t need them to have long attention spans. The DSA has proven that Dem on Dem attack ads work, and that the centrist/neoliberal establishment has no actual response for them. Simply having political ads and town halls where you list the failures of democrat incumbents is enough to get them out of office.
The only problem is republicans are likely to also key into this for 2028.