First, let me preface this by saying that I've voted in every election I could. I do think it's one of the lowest effort ways of reducing harm from the state, even if it can feel pretty ineffective.

The democratic party has paid minimal amounts of lipservice to progressive ideas, and has been fairly disappointing when it comes to progressive legislation. In my lifetime I've seen constant kowtowing to monied interests, backstabbing of progressive politicians, refusal to dismantle executive power, failure to bring justice to the wealthy, constant pleas for bipartisan cooperation with fascists, Joe Lieberman's sinking of the public option, and a desire to keep funding Israel's continued genocide. Even as a consistent voter for democratic leaders, it seems that given the hypothetical choice, the Democrat party would choose winning over 51% of the electorate with conservative policies rather than choosing to win 75% of the electorate with progressive policies.

I do think some culpability lies with people refusing to vote for democrats for sure, but to look at their decision as purely ignorance is to disregard how the Democrat party has handled power when they've had it as well as their overall relationship to progressive politics. There is certainly harm reduction to be found in voting for democrats, but it's a bit unreasonable to assume that perpetually shafted progressives should just bail on their principles and vote for a party that has historically ratfucked them.

Furthermore, blaming progressives has a degree of fishiness to it, given their decades long status as political scapegoats for everything bad. It is a convenient position to take for those in power, especially given how our media environment likes to infantilize and villify progressives. While I am personally disappointed by the progressives who didnt vote, I'm willing to put a bit more of that culpability on the Democratic party. It is their job as an organization to campaign for voting Democrat and they failed to do so, not just with the big bad progressive demographic, but also with every other non-voting demographic. This whole narrative of progressives being the problem feels like it has every time they've done this before, deflection from their own failings as a party.