Alabamian DSA member proudly proclaims that she will not be voting today.

[Willie Pep]

4. People like her will then complain when the Republicans pass terrible legislation

Then claim that the Democrats did nothing to stop them despite all or most Democrats voting against the legislation. See the Republican tax bill for example.

I still read some lefty blogs and I see this kind of thinking all of the time. Unless you are the second coming of Lenin then you are a corporate shill and no different from a Republican.

Even the most conservative Democrat is better than any Republican these days and a full-blown socialist is not winning in Alabama. Some of the people on the left need to understand that not everyone is a crypto-socialist just waiting for a DSA-approved candidate to wake them from their slumber of false consciousness.

If they cared about working class and poor people like they claimed they would hold their nose and vote for the lesser evil candidate (in their eyes) that does less damage to working class and poor people. It makes complete sense and even left-wing critics of the Democratic Party such as Noam Chomsky and Adolph Reed have made this sensible argument. But I suspect that for many on the left politics is more about performance and catharsis than policy.