Getting people to actually vote is almost as important

I’ll argue its more important and always has been. And confusing these two concepts is something liberals do to maintain power in the existing party infrastructure.

2024 is the classic example. The national preference was clearly and impeccably for Harris. There is no doubt about that. But Harris, the campaign, did everything in their power to reduce voter engagement and reduce enthusiasm. And that was reflected here and in other online spaces as the liberal purity test of confusing preference for enthusiasm. It was bad then. Toxically bad. Probably anyone who participated in that effort to bully people for clearly expressing the reality that Harris was campaigning to lose, probably those people should be permanently banned. Unfortunately the acceptance of that policy continues under the existing moderation, both here and in other places like c/politicalmemes.

The dark undercurrent is that the reactionary response many lemmings have to criticism of their proffered candidate isn’t unique to lemmy, and that this reactionary response actually serves to reduce enthusiasm. Liberals are their own worst enemy when it comes to building enthusiasm for their preferred candidates, and in my opinion, it comes down their unanalyzed acceptance of expectation of a generally colonialist, generally white, and generally liberal hegemony over what is permissible within the bounds of political conversation. Its exactly why liberals and capitalists prefer fascists over leftists. Leftists will challenge their assumptions of inherent superiority; fascists will reinforce it.

So there is actually much more to un-pack in the preference versus enthusiasm debate. Generally, Democrats should be more concerned with enthusiasm than preference, principally because of the architecture of our voting system. This isn’t always the case, because within Democratic leadership, this means they may no longer control what people are allowed to preference.