Sorry, were you around for the past several elections? Perhaps the 2020 elections where, upon the progressives banding with Biden to get him elected with the expectation that we would be able to “push him to the left”, the Democratic party decided that the reason they didn’t win more seats was because Progressives had damaged their chances of winning, and they must be marginalized. Or perhaps the 2016 elections where, the target of a long running hate campaign was preferred by the party over the popular progressive candidate who was then blamed for his supporters not being won over. Or the 2012 elections where the incumbent Democrat failed to deliver on progressive policies and was a high water mark for drone strikes, but progressives helped bring the win over the candidate Republicans weren’t excited for.

I voted for Harris in hopes that she’d beat out Trump despite how much she and Biden before her discarded progressive policy. I was under no expectation of Progressives being able to do a damn thing to reach her.

If you look back at panel 2, there’s a potential third one to research

You know who look like whales? Problem spenders who spend far beyond their means, and are preyed upon by predatory business practices that use psychological manipulation to encourage people to spend as much as as they can. Like, I’ve literally watched video game developer conference talks where a dev explains in great detail and depth on how to hijack human psychology to milk every last dollar they can. Whales stopped being “those who can afford to spend” a long time ago.

If you vote with the hope that it will fixes problem by itself, you won’t get very far. Voting is sort of the end of a political process, the other end starting in people building political movements. For your vote to mean something, you have to be voting with a political project. So, focus on the political projects: start building the structures that protect people first, without relying on the government’s approval. Support your communities of care and build your mutual aid networks. Don’t wait for it to be delivered from on high, get with people who also care about the things you care about and start using what you have to build what you can.