We're going to need ALL WALKS OF LIFE in 2020.
No one is above another in terms of voting. You're the one who gets to decide who you're supporting. If you feel that your vote needs to be won over and you're setting certain qualifiers on why you'll vote for someone in 2020, I literally have no time for you. People treat their vote like it's a prize to be won and that's the problem: it's not a prize - it's a responsibility. You have a responsibility to weigh all that comes with your vote - or non-vote. Sure, the candidate bears responsibility and they absolutely should have to earn your vote - to an extent. When you dangle that vote out there, though, and those qualifiers are increasing divisive or alienating, then no, sorry, that's on you.
The Democrats need multiple groups of people to win in 2020. They can't win on progressives alone. They can't win on blacks alone. They can't win on Hispanics alone.
We don't have the luxury of being the Republican Party where the demographics are still in their favor, even if things are rapidly shifting. Whites still make up a strong majority of the population in most swing states. Pennsylvania is 82% white. Whites, on the whole, typically vote Republican (even in the most recent midterms, Republican candidates won 54% of the white vote nationally). Republicans know that advantage exists and exploit it. It's why they don't have to run to the middle to grab cultural conservative Hispanic or Asian voters that may have voted for Bush in 2004 (Bush won 44% of the Latino and Asian vote in 2004) because they don't need 'em right now.
Where the Democrats WIN is through minority and women votes. Without 'em, they lose. We're gonna need every vote and you know what? Some voters absolutely need to get off their high horse. You feel dismissed? Disenfranchised? Alienated? Punished? All valid points. But do you think other Democratic voters haven't felt those feelings at any point throughout the history of the party? Do you think blacks didn't feel dismissed in the 1980s? Women for a generation as the party continually nominated male candidates to lead the ticket? And yet, election after election, they swallowed that anger and resentment and worked tirelessly to get Democrats elected because they knew the alternative was much worse than their pride.
We need to be in this together. But no one should threaten their vote. If you don't support the Democrats in 2020 - that's on YOU. Not the Democratic Party. Not its supporters. YOU HAVE MADE THAT DECISION - knowing everything you know, everything we've seen with Trump as president, if you make the conscience decision to not vote, then you were never with us anyway and, frankly, the threat of not voting, or voting third party, should be enough to void any argument that you ever were.
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