Barney Frank makes a good point in this Slate interview:
FRANK: I am disappointed by the voters who say, “OK I’m just going to show you how angry I am!” And I’m particularly unimpressed with people who sat out the Congressional elections of 2010 and 2014 and then are angry at Democrats because we haven’t been able to produce public policies they like. They contributed to the public policy problems and now they are blaming other people for their own failure to vote, and then it’s like, “Oh look at this terrible system,” but it was their voting behavior that brought it about.
SALON: So it seems like you’re saying Bernie’s voters have a slightly unrealistic sense about the political process. And that this is driven—
FRANK: I didn’t say slightly.
Remember: Democrats lost control of the US House in the 2010 middterm elections and then lost control of the US Senate in the 2014 midterm elections, which led to Republicans running both houses of Congress and enabled the wild obstructionism and appalling legislative inaction we see today.
In 2008 and 2012, the coalition that elected and re-elected President Barack Obama included a lot of young voters. Many of those young voters proceeded to sit out the middterm elections, and… here we are.
The problem is not just with young voters.
Still: Imagine how different the policies coming out of Washington, DC might have been if greater numbers of young, liberal voters had helped give President Obama a longer period of Democratic majorities to work with in Congress.
For one thing, “A Future to Believe In” might be a lot closer.
UPDATE: Commenter NoSpin makes a good, related point:
What if all the Seattle liberals who fret over which Democrat represents them in City Hall instead volunteered/donated to a Democrat running for State Senate in a suburban swing district?
Then maybe we’d have a Legislature that gives Seattle the freedom to do what we want re: housing, transit, etc.
