I think the vast majority of Democrats in House and Senate will bend the knee or just stay silent before facing persecution.

Since Trump’s inauguration, the Democrats have been ineffective so far, but they haven’t been silent. We’ll find out soon.

And everybody voting the furthest left viable is a flimsy strategy for fighting fascism.

It was the only useful, viable strategy we had.

Many people already do that all the time, but you can’t make sure that everybody does.

We can count on people to act in their own self-interest. People can organize online to spread true information. The issue was that people fell for propaganda that convinced them to act against their own interests without them realizing it.

Also, with this there never was a chance to move the party any further left. Every election there was this myth that you have to vote moderate to change the party, but it never happened. Why should it? Moderates can say that the voters have shown they want moderate positions when they win. And when they lose for some reason they go, “Well, if you need them the most the progressives will stab you in the back. Let’s cut them out”. This is what I mean there are no consequences for Democrats, at least for the leadership that’s moderate and neoliberal. They will never move.

My argument is that voting for neoliberal Democrats will only incrementally shift the party to the left. In order to make the Democrats meaningfully change from a leaning right of center organization to at least a leaning left of center organization they must be co-opted by a progressive or socialist candidate with a populist narrative. This populist narrative would ideally be a progressive and socialist agenda. Like Bernie tried to do twice. In order for someone like Bernie to do this we needed more time before a fascist takeover.

We know this strategy can work because Trump did it to the Republican party. He used a populist narrative of white christian nationalism. However, we are now out of time and relying on the idea that fascist incompetence will give us another chance.

There is no fulcrum on the political spectrum that can force Democrats to change. And if what your argument wants is a reason for Democrats to change that is not consequences but incentives. To be clear, in a democracy the only consequence for losing elections is to lose out on political power. There is no mechanism besides voting to make Democrats agree with one group of constituents. Democrats look at who voted and then chase those votes.

As long as money is in politics the incentives will always be for the Democrats to incrementally change at best. At a pace that is far to slow to fix wealth inequality or climate change. Political power has to be seized when it is up for grabs during primaries in order to see more systemic change. But in order to do that there needed to be future elections which is no longer guaranteed.