We hear it constantly: "You're too harsh on Democrats. You're helping Republicans by criticizing our side. Now is not the time—we need unity against the rising threat of fascism."
We understand the fear behind these objections. The right is more extreme, more authoritarian, more openly hostile to democracy than at any point in our lifetimes. In that context, criticism of the Democratic Party can feel like sabotage, like handing ammunition to the enemy.
But here's what we need you to understand: fierce opposition and lesser-evil voting are not contradictory. They are complementary.
We are not asking you to abstain from voting strategically. If you genuinely believe Democrats are the lesser evil—and on many issues, they clearly are—then vote accordingly. Lesser-evil voting is a valid tactical calculation. What collapses it morally and practically is treating that vote as the end of your political engagement rather than the beginning.
Voting should be understood as choosing your opponent, selecting the terrain on which you'll fight. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for human rights regardless of who occupied the White House. The civil rights movement didn't pause because a Democrat was president—in fact, some of its most intense pressure campaigns were directed at Democratic administrations. Our task is to become powerful enough to move whoever holds power, and yes, it makes strategic sense to choose the party more susceptible to public pressure. But that choice must be accompanied by relentless organizing, not complacency.
The cliche about liberals "going back to brunch" when Democrats win is rude, but it's grounded in observed reality: too many people treat electoral victory as mission accomplished and demobilize precisely when pressure is most needed.
Understanding Liberalism's Right-Wing Instincts
Here's the part that makes many liberals uncomfortable: liberalism itself, despite its progressive rhetoric on social issues, shares fundamental right-wing orientations when it comes to power.
In the framework where left versus right is about democracy versus concentrated power—not cultural signaling or party affiliation—liberalism consistently sides with existing power structures. Liberals believe in reform, not transformation. They trust institutions that have repeatedly demonstrated they serve elite interests. They seek incremental change within systems designed to prevent fundamental redistribution of power and wealth.
This is why corporate Democrats can sincerely champion LGBTQ rights and racial justice in hiring practices while simultaneously opposing Medicare for All, defending Wall Street, and funding endless war. Social progressivism costs capital nothing—in fact, it often serves corporate interests by creating new markets and defusing more radical challenges to economic hierarchy. But economic democracy, wealth redistribution, and workers' control over production? Those threaten the very foundation of the power structure liberalism seeks to manage, not dismantle.
Liberalism's commitment to "civility," "norms," and "working within the system" translates, in practice, to accepting the boundaries set by concentrated power. It means treating Republicans as legitimate partners in governance even as they dismantle voting rights and build toward authoritarian rule. It means condemning property destruction during uprisings while remaining silent about the structural violence of poverty, medical bankruptcy, and police killings.
This is not an accident or a failure of strategy. It is liberalism functioning as intended—as a mediating force that absorbs and redirects radical energy into channels that pose no threat to capital.
The Cost of Loyalty Without Accountability
The Democratic Party has mastered the art of exploiting liberal loyalty. Every election cycle follows the same script: progressives are told this is the most important election of our lifetimes, that we can push the party left after we win, that criticism helps Republicans. Then Democrats win, move right to "govern responsibly," and when progressives object, they're told to wait until after the next election.
After never comes.
Consider the pattern: Obama had a supermajority and delivered a healthcare plan originally conceived by the Heritage Foundation instead of the public option he campaigned on. Biden campaigned as the most pro-labor president since FDR, then broke the rail strike. Democratic leadership funds far-right Republican candidates in primaries, calculating that extremist opponents make their own corporate-friendly candidates look better by comparison. Pelosi and other party leaders actively campaign against progressive primary challengers, protecting corporate Democrats from accountability.
And on foreign policy—the area where presidential power is most unconstrained—Democrats have been indistinguishable from Republicans. Biden continued Trump's policies on immigration, kept troops in the Middle East, expanded military budgets, and provided unconditional support for Israel's genocide in Gaza even as his own voters begged him to stop.
When you defend this record because "Republicans are worse," you are not being strategic. You are providing cover for a party that has learned it can betray you without consequence.
What We're Actually Asking
We're not asking you to stop voting for Democrats if that's your calculation. We're asking you to stop defending them.
We're asking you to recognize that the Democratic Party is not your friend, not a vehicle for progressive change, but an obstacle that must be overcome through the same kind of organized pressure that forced previous generations of elites to concede reforms they would never have granted willingly.
We're asking you to understand that every minute you spend arguing with leftists about being "too pure" or "helping Republicans" is a minute you could have spent organizing against the corporate Democrats blocking the policies you claim to support.
We're asking you to apply the same critical lens to your own party that you apply to Republicans—not to achieve some false equivalence, but because understanding power requires it. When Democrats fail to deliver on their promises, when they move right after winning, when they prioritize donors over voters, it creates exactly the conditions that allow demagogues to thrive. Trump's rise wasn't despite Democratic governance—it was enabled by decades of Democrats abandoning the working class while Republicans at least pretended to care about their economic grievances, however dishonestly.
Complicity Through Silence
The clearest recent example is U.S. support for Israel's genocide in Gaza. Liberal voters who claim to value human rights, international law, and the protection of civilians have watched their party fund and defend actions that violate every principle they profess to hold. The response from Democratic leadership has been to dismiss protesters as naive, to conflate criticism of Israeli policy with antisemitism, and to continue shipping weapons while Gaza is reduced to rubble.
This is not an anomaly. It is the pattern. On healthcare, climate change, labor rights, criminal justice reform, and endless war, the Democratic Party has repeatedly chosen corporate donors and imperial interests over the needs and values of its base.
The question is: how long will we let "but the Republicans are worse" be an adequate answer?
What Liberal Opposition Could Look Like
Ideally, we'd see both parties renewed—progressives taking over the Democratic Party, and conservatives taking over the Republican Party. Both factions need to kick out the corporate grifters in their own ranks. That requires liberals to challenge their party from within, not with timid requests for incremental change, but with demands backed by organized refusal to accept betrayal.
What would that actually look like?
It would mean:
- Withholding money, volunteer time, and energy from candidates who take corporate PAC money. Every dollar from pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, and Wall Street banks is a promise that your interests will be sacrificed when they conflict with theirs. If you must vote for them as the lesser evil on election day, fine—but they get nothing else. No donations, no door-knocking, no social media promotion. Save your enthusiasm and resources for progressive primary challengers who refuse corporate money.
- Building primary challenges to every corporate Democrat, in every district, every cycle. The party will only move left when its leadership understands that betrayal comes with consequences—that there are limits to how far "vote blue no matter who" extends.
- Demanding immediate action on universal healthcare, not as a future aspiration but as a non-negotiable condition for active support. Medicare for All isn't radical. It's what every other developed nation already has. The fact that it remains politically impossible in the wealthiest country on earth is evidence of capture, not pragmatism.
- Ending U.S. militarism and empire—not just the wars we disagree with, but the entire apparatus of global domination. That means cutting the Pentagon budget, closing hundreds of overseas military bases, ending arms sales to human rights abusers, and subjecting the national security state to democratic accountability.
- Abolishing the carceral state that Democrats helped build. Biden wrote the 1994 crime bill. Harris built her career as a prosecutor. The party's recent rhetorical shift toward criminal justice reform means nothing without dismantling mass incarceration, ending qualified immunity, defunding militarized police departments, and guaranteeing housing and healthcare as alternatives to criminalization.
- Passing a Green New Deal that doesn't just reduce emissions but fundamentally restructures the economy away from fossil fuel dependence and toward democratic control of energy production. Climate change is not a problem that can be solved through market mechanisms and tax credits. It requires the kind of mobilization that only public investment and planning can achieve.
- Strengthening labor power by passing the PRO Act, raising the minimum wage to a living wage indexed to inflation, banning right-to-work laws, and making union membership the default rather than the exception. The New Deal coalition was built on organized labor. Its collapse tracks directly with the decline in union density. If you want progressive policy, you need the structural power to force it through—and that means workers organized enough to strike.
- Taxing the rich at rates that actually redistribute wealth—90% marginal rates on income over $10 million, wealth taxes on billionaires, financial transaction taxes, and an end to the carried interest loophole and other mechanisms that let the wealthy pay lower rates than working people. The money exists. It's just being hoarded.
These positions don't require abandoning liberal values. They require taking them seriously enough to fight for them even when the party that claims to represents them stands in the way.
The Lesser-Evil Trap
I know what you're thinking. "But if we don't support Democrats, Republicans will win, and everything will get worse."
Here's the thing: Republicans are already winning. Not just elections, but the ideological battle. Because when Democrats move right to chase "moderate" voters, they don't stop Republicans—they legitimize Republican framing. They accept austerity as necessary, imperial violence as unavoidable, corporate power as inevitable. The Overton window shifts, and what was once far-right becomes the "center."
The lesser-evil calculation only works if the lesser evil is actually moving in the right direction, however slowly. But the Democratic Party is not moving left. It is moving right while asking us to be grateful it's not moving as fast as the Republicans.
That's not a strategy. It's surrender.
The Shared Fight
A populist movement from below is needed in both parties. Not to erase ideological differences, but to break the shared allegiance to a political and economic system that no longer serves the public.
We know what we're asking isn't easy. You've spent years defending the Democratic Party against Republican attacks, watching the right become more extreme, more authoritarian, more willing to embrace open fascism. The instinct to close ranks, to defend your side against the greater threat, is understandable.
But here's the distinction that matters: voting for Democrats and defending Democrats are not the same thing.
You can cast a strategic vote on election day while spending the other 364 days of the year organizing against corporate Democrats, building primary challenges, and refusing to provide cover for their betrayals. The problem isn't lesser-evil voting—it's treating that vote as loyalty, as permission for the party to ignore your demands.
As long as Democrats know you'll not only vote for them but actively defend their record, deflect criticism, and attack those who hold them accountable, they have no reason to risk donor money by actually fighting for progressive policy. Your loyalty has become a blank check for betrayal.
That's what we're asking you to revoke: not your vote, but your defense of a party that has learned it can betray your values without losing your support—as long as they do it more politely than Republicans.
Conservatives Are Not Your Enemy—The System Is
One final point: we need to stop treating conservative voters as the enemy. The "basket of deplorables" framing was not just politically foolish—it was a failure to understand power.
Trump's rise was not an aberration. It was a response to decades of bipartisan betrayal—Democrats and Republicans both shipping jobs overseas, bailing out Wall Street while foreclosing on Main Street, promising change while delivering more of the same. When people are drowning and only one party even pretends to throw them a rope, however frayed and fake that rope may be, they'll grab it.
Conservative voters are being exploited by the same systems that immiserate all of us. They've fallen into the same trap of partisan loyalty we're asking you to escape—defending one half of the establishment while the other half carries on unaffected. Many of them are beginning to recognize this, particularly around issues like endless war and corporate capture. They are potential allies, not permanent adversaries.
This doesn't mean pretending real ideological differences don't exist or excusing bigotry. It means understanding that the path to defeating Trumpism isn't through electoral dominance of corporate Democrats—it's through building a multi-racial, cross-ideological working-class movement powerful enough to force both parties to serve the public or be replaced.
The work ahead is clear: organize relentlessly, build primary challenges, withhold resources from corporate candidates, and refuse to provide cover for betrayal. Vote strategically by choosing your opponent, but save your energy for the fight that matters—the one against concentrated power in both parties.
If you've made it to the end of this letter, thank you for reading. Now let's get to work.
Tim Hjersted is the director and co-founder of Films For Action, a library dedicated to the people and movements creating a more free, regenerative and democratic society.
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