It would be in theory, but mostly it's just spread around as how any protest against Israel cost the democrats the US election (despite how it was considered widely unpopular to support Israel's genocide by most democrats).

The problem is that those people (leftist prostest not-voters) most likely wouldn't have changed the results.

No, they were never going to do that. They've already said that they learned their lesson, and in 2026, they're gonna double down on the losing strategy that they've been running since Clinton was in office and run on building the wall on the Mexican border and deporting immigrants to court the moderate Republican vote that doesn't exist and never would vote for them even if it did.

By the Presidential election, it's already years too late to force them to actually do good things. Protest votes and withholding your vote have done nothing to stop the slide that led to Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney in tow in the 16 years that I've been voting. If you want change, it's only going to come by threatening the position of the people in charge of the party and replacing the old guard with people like AOC. Whoever gets elected President does neither of those things. Unless Krasnov declares the Democratic Party a terrorist organization and has them all arrested as political prisoners. But then we won't have to worry about voting ever again, just like he promised.

Yeah, they probably think, well the right is doing so well so that's probably what the country wants. We need to move further right!

Uh yes it was definitely hand-waved away by some "if you look carefully". It was only the "least-worse option" because so many were successfully manipulated by the system into being placated with crumbs so they wouldn't revolt at the thousands of other reasons we've had for years to fight back against this shit, pushing the Overton window to the right in increments and leading folks to not use or even possess or be taught in the first place the critical thinking skills required to inform oneself and take steps to make positive change, in this system designed to intentionally misinform and mislead us and pit us against each other so we vote for the same rich white men responsible for perpetuating this system and the harm it brings to all of us, especially marginalized communities.

I would recommend to you (and anyone who is interested in informing themselves on what is being done to us) to read "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. It details this process of incremental change, and some of the strategies and parties previously and currently involved in taking control of our government (or at this point more like what's left of it).

(For clarity: I'm not saying both parties are the same, although their goals, tactics, and policies seem less different to me as time passes; I'm not making any general statement passing blame to any group of voters or non-voters in this comment, because I believe the bulk of the responsibility lies on the system and those who hold sway over large parts of it in the form of currency or legislation, for example; I'm not denying or invalidating that you may feel this way and/or believe it is true, I'm taking issue with your statement that "it was never handwaved", because I most certainly saw that happen and know people who to this day are clinging to that sentiment; I'm not saying harm reduction isn't the move or good policy, it is but there has to simultaneously be work being done on reducing or removing the source of that harm)

Edit: sorry for run-on sentences. working on it gradually and open to feedback

by refusing to act, they didn't oppose that man getting into power.

you can refuse to vote for a Democrat and still oppose the man getting into power.

There are no mental gymnastics, and unless you've been absent in the debate since it began in 2023, it's been one conversation regarding the direction of the Democratic party, with effectively two camps.

The first camp, effectively taking the party line and acting as cheerleaders of the DNC, have taken a "No critisism of the Democratic Party is acceptable; voters need to move to the positions of the DNC" approach.

The second camp took a "The DNC needs to be better and acknowledge it's shortcomings, and make changes when necessary. The DNC needs to align itself with DNC voters and the party base."

The first camp, for the first 8 months of 2024, insisted we had to run Joe Biden. That there were no other possibilities, options, or potential outcomes. They defended the approach the DNC took to the primary process, which was by any measure, the least democratic primary they party had ever held.

The second camp raged at the preposterous farce which was the DNC primary. They pointed out that Bidens poll numbers were so bad he basically had no chance of winning. That by insisting on this losing strategy we were losing critical time.

Bans were made, here, regarding this debate. And the first camp was wrong. There was another way possible.

After the candidates were swapped the first camp further insured that people just needed to move to where the DNC was, after taking effectively a pro genocide, Republican lite campaign philosophy as an outcome of the convention.

The second camp pointed out that this would lose the DNC the election, that we needed our focus to be on moving the candidate to a more popular, more electable position.

The first camp won the argument and lost us all the war, because their fundamental belief in what is being argued and whom they are arguing with is wrong. The first camp is responsible for the millions of votes difference between Kamala and Biden, because they insisted on this losing strategy.

It's a very popular sentiment on Reddit and Lemmy, in my experience, to blame non voters as much as or even more than Trump voters.