So rather than going for the party who has a chance of doing anything good, just throw fuel to the fire. Give them the entire government.

That's how Trump got in in 2016. Rust belt states being tired of being constantly lied to by democrats went and got lied to worse by the GOP

Two things:

1. The Dems don't take your vote for granted, they just can't accomplish anything substantial with such historically slim majorities in the legislature. Link has a chart that shows the majorities in the legislature over time, notice than the margins have been massive in the past, such as during the New Deal era, but they've been razor thin recently. You can't pass housing reform, health care reform, college reform, abortion reform, etc. with razor thin margins thanks to our dramatic polarization.

2. The Dems are not a monolith. Due to our FPTP voting system, we have two coalitions pretending to be parties, with the Dems being a mixture of everything from barely represented democratic socialists to fiscally conservative moderates. Vote in your primary to choose who in that spectrum you want, and in the general realize you can only choose between the party that gives tax cuts to the wealthy and inspires discord in our nation and the party that actually tries. Voting for a third party is just useless, look at link if you're not convinced.

@dankapotamus

@Arotrios

The time for that line of thinking is in the primaries. It's a lot of work, but learn what the candidates in the primary stand for and vote as liberal as you can. Voting for anyone other than the Democratic nominee (or in very, very few cases a well-established third party with a high likelihood of winning) might as well be no vote at all.

The first-past-the-post system we have makes it nearly impossible for a third party to win and basically ensures that whatever party they are closest to also loses.

I’m incredibly liberal but to be honest,

Literally every time I see this it's followed by insert right-wing view/talking point

@dankapotamus I disagree - while there's certainly deadlock on the federal level, your vote absolutely matters, especially when it comes to state and local politics. Take a look at the states that have democratic super-majorities. Best example of progress in action is in Minnesota right now.

That being said, speaking to your larger point, I think that if ranked-choice voting were implemented, we'd have a much more effective democratic process that would allow protest votes that didn't directly harm your best interests. Sadly, given the state of American politics, if you make under $150k a year or are a member of any minority group, if you don't vote Democratic, you're voting against your own interests.

The Green party or DSA would be the "very liberal" protest vote fwiw, and I say go for it.