How “Do Something!” Twitter Could Depress Voter Turnout

Constant Focus on Negatives will Not Help Win Elections

I first “got into” politics in the early 2000s, ah the halcyon days of early political blogging, when soundbites were frowned upon and in-depth articles that were sourced and well laid out were appreciated, not ignored. I was one of the early subscribers to Daily Kos and whiled away plenty of hours engaging in conversation, election results, policies, and minutiae of political news.

Slowly, as Dkos and other sites got bigger, the noise got louder, the cliques appeared and the quality of discussion became polarized, diluted, and tribalistic between various factions within the liberal world. Which oddly enough, never seems to happen much on the conservative side, take note of that for later on.

Over time the world of blogging shifted to social media where it became much more about impact, dramatic (but not usually accurate) headlines for articles, trying to slow the scroll of millions of eyeballs to catch a glimpse of attention. Which is when the comments and responses started losing understanding and became more demanding.

The liberal side of the spectrum has always had an issue with playing the long game in politics, especially the voters. There has been a constant undercurrent of “We voted”. Everything should be solved in 18 months and if not, screw it. And if a bill does pass that we like, there’s obviously NO WAY it could be overturned or nullified by the GOP at a later date.

If something is settled, it should stay settled, we shouldn’t have to keep fighting for things we already achieved.” Um, I hate to say it, but it seems like a great many people fail to understand the concept of how history repeats, and repeats and repeats.

They also fail to grasp that to the GOP, politics is a war of attrition; they are more than happy to wait out liberals who get comfortable and distracted while the GOP is making behind-the-scenes moves to obtain their goals in 5,10,15 years. The people behind the politicians in the GOP are strategists with the historically successful attitude of never giving up, never backing down, and never, ever losing focus on getting power.

Liberals, on the other hand, revel in the victories, then go back to sleep until the world comes crashing down again, as evidenced by their lack of turnout for midterms, local elections, etc.

What does all this have to do with “Do Something!” Twitter? Simply this, “Do Something” Twitter highlights this attitude of nothing is ever enough, that even when Democrats in office make headway all of it is for naught as they didn’t achieve the exact thing you wanted.

That it’s taking too long, that obviously everyone in power is corrupt and uncaring, that the party is too split, (even though 99% of the Democrats in office consistently vote together)and that nothing matters anyway.

“Do Something” twitter ignores political realities, such as basic math, a 50–50 split (with two Dems from red states who refuse to tow the party line) is not a majority, as most of the bills need 60 votes to pass. The other political reality that is consistently ignored is that to get a bill to pass, it has to be agreed upon by literally hundreds of people.

Around 200 + in the House and 60 in the Senate. Most people can barely get a group of friends to quickly decide on where to eat out, and yet these same people feel that getting close to 300 people to agree on legislation will occur with no compromises and in a snap of a finger.

But what “Do Something” Twitter excels at is making you feel despondent, angry, frustrated, and aggravated that things aren’t working like they do in every single action movie or political thriller ever made. You know, where the good guy wins, the bad guys lose and it only takes 90–120 minutes for world peace to be achieved.

I mean, why can’t reality be like the movies! Right?! As people who may be just starting to follow politicians, get into politics or start to become politically aware scroll through comment feeds where every other comment seems to be “Not enough!” “Yeah, we’ll believe it when we see it!” “We got you 50 seats, why aren’t you doing your jobs!” “Politicians are all the same!” “This is just the usual sell-out BS, you don’t care and nothing happens anyway.”

Why would these people want to vote? Why would they want to get involved? Why would they care when they keep getting assaulted with how it’s all meaningless anyway, even though it’s not.

Now, remember how I said conservatives don’t tend to fracture and in-fight? Yeah, about that. GOP voters are more than happy to elect people with criminal backgrounds, embezzlers, sex offenders, con artists, and a whole rogue’s gallery of people who should never be allowed near power, but they do it.

Do you know why? Because GOP voters, like their leaders, understand that without power you have nothing. They don’t care who is holding that seat as long as they are on their team. As such, they become utterly entrenched and refuse to vote for anyone that doesn’t have an R next to their name. And you know what? It’s working.

The GOP doesn’t have to pass bills to keep their voters happy, all they have to do is fight liberals and give lip service to the tenets of the party. But those few acts have been pulling us backward for years now.

While “Do Something” Twitter screams for more, more, more and refuses to vote if they don’t get it, the GOP voters are content with slowly growing their power and influence in all areas.

As a result, “Do Something” twitter aids in the loss of power for the people that they desperately need to achieve what they want, and yet, instead of blaming themselves or the GOP, they will yell at the politicians. Those same politicians are the only ones attempting to fix the problem.

If liberal voters spent less time being negative and more time consistently voting, we’d gain power, instead of losing it.

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