2016 Postmortem

Whether democrats are actually fighting for those things you mentioned though, is a very fair question to ask. Paying better lip service to those issues in order to give people a political voting "choice" is not good enough. Continuing to not tackle the systems that make divide-and-conquer politics so effective in this country is not actually fighting for these causes, it is only using them.

There are legitimate reasons to be cynical about our two-party system, and to sometimes feel like we are presented with an illusion of choice. Race baiting and poor bashing will always be powerful tools if we don't start telling people where they really need to look as the source of their economic insecurity.

For the record, I think Democrats in office are generally well meaning. But if they aren't pushed from the outside to do things that are politically inconvenient to them, they just won't do them. If Sanders hadn't run against Clinton AND pushed to the convention, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have heard her say that for-profit prisons shouldn't exist. In 2015 she was still accepting donations from that industry. Tell me a monetization of the prison system is good for minorities, who are already disproportionately charged and convicted in our fucked criminal justice system.

The point is, no, there is no point where they should take our votes for granted. There are only points where our voting power most influences their platforms and policies.