I’m trying not to get into the practice of spouting off at people I don’t know on Twitter who are, mostly, just venting to each other, but I’m seeing a continuing and building pattern in lefty spaces that frustrates the hell out of me. So rather than try to speak up to people who really don’t need some random dude poking his head in to #wellactually them, I’m going to do my own venting and shout into the void here.

There’s a train of thought that goes something like this: “Democrats will never win unless they start fighting for things people care about.” On its face, this is simple tautology. Of course they won’t. But it really goes to show just how throughly movement conservatism has won the rhetoric war. It swallows whole the line that the Democrats don’t stand for anything.

I’m not trying to claim the Democratic party fits perfectly to my ideal politics. Of course they don’t. But first of all, the idea that Democrats always lose because they don’t stand for things people care about means vastly different things to the different people arguing it. And they all take for granted how clearly right their side is. For some it means Democrats need to “get over” their hangup about reproductive rights (no) and refocus from attempts to build a social safety net into policies that will help middle class people get and retain well paying jobs (because no one, not even those who would benefit, wants to receive direct aid, rather than a job they “earned”). To others it is just as obvious that it means a forthright, hard line protection of women’s reproductive rights, policing reforms, and broad new social programs like free tuition, single payer health care, student loan forgiveness, reparations, and universal basic income.

Everyone on both sides of this debate is certain that they are the vast majority of the left half of American politics, if not an outright majority, period. But Democrats are a coalition party. It is unlikely that they will be able to win majorities without pulling at least a little from all sides. That doesn’t mean you abandon your positions or that certain ideas don’t balloon in importance while others will remain flatly unacceptable. (I think the aftermath of the Obamacare fight is making single payer of some sort a broadly recognized must even among those in the coalition who might not have favored it a few years ago, and while I think the party needs to be accepting of fringe figures with conservative abortion views who will nonetheless vote with the party on supreme court nominees who will protect abortion rights, making some calculated compromise on reproductive rights is a complete no go.)

And yet it remains that the party that defends women’s access to abortion, pushes for universal healthcare, regulates banks (imperfectly and not enough, sure, but does it), issues relaxed sentencing guidelines on drug offenses, etc etc, doesn’t stand for anything and doesn’t deserve the votes of the left because they’re out of touch and don’t care about the issues people care about because I can find examples of things they didn’t go far enough or that I disagree with.

Never is there any self reflection that the narrative itself, that Democrats don’t really have their backs or advance policies that are good for the left, is what leads to people on the left—people who need to push all the harder due to gerrymandering, the electoral college, and packing in cities—to offer at best soft support on election day. Especially during off years when the fear of a supreme court nominee isn’t in play to make people hold their noses.

The fact that this meme is so embedded in consciousness that everything Obama did rounds to zero, that young, politically active people just know that Democrats don’t stand for progressive causes due to the very fact that they’re an opposition party and with complete disregard to the stark differences between what happened during the brief unified Democratic government versus what has happened under unified Republican government, is killing us. And you’re helping.

The disillusioned left doesn’t turn out, the Democrats lose their power in government, Democrats’ priorities don’t get done, and then the failure of action on progressive priorities leads to more disillusion. What have the Democrats really done for us lately? If they really cared, they’d win. And on the side of the Democratic politicians, they look out and see a fickle group that can’t be relied on to turn out and they look more and more elsewhere to secure their votes.

Meanwhile there is always someone further to the left who more perfectly embodies the spirit the left wing of the party’s voters would prefer. This is a good thing. There should always be pressure from the left. But the response isn’t “keep up the pressure” or “these ideas are gaining unexpected popularity, let’s cheer politicians toward the center who start picking them up.” (Isn’t that what we want?) Instead, the fact that the figure to the left isn’t immediately acknowledged by the leaders of the party as the clear arbiter of what the party should stand for, leads constituents on the left to reliably complain that the party is out of touch. Or that the leaders are just faking it because they only started talking about those lefty ideas after they became popular. And remember, there will always be someone to the left. This wouldn’t go away if Sanders had won. It would only shift as we all became disillusioned with his inability to follow through on all his promises and we all became surprised by how not progressive he was on whatever issue he decided to compromise on.

So we’re left with an eternal lack of enthusiasm that rides right up to “eh, they’re all the same.” There is an enormous gulf between being uncritical of the flawed motley Democratic party and living in a perpetual state of disillusionment that prevents ever really buying in to the political process and turning out Every. Single. Time. for every imperfect, but better, option. And this includes recognizing when Democrats you don’t wholly love do good and important things, or when they are out of power, acknowledging that yes they have talked at length about what they would like to do if they could.

I cannot believe that the American left (with whom I largely identify) can look out at the current situation and come away with the idea that Democrats don’t deserve our votes because they aren’t excitingly ideologically pure enough. Republicans who were dumb enough to think that Trump really had their backs and really was going to make a “beautiful” health care system where everyone got better coverage, I can understand. I’m never going to see eye to eye with them and their sin was believing someone who told them what they wanted to hear (also, racism and sexism). But the left needs to come to terms with the fact that buying into the idea that the Democratic party has no ideas and won’t really help advance progressive causes is what gets us here, every time. That getting mad at Democrats for using politics (the unprincipled nerve!) and then getting mad at Democrats for losing (weak pushovers!) and then immediately not caring as soon as there is any victory (because that’s just the way it should have been from the start, what do you want a cookie?) creates the atmosphere where this happens.

Want things to move to the left? Come out in force and vote for the people to the left of the other people running. Want those people to move to the left? Vote in off year elections and primaries. Show them what you care about. You aren’t going to get your glorious revolution. That would feel great, but it doesn’t work like that. It’s a long slog of doing a bit better and a bit better than that. Obamacare is stupid and imperfect and vulnerable, but single payer is much more likely as a goal in a world after it than before. Keep the pressure on and ratchet. And for fuck sake, don’t throw up your hands and say, well, I guess we get Trump because I just can’t recommend people get worked up about voting for a politician (ew) who can be criticized from the left (serves them right).