Black Female Voters Taken For Granted

[pinkstarburst]

22. I think every group feels like this and it's because

the democratic party is such a big tent party.

I know I absolutely feel like I am told again and again, that I will need to shut up and vote for whoever wins, no matter if I agree with them, no matter if I like them, no matter what was done to make sure they made it through the primaries. We often hear in the primaries that if the base decides they are going to reject a candidate because black men won't vote for a gay man, then they're sunk and it doesn't matter if other voting blocs really like them.

I don't discount what you're saying. I'm just trying to say that you're probably not the only person feeling this way. I feel very frustrated and dispirited every primary season, especially when it comes to the presidential primaries, because my state doesn't vote until later, and by then the candidates I wanted have often dropped out, often decided by just a handful of states. I feel like my vote often doesn't even matters, and yet I am told to shut up and vote for the candidate, too. And I do, because not doing so would be so much worse. And even if the primary candidate I wanted doesn't always (or usually) prevail, I usually find the person we elect grows on me and I'm happy to support them in the end.

And I think when people stay home and don't turn out in big numbers with big support because their horse didn't win, it just means when their horse IS up... the same thing will happen to them in response. We don't want to start playing that game. The republicans are really good at showing up for their candidates every time and staying united. When we get upset and don't do that, we shoot ourselves in the foot. Again, big tent party.

So, I don't know what the answer to this is. I know it's not to vote for a republican.

In this race, I voted for Talarico. It wasn't that I didn't like Jasmine. I wished we could have had both of them. I was so disappointed when she announced she was running for senate, not because I didn't like her, but because Talarico had been running for that seat for MONTHS, long before she announced on literally the last day of the filing deadline and I desperately wished there was a way I could vote for both of them. I had been hearing about his campaign for months, had been reading about him, and my vote already belonged to him MONTHS before Jasmine ever announced. It wasn't that I didn't like her. It was that Talarico got into the race earlier, and I really liked him and my vote was already spoken for. I really wished she would have run for something else because I did want to support her. It just sucked that she chose to run at the last minute, and against another candidate that I really liked, and who already had my vote.