Not even twenty-four hours have elapsed since Bernie Sanders announced that he was suspending his presidential run, and already a shaming campaign has been launched against those who are contemplating abstaining from voting due to dissatisfaction with the two major-party candidates. The premise invoked for this tactic is that only those who are sufficiently “privileged” have the luxury of choosing not to vote — meaning that nonvoters are rich and white and thus largely immune from the harmful consequences of a Trump presidency, which largely fall on the backs of poorer and non-white Americans.
This tactic rests on a caricature: it is designed to suggest that the only people who make a deliberate and conscious choice not to vote due to dissatisfaction are white trust-fund leftists whose wealth, status and privilege immunize them from the consequences of abstention. By contrast, this you-must-vote campaign insists, those who lack such luxuries — poorer voters and racial and ethnic minorities — understand that voting is imperative.
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