“There is an emotional satisfaction to not voting, as well.”

Calling out a key paragraph from the fascinating article by Ryan Grim in the Intercept:

“The system is what it is, politicians are corrupt or in it for themselves, and nothing meaningful is going to change. They might agree with Sanders on the issues — in fact, they probably do. But they don’t agree that there’s any point in trying to make his agenda happen. There’s an emotional satisfaction to not voting, as well. The most satisfying way to react to a system that shows you no respect may well be to show it no respect in return. If you can’t beat it, you can at least protest it by withholding your emotional investment. “A lot of people don’t want to consent to be governed by nonsense, and that’s why they don’t participate in our system,” Ocasio-Cortez said at the Las Vegas rally. What’s needed therefore is persuasion — persuasion that voting matters, that you matter.”

“To convince a nonvoter that voting matters, and that all the politicians aren’t just the same, that is a very hard persuasion challenge, and most of them hate Democrats and Republicans alike,” Sandberg [who is Sanders National Organizing Director] said. “I want to do away with the idea that getting nonvoters to vote is just turnout.”

The entire article is worth reading. But it is LONG, so settle in.

There is a whole section of the article on relational organizing, and this is a fascinating comment by Sandberg: “The only other campaign that is doing relational organizing on a scale close to what we are doing actually is the Trump campaign.”

I highly recommend you watch this 8-minute clip by Grim first, to give you an overview of the piece, and some really important statements by AOC and Sanders, before reading the Intercept piece.