alt Hacker News> If voters didn't vote for your candidate, your candidate failed. The voters didn't fail. The candidate did.
Voters aren't immune from failure. Voters fail when they stay home and don't bother to vote at all, when they remain ignorant/uneducated, when they vote for a party/team instead of the candidate, etc.
It's tempting to let voters off the hook when candidates lie to their faces but ultimately it falls on voters to be aware of the track record of the candidates, be educated on the issues, and use a little critical thinking. I certainly can't feel too bad for them when they reelect a candidate who already screwed them over once already. Everyone knows the old saying: "Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me... you can't get fooled again."
> Voters aren't immune from failure.
Hard disagree. Voters are never at fault. It is incumbent upon the candidate to give the voters something to vote for.
> ... they stay home and don't bother to vote at all
Because they had nothing to vote for. Candidate's fault.
So what you've touched on is what's called "lesser evil voting", an idea that it is the voter's responsibility to engage in harm reduction. For too long the Democratic Party has relied on this to do nothing by just being a gentler face on fascism. Some might say you're rewarding that behavior by turning up to vote for them anyway, even when they offer you nothing. Millions stayed home in 2024 because they were offered nothing. That's the only power voters had and they exercised it. And I said at the time that the Democratic Party will learn nothing and change nothing as a result of a devastating loss in the easiest lay up of all time.