Bernie Sanders is also a Democrat, but look at the kind of games party leadership played against him to make sure their preferred candidate got the nomination. Don't pretend you don't understand the difference between running under a party and being part of party leadership.

I happen to have a productized campaign contributions and expenditures database at my fingertips, so maybe I'll take you up on the offer to check. What state are you in?

EDIT: Your donations are probably to candidates in California, and we don't have that normalized and loaded yet.

Is not running AFAIK.

> Bernie Sanders is also a Democrat

No, he's an independent.

> Suppose we had Elizabeth Warren as a candidate instead?

Elizabeth Warren already holds elected office and is not up for re-election this cycle.

> Your donations are probably to candidates in California,

Don't make assumptions.

> we don't have that normalized and loaded yet.

And what exactly do you expect me to do about that?

I appreciate the fact that you are actually trying to move the needle, but you need to focus. Words matter.

"[Voting] only matters if voting actually functions as the root cause of election victory, but in practice it is merely an illusion of choice."

Don't confuse a data point with a recommendation. Data points are always in the past. Activism can only be effective in the future.

Your example had flaws I attempted to point out, but you are going to such great lengths to find any reason to misunderstand and mix up my statements that I find it both uncharitable and uncanny.

Are you somehow claiming Bernie did not run against Hillary in the democratic primary, and that party leadership did not attempt to sabotage his campaign in favor of their preferred candidate? Why did you suddenly switch from past tense to the present to claim a misunderstanding instead of addressing my point directly?

But it was still a choice. And people's votes still mattered. (And BTW, tens of millions of people still purport to be happy with the outcome.)

A choice between staying in an abusive relationship and killing yourself does not meet the criteria for an uncoerced choice, especially when it is being offered by the people with whom you are in an abusive relationship. Not killing yourself doesn't imply you consent to being in an abusive relationship. You'd have to be trying really hard to consider that a choice except in the most literal unhelpful sense.

Even our legal system (mostly) understands that you can't have a valid contract without consideration on both sides.

"in practice it is merely an illusion of choice"

I think it's a real choice, not an illusion, and that therefore votes matter. You may not be happy with any of the options, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a real choice, votes matter, and the outcomes of elections really can and do change the course of history, for better or for worse.

As an aside, if you are not happy with the choices, you can do something about that too, but effecting that kind of change does require more work than merely voting.

We don't need to agree on the definition of choice, but as long as political machines are allowed to keep playing these games, we're going to keep voting into an effectively captured playing field, and our decline as a society will continue.

The difference between slow decline and quick decline is important, but we still lose.