If you identify as a progressive, you should be scared about voter turnout in the Democratic primaries so far, which is down from 2008 by more than 20%, despite the historic numbers of small donors and rally attendees that are widely circulated. Republican voter turnout in South Carolina, by contrast, was up by 70%, and has been in every primary. The two party system is flawed by design, and the DNC, superdelegates and electoral college are definitive artifacts of a political system that tilts heavily in favor of big money. With the exceptions of the landslides in South Carolina and New Hampshire, the race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton has been more or less even nationally, BUT, Hillary has 543 delegates to Bernie’s 85.

It’s hard for me personally to put cynicism aside in the face of this kind of entrenched adversity, but if we don’t participate in this system at all, in the primaries or in the general election, we will end up with President Trump, who, despite the many sneering Vox and Salon articles about his supporters’ lack of education and racism, is winning primary after primary mostly because he has excited and mobilized disaffected working-class conservatives. People who don’t want Trump have to match that level of civic participation, and not just wait for John Oliver or some other viral guy to “eviscerate” him when he pushes for a literal Trail of Tears trod by immigrant children. A valid, not-insignificant and impactful thing we can do to support is to vote. At the very least we will have had our say, and not just give away a House like we did in the 2014 Congressional elections, when we just didn’t vote.

The political and electoral system that we have is not representative and deeply, deeply plutocratic. Correcting it in the long term will require sustained civil activism and commitment to democratic participation, small- and large-scale. For the moment, before the 2016 election, what we can do is to vote, and have our voices at least be heard.