Some will tell you that if you didn’t vote in the midterm elections, you’ve sacrificed your right to complain for the next two years. Perhaps. But when faced with a choice between two undesirable options, opting for neither is not quite the same as denying both. Picking “neither” may simply evince a distaste for a decision that feels more like a stick-up-job than a patriotic exercise of one’s sacred rights. And as the American Conservative’s Rod Dreher recently wrote in a spirited defense of the disinterested, quoting famed director Richard Linklater, “Withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy.” Need proof? Allow me to submit the 2014 midterm elections, a terrible, awful affair. When forced to choose between a party that endeavors to be judged by the legislation it repeals and a party that would prefer to be judged by the vileness of its opposition, emotions like disgust seem entirely reasonable.

As just one minor but fairly typical example, I live in New York City. Here, the first referendum of 2014 — one of the only real decisions I was able to make on a ballot dominated by landslide victors and uncontested seats — was seemingly tailor-made to enervate whatever shred of interest in politics the average person might have previously held. The referendum focused on ending congressional gerrymandering, a reform that’s widely popular among the electorate. So why were loads of outlets — including the left-leaning New York Times’ editorial board — so staunchly opposed? Because it only claimed to reform gerrymandering. In reality, the initiative kept control of drawing districts largely in the hands of the legislature, in some cases even increasing the power they already held over this blatantly partisan process. (And the initiative passed, becuz democracy.) According to an op-ed by Blake Horner, the legislative director at the New York Public Interest Research Group, “New York voters [were] faced with two lousy choices: keep the awful status quo or approve a so-called reform that makes matters worse.”

That one sentence is perhaps the perfect microcosm of the entire 2014 midterm election cycle. Voters were faced with two lousy choices: keeping the awful status quo, or approving a so-called reform (and/or new candidate) only likely to make matters worse. Can we really blame those who chose to sit on the sidelines in despair or disgust?

Already well-documented in the political press, in the months leading up to the election, many national news programs essentially ignored the upcoming vote in favor of more trivial (but titillating) fare. Culture war stand-ins like #GamerGate, that #CatCalling video, and #IsisBolaGhazi each dominated the news cycle and Twitter — even in the last weeks of October. But can we really blame these shows’ producers? In some cases (perhaps most notably, Florida), framing this election as a choice between “the lesser of two evils” became an insult to evildoers everywhere.

Of course, there were plenty of places with contested seats or progressive ballot initiatives where voting was still important, and far be it for me to concern troll those who took the time out of their busy days and hectic schedules to exercise their right to vote. These voters won increases to the minimum wage, they legalized marijuana, and even enacted a stridently-progressive criminal justice reform in the great state of California. But it’s a terrible shame that so many of those reading this article live in states and districts with comfortable incumbents, uncontested down-ballot elections, and largely-ornamental poll questions.

Every incentive in our politics only encourages elections that are ever more expensive, despite the paradoxical fact that incumbents are winning elections more than ever—now above 90% of the time. And there’s no single fix we can realistically enact that’s likely to change this shameful contradiction. On its own, rolling back the gerrymandering of Congressional districts won’t do, nor will turning to third party candidates, or enacting popular bills to reform campaign finance, or even passing a constitutional amendment that unwinds Citizen’s United. Why? Because the problems embedded in our system are too deeply-rooted, and the people who would need to enact substantive change are the those with the least to gain and most to lose by doing so — the politicians themselves.

Even beyond the broken incentives that corrupt the motives of individual candidates, our system gives enormous power to incumbents and thereby tacitly encourages them to shore up their power base — and raise massive financial war chests that they then wield like weapons. When the most superficial changes to our electoral system might help to empower outsiders, why would our politicians ever agree to such changes?

And even if one party wanted electoral reform, any such proposal would require the comity of a political environment so profoundly different from what we have today that it’s difficult to even imagine what it might look like. Regardless of which hypothetical path you prefer, the scope of the fixes that have been suggested in the past provide a sense of the enormous political will that would be necessary to appreciably change our current system. Fully state-sponsored elections, run-off voting,“scratch” ballots, or bundled Congressional districts — these simply aren’t feasible today. Whining about it, or navel-gazing about the electoral possibilities that the left might enjoy if only everyone voted, isn’t going to make these changes any more likely, either.

All of this is not meant to suggest that political speech is, in and of itself, meaningless. Indeed, higher stakes demand a greater commitment to political movements from principled individuals — not a cowardly retreat from politics altogether. But if 2014 doesn’t present a teachable moment to the left about the effective limits of hitching one’s ride to vacuous money-hungry cynics, I don’t know what will. This country is being smothered in a crisis largely of its own creation, an own-goal of epic, tragicomic proportions. Creating powerful and lasting political institutions that exist beyond the short-term, myopic demands of our election cycle is a crucial first step in clawing back the power and influence the left has lost as our unions have diminished and the memory of the New Deal has faded away.

In some places, this project has already begun; consider the #DreamDefenders, who organized around the tragic death of Trayvon Martin and have since become a powerful force protesting police brutality. Or consider the Moral Monday movement, which started in North Carolina in 2013 and has since spread outside the state’s borders, engaging in civil disobedience and media-friendly protests to fight against the extremist agenda of local conservative politicians.

As long as the Democratic Party is dominated by Wall St.-friendly centrists and career politicians who value victory over their convictions, the left cannot rely on national elections to accomplish anything. So instead, maybe we try to find time to strengthen our connection with local activist groups, or liberal charities and nonprofits, building alliances with like-minded individuals rather than engaging in the sniping, infighting and ankle-biting the left so often prefers. We are not likely one election cycle (or two, or even three) from some glorious left-wing utopia. And we won’t get there any time soon unless committed liberals accept the grim reality: there is much, much work to be done.

I want young liberals to vote, and to vote a lot. But I also want candidates who’ve earned those votes, by committing to a set of ideals beyond sheer political self-preservation. Does that sound anything like the Democratic Party as it exists today?