Howard Dean pursued an explicit "fifty-state strategy" as chairman of the Democratic National Committee in the mid-2000s, putting resources into building a Democratic Party presence even where Democrats had been thought unlikely to win federal positions, in hopes that getting Democrats elected to local and state positions, and increasing awareness of Democrats in previously conceded areas, would result in growing successes in future elections.
The strategy was gradually abandoned after Dean stepped down from the DNC, and I believe that a large part of the Democrats' losses since then is exactly a result of your mindset, since abandoning red states or districts as lost causes only allowed the Republican Party to grow even stronger in areas where it was unchallenged, resulting in lopsided losses for Democrats in even more races and killing any ability to lay the groundwork for future victories.
It's kind of counter-intuitive, but the election of a Democrat in Alabama actually provided a lot of discouraging data about gerrymandering. While a Democrat won the state-wide popular vote, if those votes had been cast in the House districts, Republicans would have won six of the state's seven seats. Gerrymandering doesn't really help as much in a Senate race, but in House races, it's everything.
What is unquestionable is that in a very tangible way, Garland would have provided a crucial vote here. He would have been on the court with a Clinton presidency, instead a partisan extremist is. The path to progress is by participating in the current system so that you hold power to make things better. Things would have gotten better directly on this issue with a Clinton presidency. So if you’re not participating because you think that’s the quicker path to progress, I think this issue provides a large point against that logic.
It does matter, but it only matters in small sliver of states, as those states literally can swing elections.
Whether Republicans and Democrats have the same, slightly different, medium different, or wildly divergent views is secondary to the fact that for most Americans, the choice has already been made.
As an example, take Wisconsin - it was a blue state for 8 cycles before swinging to Trump in 2016. Democratic turnout was paltry, in great part because Democrats assumed that Hillary would win without them.
When a policy issue comes up, politicians look at their constituency. An issue may be very important to certain demographics, but if those demos don't vote, they don't care.
One of the single best ways to get your voice heard is to vote. Even if it doesn't have direct impacts, it drastically changes what politicians look at. They won't vote to your every whim just because if it, but they'll try to gain your vote at any opportunity they can. Lots of small decisions add up.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/15/u-s-voter-tu...
And there's "no difference" for the average candidate, not for outliers.
You are technically correct. Almost no election is changed by the result of a single person. However, if everyone who thought this way chose to vote anyway, they could collectively swing every election.
We can discuss ideologically what the differences are between the parties, but as those of us in CA, NY, NJ, etc. well know - it's purely academic.
[edit:] Folks, it's a winner-take-all capital-E Electoral system in the vast majority of states, and in the vast majority of states, the demographic votes consistently in the same way. Thus very few states swing the entire Presidential election process, meaning that they matter. In California, for example, 3 million Democrats could have stayed in bed all day and not voted at all, and still it would have not touched the end result there.