Mitterrand did attempt to do the things his voters wanted. He was constrained by capitalists who punished him mercilessly until he bent the knee. Allende was simply couped and assassinated.

Voting changes things when those changes do not substantially threaten elites and they can come to some kind of acceptable deal, or when you have sufficient leverage that when your guy gets in they can steamroll the capitalists.

Leverage isn't "votes", that's just a preference on a piece of paper. Leverage is the ability to materially change reality to reward or punish actions. A strike, granting or witholding financial resources, shutting down infrastructure, armed revolt, etc.

> Leverage isn't "votes", that's just a preference on a piece of paper.

It actually is leverage because those people who get the most votes are in charge of our government.

The government monopoly on violence, controlled by the people who get voted in, is the clear and obvious leverage.

> Mitterrand did attempt to do the things his voters wanted. He was constrained by capitalists who punished him mercilessly until he bent the knee.

Sounds like he didn't get enough of his own people in government then.

If you fail, then it means that you didn't get enough people voted in. Having leverage requires more than just winning a single election. It involves winning many elections and getting widespread support and your people in government.

The attack did not come from inside the government alone. It was for example, capital flight. The rich attempted to starve the French economy to win concessions and they won them.

People that control the government in principle control the guns. People that control the economy hold the real levers of power. You can in principle use guns to get control of the economy, though in practice it is trickier. America has done it on many occasions though, blasting apart democratic governments in South and Central America to install neoliberal puppets.

If a person doesn't like where they live, yes they tend to vote with their feet.

Thats not different than voting. If everyone flees, then that means that your agenda wasn't popular enough and you should get more support. The solution is still the same.

And the idea that just because you win 1 election somewhere in the world means that you get to infinitely enact your agenda is also silly. To fully enact an agenda you need widespread support.

And if your answer to that reality is to start asking question about how to prevent everyone from fleeing, then that almost definitionally means that your proposal don't have enough support.

So the point stands. Yes if you get enough votes you can enact your agenda. That says nothing about avoiding the consequences of your agenda though. You cannot use wish fulfilment and make believe to turn a bad policy into a good one. Yes, you have to suffer the consequences of your bad policies.

And it is not the fault of "The Elite", when people flee from the consequences of bad policy. Instead thats just the policy being enacted as expected.