Sunday, November 7, 2010

Two Years and It Has Come to This

Given a choice between voting and staying home, my argument continues to be that skipping the vote was a hugely counterproductive decision. A no vote for a Dem last Tuesday was a vote for Republicans. Even if you did not care for your particular pol, voting could have helped keep Dems in control of the House. That control is now gone. So for the 72% of registered Democrats that did not vote, thanks for nothing.

Mark Morford hits the non-voters hard in this piece. He shows particular irritation for the youngest voters, the 18-24 crowd, who made such a difference in '08. I share that view because on Tuesday we had stark and simple choices. Our preferred choices may not have been there, but we all still had a simple decision to make: Do you really want the Republicans back in power?

Having said that, I understand and share the concerns of the panel on the clip below. I especially enjoy Cenk Uygur. In the last 12-18 months Cenk has blasted Obama repeatedly over his failure to be more responsive to those who voted him into power as well as the agenda he, Obama, declared so often on the campaign trail. Progressives would likely have been far more patient with Obama if he had made it clear that he was truly working for them. Yet it is not at all clear that is the case. Watch the clip; it has some serious discussion on the hole into which Obama has helped dig himself.





If you are not familar with Cenk Uygar, by all means visit the young turks. You can easily find him on You-tube as well.

2 comments:

  1. Why the hell would we vote for Democrats? You're welcome, because I did vote but refused to vote for either of the factions of our one party system.

    Oh no, the Republicans are in power now, the new boss is the same as the old boss. Thanks Obama for committing to extend Bush's tax cuts, thanks for Obama's deficit commission telling me to work till I'm 69 before I can retire.

    This post makes me want to vomit. Do you never learn from your mistakes or are you going to keep voting against your own interests because of some confused notion of a lesser evil?

    Ugh.

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  2. formula:
    You hit upon the core problem with so many Dems. Your attitude explains why we lose elections so often. So how many of your candidates won? If you did not vote R or D, the answer is zero. Good job, formula. You are just the kind of progressive that Republicans love: the ones that bitch, then stay home.

    I share your ambivalence towards Obama. But this election was not just about Obama; he wasn't running if you recall. But there are other more progressive candidates to support, which is what we did in Hawaii.

    Work for more progressive candidates. But staying at home only guarantees Republican victories.

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