It has nothing to do with facts, truth, reality, honesty, etc.

It has to do with the zeal of the right to discredit the left, regardless of truth.

Follow the money.

it is to laugh, yet it persists. Good post.

a bunch of excuses for people too lazy or apathetic to give a crap about their country?

"I wasn't entertained or wooed enough"

Yeah, I have a hard time either understanding or respecting those people. I have not missed any election since I turned 18 in 1980.

We, the party don't owe them anything. If they don't give a crap about their own future, that is on them.

That doesn't surprise me one teeny little fucking bit.

Making a rational decision isn't about excitement.
Caring about your own future isn't about excitement.

If the non-voters don't want to be "dissed" by the people who actually care, there is an easy way to avoid that. Get off their lazy apathetic butt and go vote.

Until they do that they have earned any disrespect thrown their way.

They don't think that is you, nor the politicians you seem to champion. They have a point.

and whatever. I guess they were right then that Brownback would be a better Governor than the politicians I championed against him. It could not possibly have been worth taking twenty minutes to vote and keep him out of office. After all, neither Holand nor Davis were perfect.

Is that their point?

Politics has to be positive and persuasive to work.

It fails to just scream "You have to. You have to. You HAVE to".

And Democrats can't win by focusing only on habitual voters. Most habitual voters will always be against us.

It's on US to earn the turnout. And there's no good reason to not try to earn it, since the best way to earn it is to keep faith with new voters by fighting hard for what we want.

Selling a shit product and then blaming your customers for not buying it is bad business.

it seems to work for the Republicans. Their shit product seems to be selling.

Unfortunately they perceive that the Democratic Party DOESN'T, and that is why they didn't support it. If you want people to vote for you you have to give them a reason to do so. If you don't you certainly have no room to bitch at them because you are uninspiring.

More excuses for people too lazy, too cynical to bother to vote.

You have excuses for them, and insults for me.

They need to be "inspired". The party and the candidates need to "inspire" them.

With free beer or something. Because they apparently do not care if money is taken from their pockets and put into the pockets of rich people. Thanks to the elections of 2012 (and the legislative bloodbath of 2010) the poorest 40% of Kansans are paying about $100 million more in taxes every year compared to 2007.

It is the KDP's fault that happened though, because the people who spent thousands of dollars of their own money and hundreds of hours of their own time running for office were just not inspiring enough.

Who can possibly blame the voters and non-voters for either not knowing or not caring?

And that when Dems stay home, which they undeniably do in the midterms, Republicans win?

Do you mean other than the undeniable data? Or are you just making stuff up?



I dunno. I think you are mistaken. Horribly mistaken. It is all about turnout. When Democrats don't vote, Republicans win. Que surprise!

Some folks just do not get that fact.

We all agree that turnout matters.

But we can't just expect turnout to happen without the party doing any of the work to get people to turn out.

Turnout has to be earned. It isn't OWED.

Is that so hard to understand?

It's on the party...not the voters.

I always vote because I fervently believe that it is my duty as a citizen. Your mileage may vary. If so, too bad for all of us.

Turnout is not fucking earned, it should be obligatory. Remarkably, how many stupid idiots who don't vote complain about our political system?

It is all about turnout, my friend, which is why we lose in the midterms. The fervent believer GOP turns out, and Dems don't.

Pretty simple when one thinks about it and looks at the undeniable data.

The extent to which one does not vote is the extent to which they have no basis for complaint.

Your argument is so fucking busted.

VOTE! In every election. Or you have no basis for complaint. It just sounds like a two-year-old whining. I don't get my way, but I refuse to take part in the process to change it.

Fuck that!

boy we have come a long way from a sense of Civic Duty and responsible citizenship...

YES it is owed... we owe it to each other and the Country to be informed and vote and vote smart each election

but if they don't show up, it is their fault, not the party's. And maybe they should take some of that advice themselves.

I'm sick of their threats. It's their way or the highway. It is most certainly on them. If they don't get it all, they sulk. They've been doing it since Obama was elected.

If they don't show up and Republicans win because of it, it is THEIR fault. All they had to do was vote rather than sulk that they didn't get all they wanted. BECAUSE of Republicans being in office, which is their own fault. Gads their constant whining that it's all not enough, and demands and negativity! They discourage others with it (though those others - it's their own fault they let the negativity get them down).

It's not going to get a rest. We are going to call them on it as long as they do it.

So, as much as you'd like to blame the voters. It's a bad tactic. The disadvantage of being more knowledgeable and motivated, is that you now have to figure out how to impart your knowledge and motivation to others, rather than just declaring that *you* *yourself* do the bare minimum.

only the voters can vote (or not), right? So, if VOTERS don't VOTE, who(m) else should we blame?

What do you think when you look at this picture? I think MOMENTUM and MANDATE. But TPTB do not want what the electorate does. Make no mistake about it, TPTB is in control of both parties.

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YES - THE LEFT SAT IT OUT. You're just giving excuses for that.

I knocked a lot of doors down here in 2010. I know our side stayed home. So the RW won the legislature and got to redistrict. And that's still hurting us

Obama carried NC in 2008. He didn't carry NC in 2012 -- because our side stayed home

I've knocked plenty of doors. I've dialed plenty of phones. And I've heard more bullshit from people over the years than I care to remember. I've heard a goodly amount of lazy-ass slack-jaw nonsense from folk on my side of many issues: Oh, I don't vote in municipal elections or I'm not voting this year because I'm disappointed in Obama or I only vote in Presidential elections or I've decided not to vote for Obama this year because he supports torture or whatever other dim-witted slogan is popular at the moment

turnout is always lower in off years.

I am kind of sick of GOTV efforts. The whole premise seems to be "a majority of voters do not like our message, but if we can get a higher percentage of those who do to turn out, we can win in spite of that".

Seems to me that more effort should be spent on informing the people who do vote. In providing them with information and a message that will win them to our side. Especially in a Presidential year I think GOTV is less relevant. In the non-presidential years it can make a difference, perhaps.

It is awesome that you can knock on so many doors though. As a precinct man, I should be doing that, but I don't really have the temperament for it,

We had record low D turnout in 2010: it was the first time in generations NC had voted for a majority R state legislature in both houses

As a result of 2010, we've probably lost both the legislature here and the congressional delegation until the redistricting after the 2020 census because of gerrymandering: there are actually more D votes here than R votes, but because of the way the districts have been redrawn, we're now get only a small fraction of the legislative and congressional seats

For whatever various bullshizz reasons, many Ds stayed home down here in 2010 instead of voting and it's costing us in more ways than I can list quickly

even in this county in this red state, the Obama campaign hired a field organizer who hired a bunch of kids who knocked on every door in the county and on election day even sent a van of us up to nearby Atchison county to knock on doors. Most of the people I talked to had already voted. Three had not and I could not persuade them to - and two of those were black. He didn't have the same surfeit of funds in 2012. At least we did not have the same effort here, although in 2010 the state party hired somebody for our county, trying to retain the seat of a retiring D in the legislature, and lost it anyway, along with a whole bunch of other seats.

2010 was tough for my state, even more because of Obama. When he took our Governor to be Secretary of HHS, we lost a strong Senate candidate. Plus it left us with a Lt. Governor, a former Republican (that I actually warmed up to) who was too chicken to run for Governor. Our long-time D Congressman stepped down because of early stage Alzheimer's and nobody wanted to run there either. His wife was finally persuaded to try, but really did not have the chops for it, and had entered late like our Governor candidate. Unlike 2006 and 2008 (and even 2004) we also did not have a strong contender in the 2nd district.

So there were too many valid reasons for us to do badly in 2010 in Kansas. If only Daschle had not been torpedoed.

The horse race, "my team" vs. "your team" aspect plays a part, I suspect.

Plus voting is just too difficult. Long lines, unknown polling places. Plus it is on a Tuesday, a work day for most people. Make it a holiday or mandate people get time off to go do it. To say nothing of Republican dirty tricks to suppress the vote: closing precincts, requiring ID, etc.

It's largely leaners and low-info types who DON'T show up for midterms.

But the facts won't get in the way of the hippie-punchers' delusions.

After YEARS of proof and links to the contrary (the liberals always vote in the highest numbers, the conservative right in the party votes the least)...only the biggest troll tries to push that one here on DU. And usually they get failsauce all over their thread.

Moderates are the highest number of voters and conseradems the lowest, probably because they are a tiny group.

Those are just leftovers really, the actual ones didn't bother to show up because they know it is bullshit that nobody believes anymore.

Lost causes are all I see here, so they don't count.

...for not buying a shitty product.

it's part of the memes that relieve Obama of all responsibility

I don't think there's any dispute over that...