This diary is an expansion of my comments to the "This is what happens when you don't vote" diary. I took the unpopular thesis that voters need to take responsibility for not voting and not pawn it off on "disappointing" Democratic candidates. More below the fold.
Prior to 2008 I was a Republican and was active in Republican politics. In 2006, The failure of the promised results in the Iraq War, differences over immigration reform, and ethical sleaziness suppressed Republican turnout. Some of us hoped that the Democrats winning in 2006 would serve as a cautionary tale to the extremists in the party to not go there again. But as we know now, they doubled and tripled and quadrupled down. During the 2008 cycle many Republican moderates saw teh crazy really come out and some like myself left the party. Given the even more overt craziness in the 2010 cycle I thought it would be a slam dunk. The American voter had learned their lesson, hadn't they?
Nevertheless, I made sure that my daughter's address remained in CO-4 in order that her vote would count for more. I hadn't change my registration so I attended the Republican caucus and my daughter attended the Democratic one. No one at the caucus knew ANYTHING about the congressional candidates at the Republican caucus. In fact, the person sent to the state convention said he was running on the platform that he could personally find out about the candidates! This ignorance allowed Cory Gardiner to be owned by the oil and gas industry (including Koch Industries) even though our district has a large alternative energy presence. Now he got rewarded by being another global warming denialist on the Energy and Commerce committee.
On the Democratic side my daughter was the only young person there. She was one of the few young people volunteering in Boulder! I stressed to her how crazy the Republicans were but her friends were not interested. When I discussed the election with my friends some saw that there would be little difference if Markey or Gardiner won. We know different now, don't we?
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. It's not up to the politicians to entertain or inspire us. It's up to we, the people. If we don't even bother to vote then:
On a les dirigeants que l'on merite
(We get the leaders we deserve.)