love how everyone starts chuckling when he declares that Obamacare *will* be killed

I'll never understand why democrats do not show up to vote on midterms. The Republicans didn't win the midterms...Dems just didn't show up so R just won by forfeit

They'll show up to vote against Palin and McCain, and to vote against Romney/Ryan. But they're silent during midterms.

On the lighter side though, Nothing has really changed though, Obama can still veto anything the R puts out and they don't have enough control of congress to override the veto. If anything If Reps really are emboldened and think they have a mandate to go full retard..even moreso than usual. Then in the long term, this will benefit the liberals when the public ultimately rejects GOP ideas as they have increasingly done so.

I think it's because the people are know fully realizing that it really doesn't matter anymore. I think the corps are laughing to tears that they have Cenk et al still fuming and waxing over republicans vs democrats like that's where the front line is.

oh god, you're another one of those "The parties are equal, so why vote" people.

Sorry, but you simply haven't been paying attention if you think they're equal. Even if you were to disagree with me on which party is less bad, that's still a more principled argument than this "the parties are equally bad" nonsense.

don't get me wrong, I despise parties, I'm an independent, If it was up to me, parties would be banned. But don't think for a second that I still can't make a value judgement and make a determination as to which party is less bad.

Saying they're equal is a cop out, its laziness...and it's part of the problem.

It reminds me so much of the media how they will try to prop up both sides of a argument to promote sensationalism. Obama is probably a citizen....But he might also be a Muslim Kenyan Communist. You never know people, it could go either way. Don't make a decision, let's promote the ratings---err I mean agony as long as possible.

For fucks sake, even the right wing trolls of the sift are more rational than this "both parties are equal" nonsense.

It's funny, I said almost the exact same thing to my right wing cousin before the election. He believes Obama created Ebola in order to put us under martial law...because he hates America. (Sweet Zombie Jebus!)

EDIT: I must also say, the dumbocrats totally gave this election away by making their campaigns the same as retardican campaigns, namely "Obama sucks and we don't like him". WHAT IDIOTS! I can't fathom how they thought that strategy might work...'vote for us because our leader, plans, and past progress are all crap'?!?
My real hope is that the next 2 years might wake people up to the fact that they don't HAVE to vote for retardicans OR dumbocrats....but it's quite a thin slice of hope with little evidence to back it up. I actually HOPE they try to force their 'agenda' (of no helpful governing except for corporations and opposing and repealing any past legislation passed with democratic votes, even their own). After the last election, however, I have little evidence that Americans CAN think for themselves, or think at all on average, so we're stuck with the teams already chosen. Might be time to move to Canada! ;-)

It's not that Dem's didn't turn up it's that geriatric retiree racists bigots and curmudgeons showed up (the true welfare state), since they don't fucking work.
Most decent people are too busy to vote, and that is no coincidence.
The only people who vote Republican now is old farts, who thankfully will all die out soon.
Everything that spews out of the Republican hate machine is music to my ears, because they are so fucking dumb, they still haven't realized its a minority majority and they are up shit creek. This is their last death throws. Bye bye Republicunt$

Can anyone explain to me why the hell you have elections on a weekday?

I wish that were true...but it's not.
My cousin, mentioned above, is about 45, and will be voting republican for decades to come. He is not alone.

There are of course more Republicans out there. Exactly like Fox News's audience.
It's core is old farts, the rest is the Southern states, the uneducated, the Religious and the Military. ie. a massive amount of people without critical thinking skills.

here's your answer: http://www.whytuesday.org/answer/

blows me away that back then it took 2 days for people to vote. makes complaining about how long it takes to vote now even with a long line seem that much more petty

still, I don't think moving it to the weekend would be significantly better. too many people would go on a trip or make other weekend plans that would also interfere with voting.

If I had to pick a single day (to be a national holiday for voting) I'd pick Wednesday. if you make it any other day, it just encourages people to make a long weekend out of it and make other plans.

but then, I also have to ask....why does it have to be a single day? Why can't there be a voting week? The cost of having elections would go up, sure. so I don't know exactly if that's the way to go.... or what about 2 or 3 days voting time?

In recent decades, however, high voter turnout tends to favor Democrats, and low voter turnout tends to favor Republicans and midterms have always had low voter turnout.

So is it any surprise Republicans have been trying to implement all these voter suppression laws...under the guise of voter fraud (hah!) of course

I guess he fits in to the 'southern states' category. He IS educated, is not religious, and not military, yet he buys into these conspiracy theories constantly. As long as they are anti-Obama or anti-Democratic conspiracies, he's in. I just can't understand it, but I also can't break him of it.

Oh, and I left out an obvious one, the Rich...
(ceo's, wall streeter's, aristocracy, land owners, bankers etc.)
My bad.

Absolutely...he's not rich though, so that doesn't explain it. Racism might explain the Obama hate, but not the Democrat hate.

don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to guess anything about anyone in particular.
These are of course all generalizations.

My thread was an attempt at a partial explanation for why this vote swung heavily Republican s'all

I think I can explain the democrat hate: pure romanticism

Lincoln was a Republican, arguably our best president in history. I think people still try to attach to that and ignore the fact that the parties basically flipped because of the Southern Strategy after the Civil Rights Act. That and Republicans weren't always hijacked by the crazies. I think too many people don't want to admit their party has changed. It's also indoctrination. I've met plenty of people that agree with me point by point, yet they still manage to do these crazy mental gymnastics to rationalize to themselves that they HAVE to vote Republican. It's how they were brought up. Hell it almost happened to me, as a kid, long before I had any political identity. I always assumed I was Republican simply because I believed what everyone told me "Republicans are good with money, Democrats waste it" It wasn't until much later that I realized how untrue that was. Hell, even my first presidential vote in 2000, I listened too much to a Republican friend of mine ( one of the people I mentioned before that agreed with me on most everything, but still voted Republican) and because of his influence, I did vote for Bush in 2000 (so so sorry...not that it mattered in my red non-swing state)

One of my best friends is like this. he doesn't vote purely along party lines, and we agree on most political points, yet he still identifies as a Republican when in my opinion, he's an Independent like me. I think it's mainly because he was brought up by a military family and he was brought up to believe that the dems were the devil...despite how much he tends to agree with them.

its totally dysfunctional.

Its also part of the human condition IMO. There is a human need to have an enemy. Back in WWII we were pretty much united because we had to defeat the Axis. In the Cold War we were mostly united because we had to defeat the Russkies. America kinda stands alone now. No other military on earth can really challenge us. Sure the Taliban and ISIS are a source of terrorism, but they're still not a real threat, they could never invade or occupy us.

So there just aren't any real big threats out there...and when that happens...that's when infighting begins. People need an enemy, and when you can't find one without, you find one within.

The only part I took issue with was the idea that these ideologues are all (or nearly all) elderly and will just die soon, solving the problem. Unfortunately, somehow, they are replenishing their ranks with the angry, the uneducated, the bigoted, and the self centered 'rich'.
I have no solution to that, as I simply can't understand it.

my guess would be that the corporate ownership of media and the news is likely what is brain washing the youth. Not that state ownership is any better, but news has gotten particularly bad the last decade.

If the people wanted Obama and Democrats to move forward they would have voted for the Democrats. But that is not what happened.

The people don't want the Democrat way.

The Democrats failed to deliver.

This TYT episode is a joke.

Its now up to the Republicans to deliver, but they will most likely utterly fail with egg on their face.

They did vote for the Democrats, decisively, Twice.

Problem is, nobody with a job could give enough of a shit to vote in these piss-ant elections.
And they're right. Obstructionist Republicunt$ have locked up Washington, crying like babies at anything Obama tries to do. Have we forgotten how they held the country to ransom over raising the debt ceiling ? Despicable

I said nothing about both parties being equal, calm down. I said is doesn't matter. The ones buying the government get what they want regardless. The battle on the rep v dem front is there to keep us excited and rooting for 'our side' and voting to make us feel we're a part of the decisions but is yielding the same results regardless. Both parties are only the same in the fact that they're both bought and paid for.

I think the Democratic voters failed to turn out for a few reasons. All the media made it seem like it was going to be a Republican win, even the "liberal media" was portraying it that way. This led to a defeatist "what can I do?" mentality. Another is that Democrats failed to really push a couple key issues, namely raising the minimum wage and equal pay for equal work. Heck, even just saying that minimum wage will be tied to inflation and go up with inflation each yet, even if it isn't fully adjusted to where it would be now, would have been a big step forward. They shied away from those, just like when they passed Obamacare they shied away from single payer or the government option that was promised and instead gave us an old Republican plan under the assumption Republicans would be glad the Democrats caved in and accepted a Republican idea.

The Democrats failed to deliver largely because Republican obstructionism. This isn't to absolve them of their failure during the two years they could have really moved forward with a true progressive agenda.

Fox News and the pulpit have the Republican voter base convinced to vote Republican, that Obama is singlehandedly destroying America (I'm surrounded by these people every day, I have to unfortunately live with them, I used to be a right wing, Christian Republican myself, then became a right wing Christian Libertarian before I actually started applying real critical thought to the economic impact of the policies as society stands now and became more Liberal). The pulpit has convinced these people that it doesn't matter Jesus said to help the needy and the poor, to heal the sick, and basically everything 100% opposite of the beliefs of the Republican party, to vote Republican anyhow, and it to be the Christian vote. They deny being Christian Reconstructionist while being clearly Reconstructionist. They say things like "if you actually think about it critically, CO2 is good for plants, so their argument is silly" and they accept it, because plants absorb CO2 they think that CO2 emissions can't be as bad as the environmentalist say it is, after all, greenhouses pump CO2 into them to make plants grow better. Again I was guilty of repeating that sort of non-sense. Then it occurred to me there are no walls around plants in the wild, there is no ceiling to help keep CO2 near where plants are, and the fact that very little of the Earth is filled with green (let alone the fact most plants are doing as much CO2 exchange as they can already).... that most of the Earth is blue... that yes the ocean absorbs CO2, but in doing to warms it and that drives massive changes including storms in of itself and learned the real consequences of CO2 emissions.

As Ralph Nader recently pointed out (http://videosift.com/video/Ralph-Nader-on-GOP-8482-s-2014-Wins) the Democrats can't just blame Citizens United or attempts by Republicans to try and limit voting among the poor, they have to take a look at the fact they didn't push the issues that most Americans stand behind but didn't push.

I like the idea of moving elections to the weekend. That probably would help more than some calls of late to make it a Federal Holiday. Most places don't close on Federal Holiday's anyhow, so that won't really help as much as moving it to a weekend... of course one could also argue that people might not want to take time out of their weekends to vote.

Nice post RFlagg. Good to hear your story. Agree with you on pretty much all points.