Vote for Democratic Candidates. Because They Don't Deserve It.

Yes, for his blind determination to win over repugs by sacrificing the middle class, Main Street and the Democratic Party, President Barack Obama richly deserves every endless second of the investigation/impeachment torture repugs will put him through if they take over Congress in November.

But we don't deserve what will happen to us.

Sitting home and not voting this year in order to send a message that you're unhappy with the failures of Obama and the Democratic Congress is like a pissed-off teenager committing suicide because that will really show his parents.

And consider this: a repug victory in November will be interpreted by the president and Democratic leaders as proof that they were not conservative enough. No matter how obvious it is to everyone that Democratic voters stayed home because the administration is too conservative, Obama will lunge even further rightward in ever-more-futile and desperate attempts to appease and win over repugs who will never, never, EVER vote for him.

Steve Benen explains:

It's an absolute, guaranteed, mortal lock that if Republicans make huge gains in the midterms, as seems likely, Graham's rhetoric will be the accepted conventional wisdom, if it isn't already. Pundits, politicians, and the establishment in general will simply accept as fact that Dems would have fared far better if only they hadn't governed "from the left." Obama, we'll hear, has no choice but to go "to the middle."

And every time this nonsense is repeated, an angel will lose its wings.

Look, obviously the GOP has all the momentum, at least for now, going into the midterms. The economy is struggling, and frustrated voters are prepared to punish the party in power, even if the mess was created by the party that's about to reap the rewards. Complicating matters, Democratic voters are feeling disillusioned, and may sit on their hands this fall, even if that means sweeping successes for the most radicalized Republican Party in generations.

But Graham's entire narrative is fundamentally wrong. Obama already is and has been in "the middle." It's what led to a smaller and less effective stimulus; it's what led to a more moderate health care reform bill; it's what produced a less ambitious Wall Street reform package. The president has sought to compromise, over and over again, with a comically right-wing GOP that's not only refused to meet him half-way on literally anything, but at times seems intent on undermining national progress purely for partisan gain.

Lindsey Graham wants Obama to "come back to the middle"? Here's a silly question for Graham: when might your party "come back to the middle"? When was the last time congressional Republicans offered a centrist compromise on literally any policy dispute? When was the last time Graham's Senate caucus allowed the Senate to vote up or down on meaningful legislation without a filibuster, a hold, or both? When was the last time the GOP mainstream responded to White House outreach with a single idea where the parties could work together?

The conventional wisdom will be that liberalism did Democrats in, despite all evidence to the contrary, and despite the fact that liberals were right, especially about the economy. And we'll be reminded again as to why the accepted political truths are often neither conventional nor wise.

Read the whole thing.

If everyone who voted Democratic in 2008 does so again on November 2, that won't turn Obama and Congressional Democrats into liberals overnight.

It will probably convince them that voters rewarded them for their repug-cock-sucking ways.

But it also might scare the repug shit out of them. Because keeping strong Democratic majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate gives us leverage.

"You didn't deserve it, but we liberals saved your ass again. You've got the majorities you refused to take advantage of for two years. You piss this chance away again, and your only legacy will be as the idiot whose failures created President Palin.

"No more excuses."