Why You Should Be Glad Grimes Lost

One fewer fucking DINO to get rid of in 2018.  Already, six Senate repugs with Ds next to their names are preparing to give Mitch McConnell his 60-vote filibuster-proof majority, and the dem leadership has surrendered the lame-duck session.

No wonder nobody wants to vote for Democratic candidates: what the fuck are they good for?
 

Alex Ruthrauf at Wonkette.

On Monday, beltway bullshit scorecard POLITICO reported that nominal Democratic senators like Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill, and Heidi Heitkamp appear eager to help the new Republican majority advance legislation. Manchin even called the idea of not working with Republicans to promote their agenda “bullshit.” They probably think that burnishing their “moderate centrist” credentials in this way will help them keep their jobs when they face the voters in 2018. They are wrong.

Assuming a Democrat is elected president in 2016, and middle class wages remain stagnant or continue to shrink, here is what will happen to Joe Manchin and Claire McCaskill and Heidi Heitkamp in 2018: They will lose.

It will not matter if Joe Manchin literally shoots every climate bill that hits his desk. It will not matter if Claire McCaskill personally lays the Keystone XL pipeline’s ceremonial Golden Pipe. And it will not matter if Heidi Heitkamp drinks a Bakken oil smoothie for breakfast every morning.

All of them will lose.

SNIP

Let them lose. Then start running Democrats who are recognizable as Democrats in a blind taste test. Even in places where the conventional wisdom says they won’t play well. These candidates will almost certainly lose too, at first. But at least the party’s resources will be spent on promoting candidates who support the core agenda that rank and file Democrats go out and vote for. Maybe undecided voters in “red states” won’t trust that agenda in Round 1, but as things stand now, they’re not even being asked to evaluate it. They choose between the Republican and the Republican with a “D” next to their name.

SNIP

So why do we just assume that Democrats in “red” or “purple” states can’t take liberal positions? Probably because they so rarely try, because they’re cowards who don’t deserve to be nominated. So let’s stop nominating them.

You think a candidate promising a higher minimum wage, an FDR-style jobs program funded by taxing the shit out of Wall Street and  universal pre-K couldn't get elected in Kentucky?

Prove it. Run one.

Centrists

You noticed, didn't you, that the Democratic candidates - even in red states - who embraced Barack Obama won, and the "Democratic" candidates who ran away from Barack Obama lost.

In the immortal words of Jim Hightower: "There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos."

Down with Tyranny:

Now Can We Stop Running Losing Campaigns?

The consultants are analyzing Alison Lundergan Grimes' catastrophic campaign and coming to the same conclusion they always do: "It wasn't conservative enough.  We need to appeal more and harder to republican voters!"

The voters who will never, ever, EVER vote for a candidate with a D next to her name.

Ignoring the 900,000 Kentuckians who voted for President Obama in 2012 and sat home last Tuesday because there wasn't an actual Democratic candidate running against Mitch McConnell.

But a few observers have it figured out.  Charlie Pierce:

First of all, the president's basic unpopularity was unquestionably a factor, but not anywhere near as much of a factor as was the reluctance of the Democratic party -- from the president on down -- to embrace the actual successes that the administration has achieved. The economy is, in fact, improving. It is the responsibility of the president and his party that we have the paradoxical polling that indicates that the elements of the Affordable Care Act are popular, while "Obamacare" is not. (Mitch McConnell told a transparent lie that Kentucky could get rid of the ACA and still keep its very popular state exchange. He didn't suffer at all for that.) The senatorial candidates who lost were senators who ran away from the administration. Alison Lundergan Grimes wouldn't say if she'd voted for the president. Kay Hagan endorsed the Keystone XL pipeline. Michelle Nunn practically ran as an independent. How much worse could it possibly have been for all of them had they stood by the president and his record? How much worse could it possibly have been for them had the president come to campaign for them?

Erik Loomis:

So there’s a lot of work to be done. In case this post was too long, here is a short open letter to the Democratic Party with some visuals.

Dear Democrats,

Less this:



More this:



Thanks,
Erik

Steve M:

No, Democrats shouldn't attempt phony duck-hunting and NASCAR bonding -- they should be who they are, advance policies that help the non-rich achieve a better life economically, and pitch that approach to the old as well as the young, the white as well as the non-white, the rural as well as the urban and urbane. Everybody but the rich is in the same boat these days anyway -- your recent-vintage Ivy League sheepskin won't get you a real job any more than decades in the recently closed factory will -- so a message of economic relief for the non-rich, backed by concrete proposals fought for seriously, ought to have appeal across demographic lines. No, this won't win Democrats a majority of older males. But it will make inroads. And this doesn't have to be in lieu of appeals on other issues -- it should be in addition. You fight for Joe Lunchpail's economic security and he really might not mind that you also fight for his nephew's right to get gay-married.

Last word to the Rude Pundit:

The Rude Pundit has said before, and he'll say again and again: We have to stop acting like the visiting team in our own country.

Off the Floor

Juanita Jean:

QOTD

Charlie Pierce:

The president's party proved itself utterly unwilling to stand behind the president's policies and, therefore, the president's very real achievements. This was not clever. It was suicidal.

You Can't Win If You Don't Fucking Run

The ballot at my Shelby County polling place looked like an unfilled-in crossword puzzle: blank boxes everywhere.

The following offices with repug incumbents had no challenger, no Democratic candidate at all:

State Senator
State Representative
Circuit Court Judge (the one who handles felonies)
County Judge-Executive
County Attorney
County Coroner

Just as bad, the following offices with Democratic incumbents had no challenger, no repug candidate at all:

County Clerk
Magistrate
County Jailer
Constable

All the incumbents have been in office for centuries.  Anybody smell a deal being cut here? A really incredibly stupid deal on the part of Democrats?

Single-candidate races should be illegal; unconstitutional, even.

Any county Democratic party that does not have a candidate in Every. Single. Race. on the ballot needs to be disbanded immediately, its executive committee barred from political involvement for life.

Letting political offices go unchallenged is a crime against democracy, and damn near treason .

Democrats Win the Race That Matters Most

Yes, it's going to be an ugly two years in D.C., with dems' only hope being that the repug Insanity Caucus will prevent President Obama from crafting neoliberal compromises on Social Security and what remains of the social safety net.

But we are sighing with relief here in the Bluegrass, where our way-too-conservative-but-still-not-repug state Democratic candidates hung on to the state House of Representatives.

Kentucky's not North Carolina. Yet.

Jack Brammer and John Cheves at the Herald:

Democrats will keep control of the Kentucky House of Representatives following Tuesday's election, turning back a push by Republicans to lead the chamber for the first time since 1921.

Democrats kept 54 of the 100 House seats, the same number they had going into the election.
House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, said Democrats "are very lucky and blessed" to keep control of the House.

Stumbo said he will ask the Democratic majority to re-elect him speaker, the House's No. 1 leadership position.

"I have spent a lot of time and effort with these candidates and would be honored to serve as their speaker," he said.

Asked if that means he will not run for governor next year, Stumbo said, "you never say never in this business."

And it's never a dull moment here in the Bluegrass.  Stay tuned: the 2015 gubernatorial race starts now.

Drink up! It's now legal to buy booze on Election Day in Lexington

Yes, liquor stores will open today for all your last-minute, vote-buying needs.

Seriously, that's why Kentucky banned alcohol sales during hours that the polls are open. Because apparently people trying to buy votes with booze are too stupid to stock up beforehand.

From the Herald:

Lexington citizens may legally buy and sell alcohol while the polls are open Tuesday, thanks to a change in a city ordinance.

The Urban County Council voted in early September to repeal a section of the city's Code of Ordinances that said "no premises shall sell, give away or deliver alcoholic beverages of any kind on any primary or regular election day during the hours that the polls are open," according to a city news release.

State law changed in July to allow local governments to decide whether to allow alcohol sales on Election Day.

Polls are open!  Have you voted yet? Have all your family members, friends, neighbors and pets?

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/11/03/3518174/change-in-lexington-ordinance.html?sp=/99/164/#storylink=cpy

Yeah, I Know. Vote for Grimes, Anyway. Polls Open at 6 a.m.

Just keep repeating: "I'm voting against Mitch. I'm voting against Mitch. I'm voting against Mitch."

And you want to be able to bitch about the repug Congress for the next two years, don't you?  If you don't vote, you can't.

New Twist on Voter Suppression in Kentucky

This is just genius. Telling people that if they vote for a candidate who lies, they are committing voter fraud.  Just. Fucking. Genius.

Don't fight it, Alison; use it.  Accuse everyone in Kentucky who ever voted for a repug of having committed voter fraud.  That might just be genius enough to get the 900,000 Obama voters to change their minds about staying home and actually vote for you.

Joe Gerth at the Courier: 

Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes' Senate campaign has filed a lawsuit accusing the Kentucky Republican Party of sending mailings aimed at suppressing voter turnout Tuesday.

SNIP

The mailer is labeled as an "Election Violation Notice" and warns recipients they're at risk of "acting on fraudulent information." It says Grimes has tried to deceive voters in her campaign to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Repug Elected = Voter Suppression = Cheating = Fraud by Repugs

Every motherfucking one of them. Frauds. Disqualified. Not fit for office.

Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:

So much has happened in so many parts of the judicial system regarding Voter ID and other recent efforts to restrict the franchise that it’s hard to get a fix on the big picture. But at the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin has seen the future of SCOTUS action on voting rights in its rulings on Wisconsin (halting implementation on grounds of timing) and Texas (giving that state the green light) Voter ID laws, and it’s not good:

The Wisconsin and Texas rulings were just preliminary requests for emergency relief, and the Supreme Court may yet hear the cases in full on the merits. But there seems little chance that a majority of the current Court will rein in these changes in any significant way. In courtrooms around the country, it’s been made clear that these Republican initiatives have been designed and implemented to disenfranchise Democrats (again, usually of color). But the Supreme Court doesn’t care.

So Toobin thinks it’s time to make a mental adjustment back to the mid-1960s, when hostile state laws and practices on voting were overwhelmed by sheer the sheer moral and physical presence of people exercising the rights they still had and participating in elections whatever the difficulty:

Certainly, the obstacles for voters in the contemporary South do not compare to those that the civil-rights pioneers, black and white, faced until the early nineteen-sixties. In the Freedom Summer of 1964, the still nascent civil-rights movement coalesced around an effort to register voters in Mississippi. It was during that summer that the infamous murders of the civil-rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner took place. In addition, of course, black Mississippi residents endured less well-known but equally horrific abuse from state authorities during this time.​ In those days before the Voting Rights Act, the effort did not succeed in registering great numbers of voters, but it did focus the nation’s attention on the magnitude of the problem.

So it could today. In light of the changes in the state laws, it’s difficult but not impossible to register voters and make sure that they get to cast their ballots. And it’s absolutely mandatory in a democracy for that to be done.

The title of Toobin’s essay is “Freedom Summer, 2015.” It’s sobering to realize that’s what we may need to restore voting rights long thought to be relatively secure. But it’s also a reminder that reactionaries who fear democracy (not just judicial conservatives, but the Con Cons who think “losers” have forfeited the right to have any say in what “winners” do with their money and power) have been defeated before in more more extreme circumstances.

 See also Think Progress on court-allowed voter suppression and Lawyers, Guns and Money on purging voters of color from voting lists.

Don't Let Repugs Get Away With Calling You Pussies

The Rude Pundit nails what's really behind the repug fear-mongering:

Goddamnit, American motherfuckers, every single one of us: Aren't you tired of being afraid all the time? Isn't it exhausting? Aren't you tired of being told that you're just a fuckin' wimp who would be murdered the second a terrorist touched our precious soil? Aren't you sick of these assholes making you think that Ebola is going to jump out of the Dark Continent and turn you black or whatever the fuck we're supposed to fear it does?

The new Democratic ad, the closing argument, if you will, should be: "Don't let Republicans tell you that Americans are pussies. You're not a pussy. Vote for the Democrats.

Election Day is next Tuesday, November 4.  Polls are open in Kentucky from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.  Find out where your polling place is from your local County Clerk.

Not for nothing, but if you are not white or male, people literally died for your right to vote. Not voting is pissing on their graves.

And not voting Democratic is handing victory to the very people who don't want you to vote.

Run As a Democratic Candidate, Alison

Elizabeth Jensen in Kentucky's Sixth, an un-funded challenger to incumbent repug Andy Barr, is running as an actual Democratic candidate, proudly supporting Obamacare and President Obama, and not wasting time trying to appeal to repugs who will never, ever vote for a Democratic candidate.

If Jensen wins and Grimes loses - or even if Jensen loses by less than Grimes does - that will be why.

Beverly Mann at Angry Bear:

If you want to run a Washington-vs.-our-state campaign as a Democrat, you need to make that campaign about the issue of who it is that determines specific Washington policy—in other words, about whether it’s the Kochs who effectively write legislation and dictate what legislation is filibustered or never brought to a vote, or instead small-business owners or ordinary individuals who play some meaningful role in this process.  A campaign for Congress by a Democrat that amounts to a generic ideological “Washington vs. our state” is a campaign that is incoherent. Grimes’ campaign is Exhibit A, but it’s certainly not the only current Exhibit.

The Louisville Courier-Journal, in its endorsement editorial, points out that Grimes supports such policies as a raise in the federal minimum wage and federally sponsored universal access to preschool.  But these are federal programs; she’s running for the United States Senate, not the Kentucky Senate. “Washington vs. our state” as a generic ideological precept precludes these. If Grimes’ ideology is really the same as Joni Ernst’s, then she should switch parties.  If it’s not, then she should make that clear, and make clear why it’s not.

And if Grimes wins, it will be precisely because of why it’s not—and because McConnell, not Grimes, finally made that clear to Kentucky’s voters.

And next time someone like Ashley Judd wants to run for Senate in a state like Kentucky, the Democratic Establishment should not insist that she not run because, after all, a “centrist” would have a better chance.  Judd would win this election comfortably, I’d bet.

Mitch Admits He Will Take Away All Your Healthcare

Well of course he will. You're not rich, white, straight xian and male, are you?

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

Under the McConnell approach, the spokesperson told Stein, when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, everything must go – the Kynect website could exist, but consumers would no longer be eligible for subsidies to purchase coverage for themselves or their families. Medicaid expansion, coverage for young adults, prescription-drug benefits for seniors, et al, would all be eliminated as quickly as possible.

As a practical matter, McConnell, in the race of his life, is running on a curious platform: he fully intends to take health care benefits away from roughly 500,000 of his own constituents, leaving most of the state with higher premiums and worse insurance.

Team McConnell emphasizes, of course, that once the senator succeeds in tearing down the American health care system, the Republican hopes to replace it with something else, but McConnell hasn’t told anyone what the new system might look like and/or how many Kentuckians will be worse off. Working families are apparently just supposed to trust the longtime incumbent – he’ll take away their access to affordable medical care, but he’ll replace it with … something. Eventually. Maybe.

No state has been more successful in implementing health care reform than Kentucky. No senator is more desperate to destroy this success than Mitch McConnell. It’s arguably the strangest platform of any statewide candidate in the nation.

Grimes Finally Attacks Mitch on Voter Suppression

Voting in Kentucky is not quite as near-impossible as it is in Texas - you  have to present a form of identification but it doesn't have to be government-issued or have a picture - but without early voting or excuse-less mail-in voting, it's still a system that forces minorities, students, the elderly and working people to jump through fiery hoops.

When I started voting almost 40 years ago, all you had to do to cast a vote was to sign your name in the registration book, right next to the signature you made the last time you voted or registered, and as long as it matched you were gold.

Grimes did not go so far as to demand the return to that system, but at least she called out the voter suppression motherrfuckers for fucking their mothers. And lying about it.

Jack Brammer at the Herald:

The campaign of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes claims in two radio ads that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to take the right to vote away from black people.

The most recent ad, launched earlier this week, is narrated by Georgia Powers, a civil-rights advocate from Louisville and the first black person elected to the Kentucky Senate.

In it, Powers says "Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are trying to take away our right to vote."

The Ad That Could Save Alison - If She'd Run It

I am sure Bruce Braley would be happy to let her steal it.

And equally sure she wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.

Not Even Congressman Awesome Can Save Alison Now

Talk to some Kentucky Democratic voters - and those of us who actually vote Democratic are ALL liberal, thank you very much - and what you'll hear is anger. Red-hot, hopping mad fury at Alison Lundergan Grimes for expecting us to vote for a repug-lite, coal-excusing hater of President Obama.

And for pissing away our best chance in 30 years to get rid of McConnell.

Some of us are still going to vote for her, because we are Democratic voters and we are liberals and we're voting against the Turtle. But not all of us.  And not enough of us to lift her to victory.

And that is 100 percent her fucking fault.

Sam Youngman at the Herald:

Yarmuth, speaking before Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, did something that Democrats in Kentucky have been going out of their way to avoid doing:

He embraced, defended and praised President Barack Obama.

"Nobody has inherited a tougher job than Barack Obama did," Yarmuth said to wild applause from more than 4,000 Democrats Wednesday night.

As the Grimes campaign has taken on water in recent days for her refusal to say if she voted for Obama and for her decision to run an immigration ad condemned by liberal groups, Yarmuth is working overtime to keep Grimes' liberal base intact.

"I think that is part of my role with her," Yarmuth said Thursday in a phone interview with the Herald-Leader.

The liberal base of Kentucky's Democratic Party is not wholly different than it is nationally — 30 percent of Kentuckians still give Obama a thumbs-up — and Grimes needs every last one of them to show up on Nov. 4 if she hopes to deny U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a sixth term.

But it is a restless base.

All the Repugs Have Is Fear. Unfortunately, It Works

karoli at Crooks and Liars:

Whether it's Ebola, the IRS, ISIS, Benghazi! or the recent Secret Service scandal, Republicans are dedicated to convincing voters they live in a dark, horrible world. Be afraid, little people, be afraid.

The corollary to that is, of course, that the good soldier Republicans will save you if you'll only vote for them so they can roll back time to some time in history (God knows when!) when everything was wonderful.

It's a tactic. Fear as motivation to reject progress is time-honored and Republicans have turned it into a sort of art form -- dark arts, that is. After all, one of the reasons we live in a somewhat scary world is because of what Republicans did; specifically, Republicans George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

SNIP

Fear and anger. Fear and bigotry. Fear and selfishness. Classic conservative tactics and monsters of conservative invention for the purely cynical purpose of gaining and consolidating power.

For example, the Ebola virus. President Obama has wisely decided that deploying our military expertise to build medical facilities and help put some infrastructure in Africa to combat the disease is a good thing. But David Vitter objects, claiming it focuses too much on Africa. No funding for efforts to contain the virus and save lives in Africa, Vitter whines, while clutching his pearls and crying about "illegals" crossing the southern border with unnamed but intentional linkage to the Ebola virus. Be afraid!

Fear, baby. It sells. Give them some fear, forget that you refuse to deal with the situation causing the fear.

Cowardly Democrats Always Lose

Why? The Rude Pundit explains:

Nearly every election, we've gotta go through this. We gotta watch as Democrats desperately try to portray themselves as salt-of-the-earth right-wingers (cue the ads of Democrats shooting shit). This time around, like in 2010 and 2014, we get to see them do the distancing dance, saying that they're not nigger-lovers, oh, no. They're "Clinton Democrats," as Grimes and others have called themselves, which is one of the most bullshit, racist phrases the Rude Pundit's seen since "urban youth." Once more, we're watching Democrats try to appeal to the yahoos when they should just rip the heads off their opponents and use the head to suck them off or eat them out like a fuck puppet.

And then, if someone does put out an ass-kicker of an ad, Democratic pussies run away, acting like their delicate sensibilities were just offended. Take, for instance, Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis's ad against her wheelchair-bound opponent, the odious scum-eater, Greg Abbott. In "Justice," we see an empty wheelchair as a serious narrator tells us that Abbott sued the fuck out of someone whose tree fell on him and won millions of dollars and then, as a lawyer, fought against others receiving compensation for their injuries. Yeah, Abbott's that special kind of hypocritical bastard, one who loves the taste of the sweat and tears of others: he speaks out against lawyers who try to get money for their injured clients.

So while Abbott gets to roll away from the substance of the ad, Davis gets excoriated.

SNIP

Davis is losing, so you could call it a "hail Mary," but it's a gut punch. Why are we not getting ads from Grimes saying that McConnell will take away people's health insurance? Is it because it will force Grimes to mention the-Negro-who-shall-not-be-

named?

SNIP

The failure of Democrats to show that Republicans would take away health care from millions of people and are responsible for our crumbling infrastructure and slow jobs recovery is a failure of imagination, messaging, and leadership. It's cowardice, purely and simply, and it's once again allowed Republicans to set the rules of engagement. Texas could have used a leader for the 21st century, not the mid-20th.

Want Attention? Vote!

If you can't come up with any other reason to vote on November 4th - and if you are a minority or a woman whose right to vote was paid for by the literal blood and tears and deaths of those who fought to get it for you, so shame on you if you don't - then how about this:

Every time someone who is not white, male, straight, xian, conservative, repug and rich votes, somewhere a repug head explodes.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

It's that day again. If you're obsessive enough about politics to be reading this, you should probably already be registered to vote by mail (assuming you live in a state that allows it.) But if you're registered to vote at the polls, be sure to get out there and vote today.

If you believe that there really is value in seeing Democrats defeat Republicans--as I suspect most of you do--then it's very important that you vote. It's not just that your vote helps win elections today. When you vote, the Democratic Party knows that you're that much more reliable a voter. We don't have to spend as much money making sure you show up, and you won't get harassed as often. From a progressive warrior point of view, it also means that when there are intra-party primaries to pick the more progressive Democrat, the campaigns will fight harder over your vote because they know you're going to show up.

For the rest of you, this is why the people who say they're going to "punish" politicians by not voting are just deluded. You're not punishing anyone. You just fall off our radar. We stop caring about you at all.

SNIP

So guess what? When a bunch of Democrats who voted in 2008 decided to just not show up at the polls in 2010 because they weren't inspired or whatever, the Democratic Party didn't say to itself "oh, we should be more progressive and inspirational!" The Party said, "well, those people can't be counted on. Let's worry about the more conservative senior voters who are on the fence."

If you want to make the Democratic Party care more about progressives and progressive issues, withholding your vote isn't how to do it. That only weakens your hand.

The biggest way to make an impact is to be both loud and reliable. Particularly when it comes to voting in Democratic primaries. Make sure the party knows you vote, that you'll vote for Democrats generally, but that any individual politician may or may not get your vote--and that you'll vote against them in a primary if it comes to that.

Those are the people who scare politicians. Not the non-voters.

So get out there and vote. Because you know what we call the sort of person who votes in a June off-year midterm primary? Someone we have to pay attention to.

Yep.  This is why I take every opportunity to tell my local Democratic Party pooh-bahs that you bet your ass I'm voting for Alison Lundergan Grimes, BUT that I'm going to have to borrow a Level-5 Hazmat suit to do it, and they better not ever forget it.

Digby:

So let's be clear. People despise Congress and its inability to solve problems. But they absolutely hate Republicans. Democrats aren't exactly sweethearts, but a majority do have a favorable impression of the party.

If everyone voted, Republicans would be bounced out of influence. But people don't vote.

The problem isn't convincing more people. The problem isn't Fox News or the right-wing media machine or anything like that. Most people aren't fooled.

The problem is getting the people who do see the world the right way to vote. In the parlance of campaign operatives, it's a turnout problem, not a persuasion problem.

So yes, because liberals stay home and don't vote, the electorate is conservative.  Democrats run as conservatives to get their votes, because conservatives are the ones voting.  We're not.

If liberals don't give a damn about voting in midterms,why should Democrats give a damn about liberals who don't vote?

Last word to Zandar, who nails it:  

Abdication of voting is cowardice, plain and simple.  If you make the political decision to stay home and not vote in order to punish politicians, you are a coward, and you deserve no voice at all in our political process.

Too many people have fought and died for women, African-Americans, Hispanic and Latino, Asian, and other minorities to be able to vote.  Walking away from that is not only irrational, despite what Gary Segura says, but suicidal.  If you feel that you are voiceless, why make yourself voiceless by not voting?

I can respect voting for the other candidate in order to punish the one you're angry with.  That's at least still exercising the right people bled for.  But to stay home and do nothing?  Insanity.  You only assure that you will not be taken seriously in the future and that your concerns will be ignored.

Why should politicians care about those who do not vote at all?