Someone didn't get the lesson in 2010

[Tom Rinaldo]

86. All kinds of people sit out elections for all kinds of reasons.

Without looking it up, I'm pretty sure that even in national elections less than 60% of registered voters actually show up to vote. I said it before and I'll repeat it; liberals and especially liberal/progressive activists are the most loyal "non ethnic" voting block that the Democratic Party has. But even if one assumes like you do that progressive defections hurt the Democrats deeply in 2010, it doesn't take a proverbial rocket scientist to figure out what demoralized some of that base.

It should have been predictable then, and it sure as hell is predictable now. A Democratic President is now proposing cutting Social Security benefits, when private pensions for most have been vanishing and the actual cost of living for Senior Citizens is rising faster than the current method of calculating it. Savings for tens of millions are depleted because people in the 50's and 60's can't hold onto good paying jobs in the current corporate economy. People are hurting and barely holding on as they enter their so called retirement years.

If progressives, or any other Democrats for that matter, get demoralized by this historic retreat for the Democratic Party, it's not like anyone can honestly claim to be surprised by that. Whatever fallout there may be should these cuts go through, it will be a self inflicted wound by a Democratic Administration and Democrats in Congress who know damn well that the American people (not just Democrats) are opposed to these moves and who just let that be known in the last national elections.