I'm becoming increasingly convinced that talk of 2016 is designed to distract from 2014

[Bluenorthwest]

59. If you still live in CA, why are you claiming that 2010 went poorly for your State? CA turnout was

not low, Democrats won everything there was to win, Brown won over Megabucks Whitman without breaking a sweat, the State House went Super Blue, etc. Here in Oregon, our 2010 turn out was even better. We set a record! We also re-elected a former but not incumbent Democratic governor as CA did with Brown, we got majority in the State House, no 'Tea Party' type Republicans elected, not one new Republican was sent to DC.
Washington. They did well too! What can we learn from this? First the 2010 apathy that you decry was not national, it was regional and did not touch the West Coast at all. The regional nature of the low turn out races makes it very easy to look for the reasons the low turn out areas were apathetic. Unlike the West Coast, the candidates in the Apathy Zone were 'Moderate Centrists' whom voters thought were too much like the Republican. In some States and districts, the youth vote declined as well as the votes from some minority groups. This was not really the case in CA or Oregon, nor in WA. Also not in NY, VT, and many other places that did just fine in 2010.
I suggest to you that misunderstanding the nature of the 2010 election, including the nature of the election in your own State, might do more harm to correcting that apathy than any amount of discussion could do. Much of 2010 was simply that there are conservative and Republican areas and they elect Republicans and conservatives. If you are going to freak out because Alabama elected Republicans while your entire Blue region brought home big victory, then I'd say you just want to freak out.
On the other hand, those folks who are calling unannounced candidates 'the presumptive nominee' and demanding protections for that potential candidate are utterly full of shit.