Actually, folks weren't silent in 2012, otherwise Rmoney and Lyin' Ryan would have become POTUS and VPOTUS and the rethugs wouldn't have lost 8 House seats and 2 Senate seats.
The issue is more that the vast majority of folks prefer not to obsess over politics, which inturn means that when they do go out in droves to make a point (generally during Presidential elections), they choose to step back out of the political arena in the following years... Most likely because by nature, they don't operate from a perspective of fear, anger, hate, and blame of someone else for all of the ills of the world, when it comes to their day-to-day lives. I.e., as long as the local politicians don't screw them too much, then they find it's easier to keep the status quo by letting someone else do the heavy-lifting of voting.
What has unfortunately happened however, is that there is a subset of the populace who DO operate from and respond to fearful circumstances, and these folks are gullible enough to believe the FUD being spewed 24/7 as it fits into their twisted perspectives. Thus they devolve into a freakish "survival" mode that demands that they must vote "for their very lives". And because they will always vote and others don't, they generally get what they want.... until the larger group shows up and swamps their efforts.
In essence, our society has managed to transform voting from being a "Civic Duty", to being a reactive vengeance-seeking reflex. And this sadly reinforces the apathy post-election (with the idea that the one "big vote" should "fix the problem"
... triggering even more fear among the dedicated paranoid few.
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