Look at all you people looking for a purge. It's ridiculous.

[stupidicus]

40. my my, whatta devastating indictment

not

just because they didn't show up at the "polls" for the same reasons many cons didn't is merely a citing of similar behavior that in no way undermines their respective "Network Moment-like" rationales behind their decisions.

Convention has it that non-voters have only themselves to blame. “If you don’t vote, don’t complain.” The dictum assumes that voters are more virtuous, more entitled to democracy’s spoils, than non-voters. But voting is neither a virtue nor a responsibility. It is a neutral civil right, like the right to marry, have children, earn a graduate degree. Not voting like not marrying or not procreating future taxpayers is a right of equal weight, a choice as defensible as the choice to vote. Both are exercises in freedom. To blame a citizen for not voting is like blaming another for voting for a crook. The blame is sanctimonious either way, suggesting the existence of an ideal voter out there, prescient and unfailing. No such voter exists, but the cult of the voter as superior citizen persists. http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/10/28/in-defense-of-not-voting/

Furthermore, since when does a lack of membership or participation in a groups activity bar the moral and 1st Amendment right to declare something wrong -- a complaint?

ANd the idea that you have to make a time and effort commitment to effect change before you can complain about that in need of changing, is just plain silly.

And any political junkie should know that money chooses candidates these days, and has for quite some time.

Membership to that vote-owners’ association is a matter of money, that legal swindle euphemistically called campaign finance. One man, one vote is an ideal at a table rigged for high-rollers. If, as Benjamin Disraeli put it, “there is no gambling like politics,” one grand is ante for the game, one million is a congressman’s eternal friendship, a senator’s returned phone calls, a president’s earlobe for a few minutes. That cool million is also out of 200 million American voters’ league. The wonder is that 100 million Americans still have the heart to vote.

Nobody's is contesting the simple math associated with the number of voters that showed up, so bury that strawman, and realize the reasons they didn't. Your silly demand that every voter become some sorta leader sounds remarkably like the "bootstrap" BS rightwingers peddle, that willfully and blindly ignores the many factors that makes it silly and simplistic and far from a viable solution as well, because it ignores all hurdles in the way.

Gee, does this mandate from you apply to all those burdened by 2-3 jobs and kids, etc, etc, etc, as well?