Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

[joshcryer]

64. They might have "voted" but they didn't GOTV, which is far more important.

It's a fact that the teabaggers, those mythical, faux, bullshit media inspired "activists" got out 9% more votes than the liberals. That is a fact. The most depressing, damning fact of the 2010 elections that anyone can ever see. Issues wonks always vote, I can't deny that, they went to their polling place, they voted, and then they went home like the petulant cowards that they are.

I myself spent the entire day getting people to vote, and that was after I spent the entire week before that getting people to go to early vote. That's what it takes. I never put more effort into it in my entire life than 2010. We won by a few thousand votes, I reckon my efforts alone contributed 10% of the vote. That pleased me.

The "messaging" problem, again, was fully predictable. The Republican's sole goal is to oust the President, full stop, they have no other goal than that. They used that energy to overwhelmingly suppress the vote in 2010, to the point where 15% less progressive-leaning voters showed up.

That is not a referendum on the President, the administration, or the Democrats. That is a referendum on the ignorant, petulant "liberals" who decided that they wouldn't expend the effort necessary to help disenfranchised voters get out there and vote. We have to get off our asses every election for at least the next 15 years if we're going to maintain a progressive presence in our politics, if we don't, the right wing will come back in force.

After that though, of course, whites will be increasingly a minority, and we, the progressives, won't matter so much. Either way we win.

But I want to win now, now later. I want to slow if not stop the decline of this country. And I refuse to sit home due to voter suppression tactics attempting to make the Republicans out to be "no different" than the Democrats.