Wingnuts

Aren't You Glad You Didn't Vote?

Here's Ed Schultz, pre-midterms:

And I’m announcing today, I’m not going to vote in the midterms. I’m not going to do it. You can say it’s un-American. No, it’s rather revolutionary is what it is. I’m at that point. I’m checking out. I’m checking out of the Democrats because they are proving to me that they don’t know how to handle these big babies over on the right that say no. You know what you do? You get in the driver’s seat, you hit the throttle, and you run over them.

In hindsight, this attitude hasn't resulted in anything positive, has it. And no, I'm not suggesting that Ed's decision to sit out the midterms resulted in the election of Scott Walker in Ed's home state of Wisconsin. That would be crazy.

But elections matter.

And when we refuse to vote, we're not punishing our own party, we're punishing ourselves by helping, in some small way, dicks like Scott Walker and other tea party Republicans. Progressives who sat out the election allowed Wisconsin (and similar horrors) to happen. Angry progressives aren't exclusively to blame, but, like Ed, they didn't do anything to prevent it. So today we're witnessing what happens when we choose our own intransigence and petulance over political reality.