Reply #133: Not quite-- talk all you want but when it's Obama and some Republican running...

[TreasonousBastard]

sitting it out is the whiny, childish thing to so. And you're saying that's what you might do.

In most elections there are only two candidates who have any possibility of winning, and unless one sees them both as equally horrific and looks for rock to hide under until the next election, vote for the one of the two you would prefer to have in office.

That often means that the one you helped put in office will screw you three times out of five, but you have avoided four out of five. Not good at all, but these are politicians we're talking about.

"Protest" votes are as stupid as they are inconsequential. The party you are attempting to spank will never learn its lesson from your little protest, and only cares about its win or its loss. Even if they are tempted to blame those votes for the loss, they look at them as votes they never would have gotten anyway, or if they got them it would be at the expense of far more from other groups that they would have pissed off.

So, it's not so much the yakking about how Obama is so disappointing (all Presidents end up being disappointing to many of their previous supporters) but the very practical point of whether to support him when it counts or let the other guys have an easier go of it.