The math is simple

(The Far Left Side)

The math is simple. The side that actually votes will win.

The polls are telling us that's going to be the Tea Party/corporate Republicans. Maybe so. But there's a reason why Fox "News" is already celebrating a win. Enthusiastic people vote. Discouraged people don't. Fox knows that, so they're trying to pump up the right and discourage the left.

Heck, even angry people vote. So be angry if you must - I am - but don't be discouraged. Frankly, if progressives are willing to quit this easily (after all, even Sarah Palin stuck it out for a couple of years), we don't deserve any better. Well, I deserve better. How about you?

(John Sherffius)

I certainly don't want to discourage you any further, but this commentary from Tom Toles is also worth reading:

Is there any difference between the parties? The knowing, conventional-wisdom, inside-the-beltway types, together with bored, cynical outside-the beltway types, are already shrugging about the election. Sure, the Democrats will be drubbed, which is actually a word that is rarely seen in its verb form. But just wait till those GOP victory parties are over, and the fresh-faced innocents walk up the Capitol gang plank into the congressional meat-packing house, goes the current narrative, and the brewing revolution will turn out to be weak tea, indeed.

This analysis may have something to it, but like most analyses, it's missing something. But I think maybe this analysis misses EVERYTHING. Today, at least, my autumn-darkened frame of mind is making me think that the usual bickering and log-jamming in Congress is all beside the point now. The real battle is in the third branch of government and may be over and lost already.

And that's because the substantive, functional difference between the parties now, it is clear to any who would like to look, is that the GOP installs Supreme Court justices who are ruling to make U.S. elections a fully-funded subsidiary of corporate America, which will be collecting legislative repayment from their duly purchased employees. It came at a small price to them, but wait till the rest of us see the bill.

But I disagree about one thing. The battle has not yet been lost. And certainly the war has not been lost. The war will never be lost unless we give up.

Corporate cash flowing into our political system is scary, but it doesn't inevitably signal the end of America. We can be smarter than that. Cash doesn't necessarily translate into votes. We the people can still prevail, if we simply don't give up - if we simply vote, in this and every election.

(Nick Anderson)