It was the fall of 2005, and the celebrated young senator -- still new to Capitol Hill but aware of his prospects for higher office -- was thinking about voting to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice. Talking with his aides, the Illinois Democrat expressed admiration for Roberts's intellect. Besides, Obama said, if he were president he wouldn't want his judicial nominees opposed simply on ideological grounds.

And then Rouse, his chief of staff, spoke up. This was no Harvard moot-court exercise, he said. If Obama voted for Roberts, Rouse told him, people would remind him of that every time the Supreme Court issued another conservative ruling, something that could cripple a future presidential run. Obama took it in. And when the roll was called, he voted no.

"n a White House video distributed Saturday by Obama senior adviser David Plouffe to supporters, Mr. Obama is shown praising the virtue of compromise to a group Democratic, Republican an independent students. He noted that President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation permitted slavery in border states loyal to the Union, in an attempt to hold the nation together.

"Here you've got a wartime president whose making a compromise around probably the greatest moral issue that the country ever faced because he understood that `right now my job is to win the war and to maintain the union,'" President Obama said.

"Can you imagine how the (liberal news outlet) Huffington Post would have reported on that? It would have been blistering. Think about it, 'Lincoln sells out slaves.'"

I'm sure when Madeline picks herself off the floor after the deep swoon your impressive resume has inspired, she will fall into line behind the really, serious, important, all-knowing, sanctimonius blivets, chastised back into her place among the truly common people who can't even be trusted to have an opinion, so must be regularly told to STFU and stay out of the way.

Or not.  Because like it or not, her opinions and beliefs are every bit as valid as yours, even if she doesn't know the super-secret handshake, which seems to be more of a lips-to-a$$ kind of thing, and hasn't been given her copy of the All New and Revised Democratic Dictionary...

No one gives a crap, Donnie, how impooortant you (think you) are and what a good little Democrat you are, or how many times you blast people for not being afraid enough of the evil Republicans.

Maybe if people like you weren't so busy shouting down other Democrats who have valid reasons to be unhappy with the party, what we - because I'm also one of those who gets sneered at with your favorite non-answer answer: "well, I guess you'll be voting for President Bachmann or President Romney" - have to say might be making a difference.

As christine would ask, in her totally passive-aggressive way that fools no one, "hmmmm...I don't know why I was thinking this, but, maybe, Donald, could it be that you are a mite worried that some commoner could elbow you out of your comfortable position of making sure the status quo continues, and the universe implodes because you aren't there to save us all from the stupid people?"

And the likely choice will be to not vote at all. And that will hurt down ticket candidates, and probably give the GOP the Senate and even more statehouses and legislatures.

the 2008 Obama campaign made much of mobilizing young/1st-time/often relatively unsophisticated voters

now he has lost some of that bloc (although some in this group voted for him for American Idol reasons & may well do so again)

my message: Get back to me when you decide to run & govern as an actual Democrat

then i mailed it back to the DSC on their prepaid dime instead of affixing postage, as suggested

You think it was "dodging" my responsibility to make a principled - and agonizing - decision not to vote that race?  Who did I desert, the rich?  The banksters and Wall Street?  Would my vote have been the one that caused Obama to see what's really important, that the Democratic party platform was something he needed to pay attention to?  Would my vote have stopped Obama from offering up women's reproductive health decisions as a bargaining chip?  Would it have protected social safety net programs from attack?  Would it have made him be the transparent president he said he would be, the answer to, and not the continuation of, the Bush/Cheney policies on state secrets and indefinite detention and the wars, both legal and illegal?

Do you imagine that it was only the failure of Obama to get every single vote that kept him from being a damned Democratic president?  And mine was one of them?

Well, then, my apologies; I guess I shall go sit in the corner now and accept responsibility for the disaster of the Obama presidency.  For the lack of jobs, for the benefits-the-rich policies, for the schizophrenic, passive-aggressive, is-he-for-it-or-against-it DADT, for the drones flying missions, for the war on whistleblowers, for whatever else you want me to feel is my fault because I decided that my vote - my one, precious, little vote - would be demeaned and diminished by once again throwing it to a candidate who didn't respect it, wasn't going to honor it and has shown nothing but disdain for principles I actually thought meant something.

Not enough done before, when hard decisions and responsibilities were dodged to instead push through/squander political capital on pet agenda items.  Even less being done now.  And, most important if you want to win the votes for him to win the future, what is he planning for the poor -- and even more likely voters, the real hurting middle class -- in the hard times ahead?