This post has a very narrow audience: those who say they will not vote unless the candidates are sufficiently in line with their personal beliefs, and think that by withholding their vote they will somehow “teach the party a lesson”. It is not targeted at any other people or groups. S’alright? S’alright.

Many of the party apparatchiks, leaders and candidates (for example, Hillary Clinton) are millionaires, and will not be hurt by your lack of participation in a hypothetical future contest. They should pay a price, but they will not. They might write books, consult, bloviate, become the ambassador to Lower Maylohda, or join the punditocracy: but one thing that they will not do is suffer. Not one wee bit.

No, the people who will be hurt by the lack of participation in a given race will be the poor. The children. The elderly. The minorities. The women. THEY will pay the price for your bitterness, defeatism and despair. You might not pay a price, the candidates might not pay…but nothing is free in this world. Somebody always pays.

In the last election, in one Ohio state congressional district, a (literal) handful of voters failed to vote for the Democrat in the race, and the Teapublican won. That state is now 100% Red. Dems have NO POWER OVER STATE GOVERNMENT.

Voting rights are being taken away. Women’s rights are being obliterated. Children are starving and dying. Millionaires are profiting and the rest of us are struggling. Because a very few voters made the choice you propose to make.

Think a bit before you decide to be dogmatic. Think of those four voters who did what you say you will do. Every vote counts. And every vote has a consequence.

Perhaps God should have mercy on those who abandon their fellow Americans to poverty, privation, and death; but the rest of us shouldn’t.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky