The problem with midterm elections for Democrats:
The right wing whips its voters into a frenzy, and those voters show up because they *know* they are at war. And it's a war they are single-mindedly determined to win.
There is no equivalent frenzy among voters who might support Democrats because they don't feel called to win a war. They don't even get that there IS a war. Right wing framing of issues is so all-pervasive that it's become normalized. And, thanks to the Corporate media, there are essentially no voices heard who might challenge it.
The big national elections every four years when the presidency is being contested gets peoples' attention because it's THE American Idol contest of American politics. The midterms, not so much. Because only one side considers itself at war, only one side thinks that it's in a life or death struggle for control - and those are the folks who reliably show up.
I know that most of us here on DU also understand that we too are at war, but that's just not the case with most of the American electorate, who are more or less disengaged and have no sense of the bigger picture.
I have no idea what it will take for our side to awaken the same sense of urgency in ordinary disengaged voters that the right wing does with their supporters. The right wing accomplishes this through constant lies and by appealing to the base instincts and irrationality of those who have no capacity for critical thinking. It's no great feat to gin up that sort of angry mob out of such material.
The question, it seems to me, is how do we, who value truth, rationality and independent thinking, gin up our own angry mob, ready to go to war? Is there a way to do this?
= new reply since forum marked as read
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- Anger is never the answer. Anger is transitory. Anger is unthinking. It has been the lack of a sustained effort and of thinking which I believe has gotten us to where we are now. The only answer is Unconditional Love.
The. Only. One.
~Albert Einstein
K&R
I can see that "anger" is the wrong word - what I'm thinking of is actually "passion". As in, inspiring voters to feel passionately enough about what's at stake for our country to motivate them to get to the polls.
Your Einstein quote is wonderful, and I would never argue against unconditional love!
I'll give you a quote in return, that probably best expresses what was going through my mind when I wrote my OP:
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
what keeps people home is disillusionment. Many times they can be motivated by an appeal to urgency, i.e. "OMG! Terror!" or "OMG! The economy!" or "OMG! Healthcare!"
But then, silly proles that we are, we want to see actual results. Don't tell me "They hate us for their freedoms." and then create a massive domestic surveillance apparatus that does nothing but curtail our freedoms (maybe the strategy is to destroy our freedoms ourselves so they won't hate us anymore? 
). Don't tell me the insurance companies are ruining healthcare then pass a 1,500-page bill that tucks within it a slush fund to prop-up insurance companies. Don't tell me corporations are strangling the economy and then pass inscrutable taxes and regulations that require mega-corporation levels of wealth to achieve compliancy while choking the entrepreneurs (and odds are the corps lobbied to make it that way).
What person in their right mind would vote for more of this crap? If people are staying home it is a testament to their cynicism borne of basic rationality. We're disillusioned because of the ease and comfort by which the liars tell their lies.
Alas, we aren't going to be able to find (435 + 100 + 9 + 1) * 0.51 saints. Not now, not at any point in the appreciable future and certainly not for any sustained period of time. We're stuck on planet Earth and it's full of humans. People who want to be good and decent become citizens and go about their lives peaceably. The rest become muggers, rapists and politicians; because that is where the power over other humans is found.
