Protests and debate are necessary, but without the votes to change things nothing will change. We cannot win a money election, but we can turn out more votes.

the edge of a cliff. Where is the motivation going to come from to fight until 2020 if we don't regain some ground in November.

I know the way I feel, that if people don't bother to vote this time, they never will and we are lost. No reason to spend the time and energy I have left on earth fighting political battles.

For every 1 or 2 people that couldn't vote because of supression, there were 5 voters that weren't suppressed or purged, and just chose not to vote because they didn't care.

and it becomes a vicious circle: left-leaning people don't bother to vote, so right-leaning candidates get elected who in turn pass laws making it more difficult for left-leaning people to vote. IMHO we can trace the current mess back to 2010, when the complacent left decided to stay home in droves.

Is that we will win the House and lose the Senate. Even the house will be difficult because of the gerrymandered advantage but I think it is likely.

But the Senate is a real long shot. We have to pick up two seats because a stalemate would just leave Pence to break the tie. The Republicans only have 9 seats to defend. Almost all of those are in pretty red states (Arizona, Mississippi (2), Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming). As of right now, the only races that are even rated as a toss-up are Arizona and Nevada.

Meanwhile, to even make that hurdle work for us, we have to defend everyone of our seats. That includes several in red and purple states including West Virginia, North Dakota, Montana, Ohio, Indiana Florida and Nevada.

The net result is that this is the worst Senate map for Democrats that I remember in my life time. If you look at what races are up for grabs, even a wave election might leave us short for the Senate.

The end result is that a democratic house would be able to stalemate the passage of laws but we would be powerless to stop any nominations. On the contrary, the GOP would use the Senate results as a mandate to cram in a right wing judiciary.

I say all this with a heavy heart. I wish it were otherwise and will do what I can to make it so. But the reality does not favor us.

If everyone voted, the outcome probably wouldn't be much different. It's kinda the nature of polling. They don't have to poll everyone to figure out how the outcome will be. The exception of course is when its a very tight race. i.e. "within the margin of error". That really wasn't the deal here.

It was all decided in about 4 states. If there were any "protest voters" in those states, little did they know what they had wrought.

While they can sometimes be fun to mock, you highlight their insignificance well.

And far more than that don't turn out in mid-terms.

The fact is, if we "sit here" deflecting both direct cause and implicit consequence from all other antecedents, we are as flawed as much as if we were reserving all our rebukes for it.