So when the politicians go for conservative votes and thus stab you in the back repeatedly, you just continue rewarding them.

In effect, you aren't just wasting your vote, you are ensuring your vote will never be anything but wasted by creating a system whereby there is absolutely zero incentive for any politician to ever pay any attention to you.

Meanwhile if anybody actually wants some positive change, you will whine about them wasting their vote or costing the moderately less evil Republican the election.

When Mr. Obama first began his backpedaling on this issue, I tried to contact his campaign.

In order to send an email requesting an explanation for this, I was required to sign up for the campaign newsletter. The response I received was to quote back to me the paragraph I had objected to in the first place.

This betrayal of our country's Constitution is indefensible. He's not the candidate yet. Can we contact the superdelegates and ask them to change their votes?

Going to sit this election out after this

I know that is very tempting but don't do this. Your vote can actually do some good if you vote for 3rd parties. They get enough votes and they gain more federal support and easier access to ballots, etc.

As for President, you can either vote 3rd party there (Cynthia McKinney, Nader, Barr) or you can simply abstain from that vote. Down-ticket, you could do as I intend: vote AGAINST Democrats. I will cast votes, top to bottom, for Greens and Libertarians, as they appear. In cases where there is no such choice, I will siply not vote in that particular contest.

Furthermore, the money I USED to send to the Democraps and various Democrapic candidates now goes to the EFF and the ACLU and to the forthcoming moneybomb against the criminal Democraps that voted for this gutting of the 1st and 4th Amendments.

Cast your votes for 3rd parties on the ballot, cast your vote for superior causes with your money...and convince anyone considering voting Obama and Democrap NOT to do so.

Troll much?

Never don't be a quitter, turn up the heat, get more and bitter. Feels good don't it?

joan, thank you for saying exactly what every true obama supporter is feeling. We all know that come november our votes are going to obama over mcsame, yet i will feel ill when i pull that switch. it's one thing to cast a vote for someone who's obvious in their pandering(hillary), yet he gave me hope when i had none, hell he even made me cry with his words, and now i feel like a fool. that hurts more than anything else.

It appears you and I are the only ones who believe Obama's simultaneously that Obama made a fundamental and disillusioning miscalculation and that Ms. Walsh spent what little credibility she had on the issue with the "I told you so"s.

You know what, though? He deserves all the Clintonites coming back to haunt him for this. Clinton voted against? Good for her. They're right-people are defined by their behavior more than by their words. Clinton's shows she's learned from her Iraq vote. Obama's shows he's getting some very bad advice.

And fellow Obamistas insisting FISA isn't a big deal? IT IS. Maybe not in the short term, maybe not during the next presidency, but this is a subtle crack in the bill of rights. The temperature of the vat of water we're all sitting in has been turned up infinitesimally and the range of acceptable intrusions into our privacy has shifted ever-so-slightly.

I also disagree from a pure campaign strategy standpoint. I think the smart campaign decision would have been to stand by the position he took in February and throughout the primary season leading up to that. If the McCain campaign and its surrogates are not making a bigger deal of this it's only because McCain's campaign is a gift-wrapped shambles. That doesn't excuse this philosophical and strategic blunder, though. One that does indeed call into question whether we can really count on him to take strong positions on other important issues.

Politics is the art of the possible, but this was no compromise.

You're begining to froth.

has turned me from a political junkie who used to consume every reputable magazine, journals like Foreign Affairs, and watch reputable newscasts, to someone who does not care except to laugh at Obama twist in the wind and watch McCain dodder his way to the White House. I have totally disengaged from political life except to check out news I have heard second hand (like Jesse Jackson's fabulous nut cutting remark; I thought that was hilarious).

I do not know how I have gone from being an educated, well-informed, concerned individual to being a selfish person who could give a rat's ass about the country. I guess I have become your typical American: I won't vote, I won't keep up with what is happening in this country (though I follow with interest situations abroad), and I'll just rely on money in the unlikely event that I need an abortion (I'm gay). My relationship is protected by every legal document known to man, but that does not matter because according to Obama, my relationship isn't worth shit.

I think it was the primary. I wanted Clinton to win. If I thought that she'd lost fair and square, then I would just vote for Obama. Yes, I am bitter. I believe in fairness. I am a woman who is concerned when sexism is casually and even jocularly bandied about and no one says a peep. It makes me and everyone with a woman in his/her life vulnerable to humiliation, lower wages, and mistreatment. Maybe next time America will get it right and say enough to treating women with contempt. I am no off the rails feminist (but so what if I were?) and I do not see Sen. Clinton as a feminist icon. I just did not like the way things went down, and the way St. Obama winked, nodded, and profited off of it. He dares give a lecture on race when there are black women who are totally left off the political radar except to be portrayed as welfare queens who cannot keep their legs closed, not as women whose rates of HIV are rising faster than any other cohort, or how they are often abandoned heads of household, or who are discriminated in the workplace because of their race and gender. Maybe if he had a black mother he would have seen that.

But, I am encouraging everyone I know to vote against Obama. Not for McCain, but for anyone else. Obama couldn't run the country anyway, look at the way the Republicans ran him when it came to FISA.

Anyway, I am laughing at this and hope the Obama campaign implodes. Hillary in '12 because lord knows we cannot take the fumbling of two Obama Administrations.