My Name is Jason and I disapprove of US Government

[Griff]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

If the moderates do not vote, the extremists are in control.

I try to keep this in mind, voting for the more gentle slope to hell at each opportunity, unfortunately the extremists are already in control of the primary elections, so when we get to the general election there is no-one worthy of a positive vote. Moderates get drummed out of both parties. My district lost a middle ground Democrat who failed to toe the line. The party wanted someone less representative of the spirit of the locals, so now we're a Republican district whose rep votes strictly by party.

As far as legitimacy goes you can see here that we barely have legitimate elections during Presidential election cycles and don't have them in off years. The partisans of each side are cartoonish in their beliefs because the moderates have better things to do with their lives than attempt to rule others.