But yeah, even the implication that both(all) sides are the same or 'why bother you can't change anything anyway' is such a defeatist attitude and doesn't help anyone.
It's supposed to make you sound smarter than people who don't think everything is hopeless. I once heard someone say watching the news was less meaningfully informative than watching Access Hollywood, "because you can choose where to spend your money in entertainment".
I don't even care if Palin wins, because it's hard to imagine her doing anything as president that Obama has not, aside from ovulating. Permit Torture? Expand the TSA? Open up oil drilling? Cower away from supporting unions? Stay in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Libya and whatever new countries?
Democrats are the way they are because they don't have to be any better, and the only way to stop that is to tell them they aren't doing what we want, the only way we can.
"The people who are supposed to represent my interests aren't representing them to my satisfaction, so I'll vote for people who I know don't even come close to representing my interests and are proud of it." Not the most convincing argument, I have to tell you. Not to overtly pick sides or anything, but speaking of the Democrats, from my perspective:
The national Democratic Party promises whatever they promise and then govern as "Republican Lite", because thirty years of being kicked around in every election by the Grover Norquist's and Andrew Breitbart's of the world has turned them into a beaten dog, convinced they can't do anything to irritate the Republican-leaning side of low-information voters and business interests if they want to come anywhere close to power, no matter how much those spectrums of the electorate will continue to vote against them like clockwork. If you want the Democratic party to start representing the interests they've been traditionally pegged with, go out and vote for them, to prove they don't have to worry about being losing their jobs for doing what you elected them for.
Don't get me wrong, it's a baffling dynamic, but "allowing" someone who you know doesn't come close to what you want to take power is not going to be better than the half-assed guy who said he would.