Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of life is showing up. True enough — except that in politics, the number is more like 100 percent. It doesn’t matter what else you do; if your supporters don’t show up and vote on Election Day, nothing else matters.

For example, a recent USA Today survey of “unlikely voters” demonstrated that if the slackers, the procrastinators,and the politically uninformed among the populace were to vote, Barack Obama would probably win handily. The problem, of course, is that those people don’t generally bother to go to the polls, which is why they’re called “unlikely voters” in the first place.