Midterm elections results paved the way for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
If there had been higher Democratic turnout in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, Kavanaugh could not have made it to the Supreme Court. Getty Images

Two years after Barack Obama won the presidency, so many liberal-leaning voters failed to show up during the midterm elections that Republicans took control of the US House.

Two years after Obama won his second term, in yet another midterm election, guess what happened?

Liberal-leaning voters failed to show up—again—and Republicans took control of the US Senate, too.

Mitch McConnell became Senate Majority Leader and soon used that position of power to block Obama's final Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, from even getting a hearing. McConnell also stood aside while Russians interfered in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump. Then, once Trump was elected president, McConnell used his Senate majority to push Neil Gorsuch and now Brett Kavanaugh into Supreme Court seats.

Sure, there are a lot of other currents that helped Republicans win the Kavanaugh and Gorsuch nomination battles. Yes, there are a lot of barriers to voting that help depress turnout.

But barriers to voting alone cannot account for the fact that in the 2014 midterms, which gave McConnell his power over Supreme Court picks, only 16 percent of eligible 18 to 29-year-olds voted.

How's it looking for turnout this year, when the stakes couldn't be higher and the consequences of midterm elections couldn't be more clear?

According to a recent Gallup poll, not great:

And here in Oregon, the online voter registration deadline is October 16.