I find myself in pretty much the same boat. I too was fascinated by Washington politics until I realized it was all just window dressing concealing a very nasty machine. But I think Dmitry Orlov gives the best advice on how to handle this:

Please don't send me to Washington: it's not the place to go to get anything useful accomplished. Centralized, political efforts are about as likely to succeed as Gorbachev's Perestroika. There, there was the one Communist party, which killed all private initiative and entrepreneurship. Here, we have the two Capitalist parties, which kill all public initiatives that impinge on the prerogatives of private capital or the free market. This makes just about any good proposal politically impossible. The best thing to do about national politicians is to completely ignore them and wait until they go away. This approach worked really well with the Communists in Russia.

Four years ago, I was a political junkie. Now...I don't care. I don't think national level politics matters in the crisis we're facing. Many of the issues that loomed so large for me four years ago just don't matter any more.

I understand your sentiment. At times, I entertain the same thoughts.

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.

- Mark Twain, "Mark Twain in Eruption"

My thoughts are similar, only it was the coup of 2000 that finalized my opinion. However, I guess I'm hoping that Obama wins - if not, then all those who cling to the belief that he would have really changed things will persist in this delusion. If he wins, then he'll have the chance to show us just what kind of change a candidate financed by the establishment and surrounded by decades long DC insiders can bring.

No, really; all these folks have just been waiting until the right time - nevermind their entire voting history to date - they're really radical populists and are just gonna go nuts and pull out all the stops. Really. Only they can't say that now, because then they'd never get elected.

We'll need to move past the illusion the the existing system can respond in the interests of the populace, and this cannot happen while people still believe in fairy tales.