If caring is paired with knowledge, this isn't necessarily bad.

I'm a little worried that the people who shout the loudest are not the wisest, but the most ideolgically driven, therefore the most blinded by ideology. Maybe it's the extremists who really care, the centralists are often more ambivalent.

I tend to think that knowing the answer to a question like this is important when voting for your senator (and there are 100 senators - 2 for each state).

I should point out that I'm not actually american, and the equivalent situation is slightly more complex in the UK, because the number of MPs keeps changing.