Mahmoud Abou Adhma's despair over Egypt's course the past 16 months has turned him from an avid revolutionary who camped out in Tahrir Square for most of the 18 days of protests demanding the fall of Hosni Mubarak to working for the presidential campaign of the deposed leader's last prime minister and close friend.

The 56-year-old Cairo tailor's misery over his own turnaround was visible — his whole body shook with it as he chatted with a circle of young neighbors half his age. It's not that he didn't understand the "humiliation" Egyptians felt under Mubarak's regime, he told them, he'd seen it firsthand. But they had to face facts, the revolution failed.

They spoke sitting outside a polling station in Cairo's middle class district of Abdeen as Egyptians lined up this weekend to vote on a successor to Mubarak as president, choosing between former prime minister Ahmad Shafiq and the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi.