Isn't The Majority Out Of Touch, Too?
(Figures are from my previous article: Link.)
Look. I'm willing to admit that in a year where the incumbent was so weak, the Democrats need some serious fixing or realization in paradigm. But back up the the truck here for a second...let's analyze the numbers of the last election. 51% Republican, 48% Democrat, and 1% whatever it is Nader represents again. So you've got a 51/49 pouplar vote spilt against a sitting incumbent. You could argue it happened to Clinton (I think it was something like 48/46, but still) but what happened when Clinton left office? The Democrats lost very close on their next big election running Gore. Legitimacy issues aside, this is a president that's only managed to maintain his office through a small amount of votes in one state to with the election (Florida 2000, Ohio 2004.) And despite some people's delusions to the contrary, the electorial votes get you elected, not the pouplar ones.
If you take the Congressional numbers, the spilt is closer to 55/43 or 44 (also overall), which sounds immense, but it seems to lend it's that only 5% more agree with the Republican paradigm than the Democratic one. That's roughly 5-7% of the total picture if you make the factors all dance for you in this 'representive democracy'.
So, what does that mean? It means Republicans were moderately better at packaging their political ideas and rolling them out to the American people. And who could blame them? In a year of war, no one wants to change horses in the middle of the race. (Those of us on the left who are optimistic and realists are thrilled Dubya has to clean up his own mess via the Pottery Barn Rule.) Kerry needed an exit plan and not blame Bush for not having having one; people who study the war interested are interested on how we plan to win and leave, not necessarly the bleating of how necessary it was. No one will admit (that hasn't been locked up in a mental institution) that Social Security is doing well and vibrant. And let's face it, when you have 'Moral America' in the form of fundamentalists and anti abortionists behind you, you're going to be seen as the more moral candidate for chruch-goers, espically since the hierarchy of the chruch your opponent goes to reams him on his abortion stance and stays oddly silent on your war one.
So, the Republicans did a better job of selling their candidate. But as the numbers seemed to suggest after the election, they seemed to vote for him on a morality vote of confidence more than any policy he rolled out. He almost lost the election by 119,000 votes, and even though it was shot down, for the second time in history, Congress had to discuss exactly what the electoral vote count meant. (Which, by the way probably lead to the cat fight between Boxer and Rice; it has been said that poltics only knows two prinicples: revenge and loyality.) But does that mean they have the secret to America?
I don't think so. I think both parties are hideously out of touch. I cite the election whereupon the Republicans shunned their moderate (McCain) to run the farther right candidate (Bush). I think the last election was more of which ideology will win, left vs. right, and the candidate brought a knife to a gun fight. I think if moderation is not shown, neither side will end up the real winner in the end, and American politics will go from a string of candidates winning (like the 40's and 50's for the Dems, and the late 70's to the 80's for the Republicans) to back and forthing of various power bases. Neither ideology will win because they will have failed to go towards the middle and then their particular direction of left and right.
Politics, when talking about people who don't know exactly what they want includes a third principle: chaos. They will flit from one ideology to another, adrift in the sea of rhetoric.
Learning the Principles of Electorial Chaos Theory, the AWM/wolf dragon,
Sol