Reply #43: The tepid Dems and crossover GOP [View All]

or however you may characterize them are ironically the very base that Hillary seems to try to appeal to most and almost exclusively, by being tepid or crossing over to RW fashions. The Dems solid 3%, the perpetual swing vote undecideds are the exact reverse of the GOP's hardcore two percent. The assumptions are also opposite in that the GOP does not assume that the division of nearly 50-50 is permanent. They KNOW the Dems have the majority by default but that a good temporary stampeded and incumbency lock can swing the balance(plus gerrymandering) way to their side.

Some Dem leaders accept and even like parity and relish the intellectual chess game for the swing voters(who are vastly susceptible to GOP cultural programming against Dems). The GOP rides their zealots in a brutal power game that knows parity is a joke but that it is necessary to keep the Dem leadership mind fixated on a self-fulfilling weakness while it seeks to spread its dominance pheromones all over the airways and electorate.

Smoking Joe thought he could be a righteous choice too, and what he got was a ticket downhill to a primary challenge. Hillary will go much farther but the fall will be all the more steep the more it overcomes the fatal perceptions that served to win her Senate seat but will not carry over even those NY votes to a presidential campaign. Furthermore, the long term strategy, that might appear wise for winning the WH will carry over unnecessary and possibly fatal weakness as both the party's ideals and its vote share are self-suppressed and proudly ignorant.

Take heart. Unless it is painfully obvious, like Eisenhower or FDR's third term, the press is a lousy handicapper. Lieberman, McCain, Bradley, Iaccoca and many others have been failed picks because both the rosy fawning fans in the press or the enemies of the people's choice like Clinton have tried and failed to predict or influence the outcome. To their credit few of them wanted either of the Bushes at first, the drooling tongues came with the lash of the master. How much they wanted a master they could love! Instead they get Nixon and Ford and Bushes with an aging actor they first ridiculed as well.