My computer is slow so I haven’t read the whole thread so my apologies if I’m being repetitive.
Republicans get elected. Piss everybody off. In reaction, Democrats get elected.
Democrats get elected, piss everybody off. In reaction, Republicans get elected.
And repeat.
A lot of people support their party the way they would a sports team. Even when they suck there is that “wait until next year!” mentality that keeps people coming back for more. Specially when the “league” only has two teams and your only option is to switch to your hated enemies.
Both parties have enough of a base, and enough of an appeal beyond the base, to continue as viable national parties. Both parties are tone deaf (perhaps deliberately so?) relative to certain constituencies. DanBlather, I think, identified a Dem “message weakness” nicely–i.e., you can agree with every plank in their platform, and still agree with Dan’s assessment that they do not maximize this particular constituency, that there’s at least something of a disconnect there where their message falls flat.
Invoking the last presidential election doesn’t change that. It won’t be the last election the Dems win, and the Republicans will win other presidential elections as well. But they’ll both do so continuously trying to create the best message, in the process alienating some (in some instances unavoidably). In some instances they’ll win despite certain message disconnects, in some instances they’ll lose as a result of them. Obviously a very complex set of variables that create a win (or loss). But those disconnects will exist nonetheless, if left unaddressed. Dan’s on the money here, I think–the Dems ignore this at their peril. Obviously, we’ll see. Perhaps the Dems will create permanent majorities and own the Whte House forever as a result of their resonant message, just the way the Pubbies did before them, and the Dems before them, and the Pubbies before them (or, “what Hilarity N. Suze says”)…
I agree with this. If the Dems changed a single policy in their national platform, I could often have voted for them. But that issue is so fundamental, so important and violative of basic human rights, that I can’t simply overlook it. I don’t mean that as a tu quoque–I understand completely how the issue of gay rights could, for someone else, exist as such a right, something that could not be brushed aside.
That is more or less my point. Black voters used to be swing voters until the civil rights polarization, when all the conservative dems left to join the GOP in the south (the dems were the party of anti-civil rights, then there was reorganization in the 60s). Now blacks tend to vote GOP barely 8-10% of the time. Kerry won about 90% of the black vote, Obama won 95%.
Latinos are another group. The intense immigration debate (which, no matter what people may say is driven to a good degree by fear of cultural/ethnic outsiders) is starting to push latinos away from the GOP again. Bush made some inroads with latinos (Kerry won them about 55-44 vs Bush) but the immigration debate starting in 2005 pushed them away from the GOP. They went Obama about 66-33.
Gays are the same, about 3/4 are not republican.
People who call themselves scientists or who are members of the professional class are not identifying with the GOP as much due to their attitudes on science and religion.
That doesn’t make someone ‘pro-democrat’ but it doesn’t seem like it’d help them become ‘pro-republican’ either.
The ‘east coast, west coast’ thing probably doesn’t matter. If I lived in Oregon and heard numerous people in one party insult the ‘west coast’ I really wouldn’t take it personally. However if I were gay or black and had to listen to talk of states rights or bestiality comparisons I would take it personally.
I really don’t know. The GOP has also now lost the youth vote (at least for the time being). Starting in 2004 youth started leaning democratic, and by 2008 it was a 2-1 margin. The margins are smaller now but are still there.
How do they keep winning elections if they have alienated such wide swaths of the public? On race alone, non-whites are supposed to be the majority of the public by the 2040s. Millennials will be 1/3 of voters by the 2020s.
As far as some of the responses, I admitted in the first line of my OP that I have a huge political bias. I’m not unbiased on this subject.
Right. In case anybody else couldn’t follow along I wasn`t suggesting the Republicans are as anti-gay as the Nazis were anti-Semites. I’m just saying there’s a point where where one issue ought to override all the other issues even if you generally agree with the rest. Gay rights are important to me, but I’m not gay. I can’t imagine that I’d ever support people who hate me for who I am even if I agreed with them about decreasing non-military spending and cutting taxes for rich people.
I think that’s a rational reaction as long as that’s really how you feel about the issue. Honestly the only people I don’t understand in the abortion spectrum are the ones who are opposed to it, but not strongly. Like, “yeah… I think it’s akin to murdering babies, and I’ll vote against that pro-choice guy on Tuesday as long as it’s not raining… but that’s as far as I’m willing to go.”
If you want to look at the question honestly, it comes down to money and mobilization of voters. The Republican Party has a lot of money and connections, and, in some cases and circles, completely out-organized the Democratic Party. It finds/manufactures issues that matter to some people and pushes the importance of those wedge issues and keeps them in the public view/puts them back up just in time to mobilize voters to make calls/write letters/vote.
After a certain subset of the population starts trending towards voting for that party, it starts to feed into itself (this party cares about Issue X, clearly the other party doesn’t listen to us/care about Issue X like we do, so we have to vote for this party) even though the issue may not be big nationally; in some cases, for the electoral math, it doesn’t have to.
People tend to vote for the individual and Republicans can often field a better candidate than the Democrats. Not every Republican idea is silly and not every Democratic idea is solid gold. I have voted on both sides of the fence over the years. I’m conceited enough to believe that most people are like me and are not wildly polarized and can cross the fence if they believe in the merits of particular candidate.
I belive that illegal immigration should be taken a lot more seriously. I believe that DADT in the military is absurd and immoral, but I also understand the structural problems in dealing with it. I believe that US military has no business occupying as many bases as it does across the world. I believe that the US public is being ass raped by big pharma and the insurance industry. I believe that teacher’s unions are huge impediments to educational reform. I belive that the US public is being ass raped by universities and their ever increasing fees that vastly outpace inflation. I believe that a lot of socially progressive academic fields are utterly useless.
I really don’t care if a seeker of office is labeled “R” or “D”. If they speak to me most effectively on the issues I care about they have my vote.
This.
If you can spend enough on TV ads, you can control the message. So you make sure that your actual policies benefit the wealthy, and they give you lots of money which you spend promoting wedge issues that manipulate the masses, but that the wealthy really don’t care much about one way or the other…God, guns, and gays mostly…but the dems have backed off a bit on the gun control stuff, so now they have to attack the brown people. They sell a return to a Beaver Cleaver America that never was, reduced taxes only to the wealthy, smaller government just kidding and morality they don’t practice.
The best of the GOP doners is Rupert Murdoch, Fox News being essentially a 24/7 propaganda outlet for the GOP. Actually, that is not quite the truth. It is closer to the truth to say that the GOP is the government division of Fox News. There are actual betting pools around how long it takes for any politician to walk back criticism of Rush Limbaugh.
As long a Democrats are pro-choice, anti-gun, and pro gay rights, well over 50% of the population won’t vote for them…of course well over 50% of the population won’t vote for Republicans either, which would create a math problem if anywhere near 100% of the population were to vote. The tactic of the GOP is not to motivate people to vote for them, but to vote against the God and gun hating, gay and wetback loving, tax and spend liberals.
Back to the OP, keep in mind that all politics is local. People hate congress, but generally like **their congressman. They can hate the GOP, but rationalize that ** their republican Senator isn’t really one of them. If an aspect of the party platform won’t fly in one area, the candidate can distance themselves from that, their voting record notwithstanding:Plenty of footage of GOP congressman cutting ribbons at projects funded by the stimulus bill they voted against.
NM currently has an all Democrat pro-gun congressional delegation as an example from the donkey side. And really, with only two viable parties, it has to be this way.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
Seriously? The party that “sells” what the most people want to hear and is most convincing, wins. Sometimes it’s the Reps, sometimes it’s the Dems. It’s all about saying and promising what people want to hear. Sell it, spin it, try to keep a straight face. Once you can fake sincerity, the rest is easy.
Quoth John Mace:
Isn’t that exactly what the OP is doing? His premises lead him to a false conclusion (that Republicans wouldn’t win elections), and so he (with the help of us) is trying to figure out where his premises went wrong.
And who’s “her who must not be named”, anyway?
Ayn Rand.
Let the screaming and wailing begin.
Slee
No. The OP asks us why Republicans keep winning elections even though they have insulted >51% of the electorate. That last clause is stated as a given.
This is pretty much how I feel, except for DADT which I think the Commander in Chief has to have enough balls to just lay down the law and let people get over it.
Thanks; I was having a hard time thinking of controversial women of a philosophical bent. But the fact that Ayn Rand happened to say that doesn’t change the truth of that statement, so no screaming and wailing is called for.
To quote William Buckley:
“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
The electoral system combined with creative gerrymandering.
Cute, but there’s a limit. Shocked and offended that the “other views” are that theirs should not be heard. Shocked and offended that their view is misrepresented. Shocked and offended that factual accuracy is unimportant to the other views. Well, that’s the right shocked and offended in my book.
Without getting caught in the hubris of this thread and the inflammatory verbiage of the OP, a great many people are single-issue voters. In the last Presidential election, many people who were dissatisfied with the policies of GWB and the direction he took America still voted for McCain. Most of these people did so because they could never support a candidate who (or who they percieved) would support reproductive rights (to use probably the most prevalent single-issue).
Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present
generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make good use of
it! - letter to Abigail Adams, April 26, 1777
– John Adams (1735-1826) Second U.S. President