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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (12799)	2/20/2006 1:32:46 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541731

Well, five elections in 7 is 71.4% while 7 out of 10 is only 70%, and if we go back to 1960 we get 7 out of 12, only 58%. Since the last two elections were by razor-thin margins, the trend leans more to 50-50 in realistic terms. No Republican can look at the electoral map from 2000 and 2004 and even dream of getting as many electoral votes as Reagan, Bush Sr. or Clinton. If Florida had gone a few hundred votes the other way in 2000 and Ohio less than 70,000 the other way in 2004, Republicans would be looking at three wins 1980-1992 then another long dry streak. There are no firm, comfortable governing support bases in the US electorate on either side. Hence the vital importance of the swing vote in the center.

To: carranza2 who wrote (12799)	2/20/2006 3:07:09 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541731

It's part of a conversation we had over the weekend dealing with Dem failures. I said, several times, that I rejected the frame "Dem failures." And, for two reasons. In your reply, you said that there were only three Dem presidents in our lifetime, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton. I noted you had left off Johnson, that if you added his term + back in, you had 5 terms of Dem presidents and 7 of Rep presidents. I also noted, that while that's clearly not 50-50, it's not terrible. And, I also noted, that the more important thing is the last two elections which were clearly 50-50. My guess is, but I'm not terribly interested in the argument, is that if you compared Bush's margin in 2000 and 2004 with Clinton's over the father in 1992 and over Dole in 1996, Clinton would have had a wider margin. I also noted, just to remind you about the failure of the "Dem failure" paradigm, that the 50-50 split in 2000 and 2004 came about even with demonstrably weak Dem candidates. So a frame of "Dem failures" simply doesn't make sense. I'm not arguing there are no problems with the Dems. I think rather there are problems with both parties at the moment. It is, I suspect, but don't care to dig around in it, the case there are far more problems on the Rep side.