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

To: Rambi who wrote (31345)	11/10/2006 10:00:00 AM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 541604

Reading much more into this election is a symptom of either Republican depression or Democratic wishful thinking. I tend to agree with most of Krauthammer's points but there is a good chance that he is injecting wishful thinking too. He omits the fact that you can no longer win moderate districts with fire-breathing conservative rhetoric. You can't scare and browbeat the swing voters into the conservative camp now. That will have a huge impact on how 2008 races are run. Conservatives need a new game plan or they are headed straight for the sidelines.

To: Rambi who wrote (31345)	11/10/2006 11:22:30 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541604

I quit reading Krauthammer sometime back but did so because you posted it. I find I agree and disagree. I agree with the forty yard metaphor. I disagree, however, with several other points. First, he echoes the bit about a conservative shift in the Dems in the House. It's much, much more of a mixed bag as the Times piece from yesterday argued. Moreover, it's much less conservative than before 94 when there was a fairly sizeable bloc of southern conservative Dems in the House. Second, that chart in the Times yesterday showed just how massively the discontent with the Iraq war and Bush is. It's very compelling. Another way to state it is that the Dem majority attained in the House overrode the structural shift provided by gerrymandering. That was no small matter. Also, I saw something the other day to the effect that the gerrymandering has grown so much in recent years that those comparisons K repeats about sixth year turnovers are simply out of date. The relevant comparison is turnovers in Reagan and Clintons sixth years, which would show some of the gerrymandering effects. I think that average was 6, perhaps a few more. By any measure, this one was very large. I'm generally a skeptic these days and don't wish to exaggerate the meaning of this election. But it's certainly more than columnists like K argue.