Why They Lose
Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest looks at the numbers: Catching The “Swing” Vote
Here is what is very important to understand about the “swing” vote: No voters “switched.” That is the wrong lesson. There are not voters who “swing” there is a segment that swings, depending on who turns out.
The lesson to learn: You have to deliver for YOUR part of that swing segment or they don’t show up and vote for you. That is what makes the segment “swing.”
Dave links to Greg Sargent of Plum Line: Progressives and centrists battle over meaning of indy vote
Now a leading liberal group is set to push back on that argument with a counter-intuitive case of its own: Independents are not a monolith, and what really happened is that indys who backed Obama in 2008 stayed home, because they were unsatisfied with Obama’s half-baked reform agenda, while McCain-supporting indys turned out in big numbers.
Elections were, are, and always will be about turning out your voters, not trying to appease the voters of the other side. Again, when given the choice of a “Democrat” claiming to support Republican policies, and a real Republican, the Republican wins. This is why the number of Blue Dogs in the House was halved.
As Lambert of Corrente notes Obama just doesn’t understand. He obviously doesn’t have anyone reading the polling on policy, and doesn’t know what Americans want. He is assuming that the conventional wisdom that he shares with the Village is true, and it isn’t. People didn’t vote for a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President to see Republican policies enacted. The Democratic “swing” voters stayed home and Democrats lost seats.
1 comment
Uhm, no, Mr. Duff, we’re just smiling and nodding knowingly, because it was clear from the beginning that the government was going to do their best to cover up BP’s liability, starting from the fact that they actively hindered researchers from gathering information that could have independently established the extent of the oil flow, to their statements in the media that basically gave BP atta-boys for their response to the oil spill. So this “independent enquiry” (which had no subpoena power and no ability to, like, actually examine the real physical evidence) is just more of the same, just another sop to throw the rubes so that the American public won’t try to make mean old BP pay for destroying the ecology of the U.S. Gulf Coast for the next 20 years. You’ll note that we don’t post every morning about the Sun rising above the horizon either… I mean, why post about the obvious and predictable, duh?
– Badtux the Laughing Penguin