Presently my best guess as to why the Democrats lost.
This line of thinking probably doesn’t hold true for most folks who voted Democratic, but for those on the other side—who are now apparently among the majority in terms of the politically active—I wonder if it doesn’t explain a lot.
Take the following quick quiz, and see what you think. (Apologies in advance for the crude stereotypes used to make the point.)
- 1. Most crack dealers, assuming they were political, would belong to which political party? Indeed, most murderers, rapists, and drug-dealers—including those in prison—would vote for which party?
2. When the garish and frequently offensive gay rights parades take place in San Francisco and elsewhere, is there any doubt to which political party these people belong? Which is it?
3. Those welfare moms who constantly game the system by having more kids and not getting gainful employment, which side do they vote for when they’re not collecting their checks?
4. Offered the following sets of choices, in each identify one as Republican and one as Democrat: rich/poor, gay/straight, pro-business/anti-business, pro-life/pro-death, pro-tax/anti-tax. (One could add winner/loser to this list.)
Get the picture?
In middle America the Democrats lost the war of words, which is to say the war of symbols. The perception that they’re the party of out-of-mainstream individuals (gays, criminals, welfare receipients, the poor) only feeds into the overall picture of a party who doesn’t represent the average folk. That might not matter for a lot of people, but for the swing voters in Florida and Ohio, I think it did. And for the rest of us, that’s the ballgame.