Quote:
Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Come on. It's not as if any of these groups voted for Nixon, Reagan or Herbert Walker Bush either.
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That is valid. The point I was trying to make is that when you appeal to one group you alienate others. In addition, you have to win the election you are in. You can't look to the next one. So I don't blame Bush for doing what he did. In addition, pulling together that coalition was an unbelievable feat. I was just saying that the groups he picked for this victory (or his coalition) ain't going to be a coalition that we can count on for very long. The political world is constantly changing so if the Party changes the Republican Party will be fine. But if we think that this current coalition and this strategy can be stuck to, we are in for a big shock.
For the Democrats, they have to stop appealing to the Unions mainly because it alienates the environmental lobby. The environmental lobby is growing all the time and the Unions are getting smaller. The other thing thing that is blowing up in their face is the US image abroad line of argument. Studys have shown that politicians who focus on the worlds ire at the US lose points. This really killed Kerry in the election. This also killed the Global Warming thing. The Democrats have learned the Global Warming argument should be couched in terms of that it is good for the world. When they focused on the fact that the rest of the world was for Kyoto, that made Americans like it less. Most American voters like to think of America as the lone country that sticks to what is right while the rest of the world waffles. I have seen this in focus groups, where the majority of the people in the group support an issue, until you say that the majority of the world takes this position, and then everyone in the group starts changing their mind. After seeing those focus groups I now know why we are the only country that doens't use the metric system and likes Soccer.
