Democrats giving up on the other side’s constituency: Some of it is unavoidable. Quoth a guy who I consider to be pretty representative of the 29%ers, “I would vote for Mickey Mouse before I vote for a Democrat”. That’s to say that there’s a little under a third ofthe country that is not only opposed to Democrats, but vehemently borderline violent against Democrats, which is, in my opinion, sad given that I’m not opposed to Republicans per se, just the modern, hijacked by the extremists variety.

Then you have the trying to learn how to talk about God. As much as I wished that religion didn’t play in politics, it does, and Democrats have been trying to learn how to talk God to the populace, and they still seem to be failing on a national scale.

Finally, they risk even further angering their base by trying to court the right.

On the Republican side, corporate conservatives have always had a hold onRepublicans as deregulation for profit is closely in line with dergulation on behalf of libertarian values. But neoconservative dogma plays well with the effects that fear has had on the populace, first with the Cold War, and then in the Post 9/11 world. Meanwhile, Social Conservatism plays to two crowds. The first is that Christian movement that sought to make a political change, credit being widely attributed to the influences of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. But, in a fear enthralled America, part of equation also includes reasserting cultural world views.

We saw a little of this in the Cold War, if you remember the term “Under God” was instated in the pledge of allegiance back in the fifties as a kind of pushback to the image of the godless communism of the Soviet Union. But of course this reestablishment of American World and Cultural view in regards to religion has become significantly stronger following 9/11 given that the “enemy” is no longer a Godless one, but instead one of a different and opposing, apparently, God.

The point to this being that while the epicenters of these movements may in fact be relatively small, the fact that they play so well towards larger blocks that extend further into the mainstream, these epicenters hold potentially large quantities of power in terms of voter turn out; the kind of power that is very hard for someone to turn away from.

Seems to me Democrats have given up on the other side’s constituency altogether to concentrate on swing voters, and the GOP appears to have lost interest in anything but its core dead-enders and extremist whackos.