re: #187 freetoken

I’ve stated before, but will repeat myself - as near as I can tell, what it means to be a Democrat today is “I’m not a Republican”.

And that’s about it.

- I hear ya. I’m staying in just in case I get a chance to vote for somebody worthhile in a primary. (PA is a closed primary). It hasn’t happened lately, but hope springs eternal.

I believe I know why - because the coalitions that have worked for Democratic Party candidates for decades are increasingly at odds with each other. There isn’t really much of a binding central belief system, other than “We’re not Republicans.”

Environmentalists are in opposition to many things some unions may want, in this case I’m thinking of those associated with the automobile culture.

Way back with Roosevelt/Truman the unifying theme was to make America work again, given the Depression.

And that structure worked for decades.

Then along came Civil Rights and the Democratic party split, with the more atavistic elements ending up in the Republican party.

Then everyone who had voted for FDR and Truman died off.

Reagan won in a landslide, over a Democratic sitting President who nearly everyone acknowledged was a nice guy.

Think about that for a moment.

Why did Reagan really win?

My suspicions are that Obama won for the same basic reasons that Reagan won - because enough people just liked him.

For all the words written by pundits, perhaps the personality of the person is really what counts.

My contribution to the why did Reagan win theory is to agree with you that he appealed to people’s noble ideas of America. He would have won anyway, but the fact that people were so turned off by President Carter made it a landslide. Carter gets a bad rap and does get some vindication by history, but the reasons he won in 76 were Gerald Ford and Watergate.

You know, there are a lot of similarities between Reagan and Obama. That might be an idea for a page, and probably for another day.