We are now back in the politics I love. During elections political thought is often collapsed into us and them. Now we are back to actual debate on strategy and policy. The republicans are back in the wilderness, trying to put together a winning coalition. This is the place us democrats found ourselves in just eight years ago. I believe they are making a similar error that we almost made this year. The drum beating is focused on the Alaska Disasta, very similar to our drum beating around Hillary Clinton. I know there will always be a huge part of our base surrounding Hillary, but they fail to understand what the right wing base is struggling with now. Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton share a very similar quality that works against national elections. Polarization!
Some may be shrugging their shoulders, and calling this more Clinton hating. It is not. Nor is it Palin hating. I think both serve their respective bases very well. Still each party must learn the true layout of the electorate before either party will see long term success. Often the demographics are broken down to the nth detail, but it can be generalized very simply. There are only three parts of the electorate, and a candidate must win 2 out of 3 to win the Whitehouse. Our country is divided by geography of urbanization. The three groups that must be understood are urban, suburban, and rural. It gets even simpler if you apply trends. Rural voters stay conservative, urban voters stay liberal. So the secret group which decides the balance of power are the suburban voters.
These are the college educated voters that rejected Sarah Palin, and in the primary more narrowly rejected Hillary Clinton. These are the same voters that pushed John McCain through the primary. These are the same voters that split down the middle in 2000. These are the same voters that broke slightly based on security for Bush in 2004. If one takes the time to really view this vote, something clearly can be learned. It is not an ideological vote. More to the point, it rejects the politics of ideology altogether. Any candidate seeking the presidency with a polarizing weight around their neck will lose this vote.
I disagree with people who call our nation center right. The truth is that we are a country of left, center and right. Whichever party best resonates with the center, will push the country left or right. In 2000 we were damn near a center nation. In 2004 the demonization of Bush without an end result perspective pushed the center right. Back then we on the left were pretty harsh on the republicans. Even though we may have been correct in our assumptions, there was no evidence to prove our case.
If we had nominated Clinton as our nominee, we still might have won. However we would have had to push back against a new energy rising in the right. John McCain could have exploited his moderate credentials, while the very existence of Hillary would have energized the polarized right of the 90's. I do think we still would have won, but with a much smaller margin. Red states would have gone redder, and blue states would have gone bluer. Florida and Ohio would have remained the 21rst century electoral model, and we would have tipped one of them our way. In the end we would continue the same politics in four years. Because we nominated a far less polarizing message, the landscape changed.
This should serve as a lesson to the republicans. Sarah Palin will come into the party as a star. She will rally the base around her. If no new ideas enter the primary, she will be nominated in four or eight years. She will then proceed to lose badly in a presidential election, leaving the party scratching their heads. During their time in the wilderness, they must turn away from this kind of logic. They must find a message that resonates with the center.