The Republican Party is still trying to scare people into voting for them, and it's still working
The world is a scary place, especially as of late. Our food is tainted, our credit is drying up, there are people abroad who want to kill us, and a major natural disaster could wipe out everything without warning. And TV news, along with politicians, aren't making things any better.
And yet, somehow, the Republican party manages to still fit in and attempt scare tactics. They work to distract us from our economic woes by claiming that terrorists are still out to get us, and that gays will destroy our way of life while Mexicans stake our jobs. Thing is, they've been doing this for three decades now, and most people aren't listening to it anymore. Most of the wedge issues that Republicans have been harping over for years have either become moot or been solved in their favor, and in any event it is genuinely hard to get a working man to fear a Mexican invasion when he's much more concerned about how he will feed his kids.
But the Democratic party doesn't appear to have noticed this. They are still cow-towing and bending over backwards to ensure they don't appear "soft on crime" or "soft on terrorism" or "creating a safe haven for illegal aliens." Why? Because for three decades, whenever they didn't give the Republicans what they wanted, they were smashed to bits by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and other components of the right-wing noise machine.
But that isn't the case anymore. Fox and Rush and others are rapidly losing market share, partly because people's tastes change over time, but also because they're quickly running out of wedge issues and scare tactics with which to draw in an audience and smash down Democrats and other persons who stand in opposition. Also, at this point, the far-right has gotten the vast majority of their issues resolved in their favor (the recent case concerning DC gun control laws is a prominent example) which means that many in their base feel that either the problems have been solved in their favor or are inherently unsolvable. The fact that many of these right-wing solutions have proven to be anything but also drives away the audience, who now feel they can no longer trust networks like Fox.
The Democrats need to stand up and realize what the rest of us realized long ago, that the right wing isn't working, and that we will vote against them purely because we wish to vote against them, not because we want to vote FOR the notoriously weak DNC. At this point, Democrats are the only ones falling for this right-wing trap (Obama's recent FISA vote is the supreme example) because they still patently refuse to believe that the right-wing beast, while still present, is much weaker than it used to be.
Our only hope is that they stop listening to their fear and start listening to us.