Winston Churchill luckily must have been a truly wise man because his statement about Americans seems so true! Churchill said about Americans, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." There have been times that I doubted this wisdom in the American people, but thank goodness, Churchill's predictions always seem to be borne out in the end!
Of course, I see the world from a progressive perspective, and the times I have my greatest doubts are when the Repub conservatives seem to be gaining power. I would never vote Repub, and I am sure many conservative repubs will never vote Democratic/progressive. However, there must be a large number of voters who can and do change from election to election, but what makes/motivates this change? Is it just boredom with the status quo such as a need for new directions every once in a while? Is it fear of too much power developing in anyone's hands? Is it a sense of fair play and when that is violated, they change votes? I think it is important to understand this for anyone interested in when and maybe how they can win elections in this country.
Lets look at relatively rapid major turn-arounds in voter sentiment as examples of this tendency.
In 1972 Nixon was re-elected in one of the biggest landslide election victories in U.S. political history, defeating George McGovern and garnering over 60% of the popular vote. He carried 49 of the 50 states, trailing only in Massachusetts. He then had to resigned just 2 years later during the Watergate Scandal, effective August 9, 1974, at which time his approval rating fell to 25%, the lowest approval rating for any president. What enabled this rapid change?
The 8 Dover PA School Board members were all conservative repubs and they were all quite suddenly voted out together in favor of a democratic slate of members in favor of not teaching Intelligent Design in science class. What enabled this rapid change?
McCarthyism
In May 1951, two members of the Cambridge Five -- Donald MacLean, Second Secretary of the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., and Guy Burgess -- defected to Moscow after it was discovered MacLean transmitted information on the atom bomb from the British Embassy to the Soviet Union during World War II. McCarthy was worried that communism would spread into America and internal treason would result. In this atmosphere, McCarthyism flourished. McCarthy faltered in 1954 as his hearings were televised live for the first time on the new American Broadcasting Company. ABC needed to fill its afternoon slots, which allowed the public and press to view first-hand McCarthy's interrogation of individuals and controversial tactics. In a famous exchange, the Army's attorney general, Joseph Welch, rebuked McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" The press was by this time quite anti-McCarthy, and reports that McCarthyism was ruining the reputations and lives of many people without credible evidence were common. Even some Republicans denounced him, among them Henry Luce and Robert R. McCormick. By the time famed CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow's highly critical "Report on Joseph R. McCarthy" aired on March 9, 1954, McCarthy's public support had all but withered. What enabled this somewhat rapid change?
George Bush's poll numbers have plummeted over just the last year especially. What enabled this rapid change?
I am sure there are many other examples that I could cite and work on, but each of these examples shows a rapid voter change from conservative repub to democrat. Maybe there are examples of the change going the other way from Dem to conservative repub, but I am having a hard time visualizing such a rapid change in the modern time. I suppose another part of the question could be why does this large group of voters keep going back to the conservative repubs only to be disappointed again and driven away by scandal and greedy policies. What do folks think is going on here that makes Churchill's predictions from the Democratic perspective so true, and why must we Dems keep going through this torture, as if the movie Groundhog day was alive and well in politics?