Reply #16: democratic congresscritters don't fare worse for that reason [View All]

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democratic congresscritters fare worse (or barely better) than republicans for the simple reason that they're in the minority party and therefore are rather impotent. this has more to do with the way the banana republicans have shut out the democrats than anything else.

these same congresscritters, doing exactly the same thing, would have markedly higher numbers were they in the majority.

hey, personally, i'd love to see our democratic congresscritters tilting at windmills, but then, i'm way out there on the left and am not very representative of the country at large. i only tolerate the occasional centrist/right-wing position because i understand politics to be the art of compromise.

if i had my strategic druthers, i'd have democrats focusing on rallying the base at this stage and worrying about the move to the center after the nomination. in the meanwhile, they should only cater to the center/right in the name of avoiding mistakes that would haunt them in a general election.

the iraq war and the flag-burning thing both reasonably fall into that category, at least for hillary. she's been tarred as so liberal (not to mention evil) for so long, she's really got her work cut out for her appealing to the center/right. this argument doesn't hold as much for other candidates, particularly those who are less national figures and need to continue to build their respective bases. hillary already has an established base so she's in a bit of a different situation.