Reply #48: Need a moderate to win - like hell.

[snoochie]

From Jim Hightower, who says it much better than I can...
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15440

So let's blow the foam off this beer. The "Big Mandate" that the Bushites are claiming for themselves comes down to a puny 17 percent of the people.

That's the Republican base, not a juggernaut. It's the same 17 percent that they won twenty years ago in the midterm elections during the Reagan infatuation, and it's nearly three points less than they got in the '94 midterms when Newt Gingrich surged to power.

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But what are the Democrats going to do to break - dare we dream? 15 percent? The group now controlling the party apparatus calls itself the Democratic Leadership Council. It's corporate-funded, has a Republican-lite agenda, and practices political minimalism. Forget the party's base, is the DLC's message - instead appeal to a narrow strata of conservative-tilting Soccer Moms and Office Park Dads. The strategy is to appear not to be scruffy, working-family Democrats, but to dress up as the moderate wing of the Republican party, hoping to siphon away two or three points from the GOP's 17 percent plurality. It's a loser, as was forcefully demonstrated in the '02 elections, but it's also a cowardly strategy that's unworthy of a party that has been known in the past as The People's Party.
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As for me, I don't trust polls. Even the hallowed Zogby was off by as much as 14 percent in 2002... 14 percent!

Also, I think people in the middle of the road vote for who they like, and I think Dennis is a likeable guy. I think his optimism and his message of hope will get a lot more people on his side than his views on gay marriage.