At the risk of being too self-referential, my earlier post on the Republican Mob needed some more thinking. There may be a reasonable explanation for why the Mob is so angry, out-of-touch and filled with misinformation. Here goes...
Everyone knows that it's the so-called "independent" voters who decide an election. These are the people who aren't necessarily affiliated with any particular party, but vote on issues / values as expressed by the candidates. One example of this population would be the so-called "Reagan Democrats." During a normal election cycle, these folks are more-or-less evenly distributed between the two main candidates. They may attend rallies for one or both candidates. On election day, how they break, state by state, is what decides things. Both parties have a "base" to build upon, but it's the independents that end up deciding things. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on where you park your politics pony), we're not seeing this more-or-less normal distribution in this anything-but-normal election.
I believe that the independent voters are heavily swung over to the Democratic side this year. They're attending the Obama rallies and ignoring the McCain rallies. Therefore, the normal dilution of Republican nuttiness is not happening. What we're getting from these people at the McCain rallies is completely undiluted Conservatism. And it's not pretty. Hateful, disrespectful and arrogant. There is nothing in the crowd to temper the viciousness.
That, combined with the latent racism of some conservatives, makes for a heady mix of ignorance, fear and loathing in the crowd. So Obama becomes a terrorist, a traitor and a foreigner.
Thats my theory anyway.
1 comment:
And that, mah frenz, is the difference between most people and the unhinged right: we don't shout death threats, racist slurs and other bullshit when we hear the name of the opposition candidate.
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