Morning Jay: Four Enduring Truths of American Elections

The Weekly Standard

excerpts:

• 1. The two parties have long been roughly equal in strength.
• 2. Strong partisans do not dominate the political process.
• 3. The swing vote is decisive
• 4. Parties must refine their messages to persuade these swing voters. 
• In the end, this is a big way that parties go from defeat to victory: they really don’t alter their basic beliefs, but they refine their presentation of them, depending on the preferences of those swing voters in the center.

Comment:  You'll probably get some argument from partisans.  All elections are mandates for the winners, and not a mandate for the losers.  There's a lot of huffing and puffing, put not a whole lot of movement.  There's one thing that I've noticed, though.

If you look over the longer history than what is written about here, you'll notice that since the Civil War, one party or the other has dominated for long stretches of time.  After the Civil War, the Republican party was dominant.  That shifted toward the Democrats after the Great Depression.  Given that we may be on the edge of a watershed period such as a Great Depression or Civil War, party control may shift in the longer term once again.  This time, back to the Republicans.

I think that opportunity exists, provided that the Republicans can convince the electorate. This article argues strongly that such an appeal will fail.   On the other hand, if the attempt were made to go ideological, the risk is that the public will not be convinced and we'll still be where we've been the entire time.

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