Everything is socialists now

I am some what fascinated by the right wings ability to kill words. The cottage industry they built up to manipulate the electorate through dog whistle and fear is as impressive at is scary. The relentless message discipline combined with an utter carelessness for the actual meaning of words has allowed them to turn what used to be words of art, words with actual definitions, into meaningless terms. The quintessential term that the right has flogged to death is liberal but i have a feeling that socialism is right behind it.

I chalk it all up to a combination of laziness, greed/entitlement, and an utter conviction that the are never wrong and no one else has good points. Laziness prevents the right from creating legitimate policy points open for debate. Greed/Entitlement tells them that they deserve to be on top, that they deserve to be rewarded regardless of merit. The utter conviction lets them rationalize everything they do to achieve their entitlement. The end result is a use of words like "socialism" as a scare tactic devoid of any real meaning.

Lets take the case of Rep. Steve King (r IA).

So in the end this is something that has to come with a, if there’s a push for a socialist society, a society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together, living collectively off of one pot of resources earned by everyone. That is, this is one of the goals they have to go to is same-sex marriage because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal. They want public affirmation. They want access to public funds and resources. Eventually all those resources will be pooled because that’s the direction we’re going. And not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept in the final analysis.

the first thing that pops to mind is that what he is describing sounds an awful lot like, communism and not socialism. Or maybe the first question is what does marriage have to do with owning the means of production? what does gay marriage have to do with economic theory? You might also ask whether or not we currently live in a closed interconnected system where everyone relies on the work of others. Finally you could ask yourself if representative king is in need of psychiatric help.

The result of rants like king's that just throw in the term socialism for no reason other to say BOO! is that the word becomes devoid of all meaning and is useless in actual debates. Think about how judicial activism is utterly useless in a debate about the role of the judiciary in our society. It has no meaning either proscriptive or descriptive. I feel like thats the point we are at with socialism. Sure it still has a general technical definition but the plain meaning of the word is totally worthless and vague. try and talk to a right winger about the details of what is and is not socailism and in all likelihood you will probably just hear about how crappy liberals and democrats are and how conservative women are hotter than liberal women.

The right thrives on shutting down intelligent conversation, thought and debate. Killing the meaning of words that are useful as part of debate fits perfectly with their mo. Reckless disregard for the truth or for any accuracy in what they are describing kills political discourse. Socialism has come to mean everything short of libertarian paradise of private firefighting and road making. why? why must they kill words?

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Essential Pawlenty: Ya, I Got Nothin'

If the Tea Bagging parties didnt tip you off the GOP is grasping for whatever they can find to return to relevance. Enter Tim Pawlenty "moderate" Republican governor of Minnesota. Pawlenty is a rumored pretender to the GOP throne. Given this its not surprising to see him giving an interview to the NYT about how Republicans are going to make a stunning comeback and return to power. The problem? He has no fucking clue.

One of the clear problems that the Republicans have is that they havent come to the table with anything that resembles new ideas. They rely on the old Reagan trope of tax cuts, spending, cuts, god, gays, guns. We should expect that a future leader of the republican party like Pawlenty pretends to should be someone with new ideas. Pawlenty should bring new policy focuses that enable him to persuade a public still wary of republicans and their policies. From the interview here is what Pawlenty says about his vision for getting the GOP back on top,

“Some of it will be the inevitable pendulum swinging back,” he said. “The Democrats, being in full control of the White House and Congress, will inevitably overplay their hands. It is the predictable thing that happens when you have total power. They will go too far, and there will be an inevitable reaction to that.”

“Feeding off what they do wrong is not a strategy,” he said. “We may get some tailwind from that, but it can’t be the central tenet of our strategy.”

But he said he was concerned with “the utter lack of concern they seem to have for the deficit and debt — and I don’t point my finger just at President Obama,” noting the steadily escalating deficits during the years of Republican government as well. He said Mr. Obama has offered the country a “very expansive view of government that I don’t agree with.”

And he said that Mr. Obama had failed to take advantage of his political capital to force Congress, for example, to cut back on earmarks. “He can get almost anything he wants out of this Congress,” Mr. Pawlenty said.

“My prediction is you’re going to see some near-term uptick in the economy — regardless of these policies, just because it’s the nature of these things,” he said. “But the thing to keep an eye on is the boomerang effect of this massive infusion of money. I’m not just talking about the stimulus bill and the spending bill, but what’s coming. The Big Kahuna health bill. The Big Kahuna energy bill.”

“Our strategy can’t be just pointing out the negatives of President Obama’s agenda,” he said. “We have to have our own agenda and our own ideas. I think the party has done an okay — but not great — job of responding to the president.”

“You are going to have a second round of problems,” he said, “and those problems are going to be directly attributable to the misguided and over-baked fiscal policies that you are seeing right now.”

Earmarks, Deficits, Liberal-Over Reach, Some Sort of Problem because of energy and health care reform. If those sound vaguely familiar they are. Pawlenty says that the republican strategy cannot be to simply sit back and wait for time but really thats all these topics point to as a strategy. No where in this article is the hint of something new in policy terms from Pawlenty. Instead we see the same thing every other conservative has offered from the days of reagan--and for good reason.

“I think, for Republicans, it has to be about staying true to our values and principles, but more effectively applying those to the emerging issues of our time,” he said. “I know that sounds simplistic, but it is the blocking and tackling of how you get things done.”

If only we could talk more effectively and sell it better conservatism would succeed. Maybe its not fair to be so hard on Pawlenty. He doesnt seem to understand that the central idea of Conservatism is a counter reaction to progress and change. Conservatives look to the past, yes that includes fiscal conservatives. They all want to go back to pre New Deal america with the freedom of contract and no safety net. Pawlenty is not the future of the Republican part because he simply lacks innovation. To lead a political party out of the wilderness requires new thinking and Pawlenty just isnt providing it.

Pawlenty said some of the right things but when provided with the opportunity to show off some real policy innovations Pawlenty had nothing. So if your looking for Pawlenty to ride to the rescue of the GOP it doesnt look like its going to happen. His only prescription for getting the GOP back is, time.

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Hoping Obama Fails

It is clear at this point that the Republican strategy is to hope for the failure of barack obama. If your doubting that i can point you to this. The general idea is that the republicans are going to obstruct as much as possible, declare everything is a horrendous mistake, hope it fails, and then run against it in 2010 and 2012. This they believe is the best way back into power without actually coming up with anything new that might actually solve the problem. Is this strategy correct or is there another way?

The obstruction strategy seems to be the easiest. Of course it has the drawback that it will fail spectacularly if obama is successful at turning things around. I believe their is a much better option for the republicans that has the added benefit of not endangering the future of the country. The Republicans should try to actually fix the situation along side Obama.

Ridiculous though it sounds there is actually a path back into power by helping obama. It requires that the republicans elevate the idea of bipartisanship to a level that makes them seem like coequal in any policy discussion, take visible credit when things that are popular pass, hope everything actually succeeds and the country returns to the point of "normalcy". At that point they can take credit for the return to better times and ague that they are the better stewards of prosperity than the democrats. Essentially they try and pull a second 2000 style election. Obama comes in fixes everything up and the american people decide at that point they can afford to go in another direction.

I mentioned the importance to the republicans of keeping the idea of bipartisanship as one of the most sought after policy hurdles. This allows for policy proposals to be framed in a gop centric manner. everything will be defined as how the republicans will respond or approve and this makes them seem like the final arbiters of policy, giving them more legitimate credit claiming in the future. The democrats think that by gaining republican support for bills they gain cover if the plan fails because they can say republicans voted for it too. However, republicans will simply charge that as the party in power the Dems crafted the failure and that they tried to improve it and were stopped etc. being bipartisan simply robs democrats of the credit while keeping them responsible for the failure.

this is not a short term plan. The key to this plan is the short attention span of the american people and the press. It might seem unimaginable that the american people would forget what happened the last time they turned a surplus and peace over to the republicans but this will be eight years down the road. By assisting in the recovery the republicans can argue they were just as responsible for the turn around and that the Bush years are long gone. The media of course would be more than happy to carry that "counter intuitive" type of story.

Kos has made the argument that if the democrats pass health care and the other aspects of their agenda that they will have a lock on the power structure for a generation. I think that this fundamentally misreads the long term appreciation for a universal health care system the american people will feel. If its done early enough in the new term it has eight years to become simply another part of the american landscape. If it becomes thought of as unremarkable the democrats running on the "but we brought you health care" platform could easily find themselves out of power. Elections are generally prospective rather than retrospective and counting on legislative achievements to carry us for a generation seems incorrect.

Several bloggers, which i cant recall off the top of my head, have made the point that voting for the stimulus and working with obama would mean acknowledging that their world view was incorrect. I dont think this is quite right. they could easily claim that they were trying to work within the system to minimize the damage done by the government and that a yes vote was simply the price for that minimization.

i think the odds of republicans adopting something like this are remote to say the least. this would require much more subtlety and long term planning than republicans seem interested in. also it requires a rather meek congress that allows the republicans to continue to dictate terms of the debate without asserting dem control. There is also the problem of facing whoever comes after obama and making the case against that person as the steward of prosperity. just something to think about.

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The stimulus negotiation

i think it went like this,

The usual democrat and republican negotiations proceed like this,

Democrat: We want to work together to pass a bipartisan bill that helps the country.

Republican: Great we would love that too.

Democrat: Here is our bill. it focuses on proven methods of increasing economic productivity and we even through in tax cuts cause we know you love those.

Republican: What? This bill is an insult! I thought you wanted to be bipartisan! How could you include things like funding for "science" and "education"? Plus there are not nearly enough tax breaks for business.

Democrat: Ok well, we will take out that objectionable funding to make you happy and we will increase the tax cuts. So now you are going to support this bill right?

Reoublican: This bill is offensive to conservative principles. I could never in good conscience vote for such a spending bill especially when it lacks a repeal of X tax. Plus some of the money could go to minorities. But i might support it if you took out the spending and replaced it with tax cuts.

Democrat: Oh well then lets increase those tax cuts for you. How bout that?

Republican: We will have to think about it.

Of course the Republican does not vote for the bill and the media accuses the democrat of being insufficiently bipartisan. The end result is compromise that earned the Dems nothing except a greater chance of failure.

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"Barack the Magic Negro"

I am not sure how many people have seen the movie Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby. It is famous for the song White Christmas. It also famous for a different song, Abraham. to give you an idea of this song and scene here is a review of the dvd,

Still, there are a few duds, the most notorious being a shockingly dated minstrel-show ode to Abraham Lincoln. As Crosby and Reynolds sing "Abraham" in blackface, Holiday Inn's African-American mammy (Louise Beavers) serenades her two small children in the kitchen: "When black folks lived in slavery / Who was it set the darkie free? / Abraham! Abraham!" The scene is a jaw-dropper, alright, but at least it's memorable.

It was that scene which put in a mind to discuss the recent racial flap. Racial discussions are always difficult because of the heated passions they arouse. The controversy surrounding the offensive song "Barack, the Magic Negro" has generated similar passions on both sides of the fight. "Magic Negro" is really a cringe worthy phrase on par with the Abraham number from Holiday Inn. Everyone is well aware that it is not ok to go around referring to african americans as "negros" just as its not ok to go around performing in black face for minstrel shows.. Those who do are trying to make a point that our society has become to "politically correct". This is not one of those phrases that straddles the border between ok and not ok. Negro is as dated as black face.

"Magic Negro" might as well be replaced by what it really means, Uncle Tom. In the outrage over the distribution of the song many people have not looked at exactly where the phrase comes from. It is a cinematic terms for a kind, older, non-sexualized black man who plays a mentor role to a white protagonist. Think Will Smith's character in "The Legend of Bagger Vance". There is no legitimate defense of the phrase applied to barack obama. To label him thusly as the right does is deeply offensive to blacks and whites a like.

Would these same people be happy to have a song written about their wives calling them a "happy whore"? no. That would be completely out of bounds and offensive. Each of the labels Uncle Tom, Magic Negro, Happy Whore are all offensive to those who are characterized as such and should not be allowed. Its not funny. That RNC chair candidate Chip Saltsman thought that not only was it funny but that it was a great Christmas gift says a lot about where the Republican Party is.

"I think most people recognize political satire when they see it," Tennessee Republican Chip Saltsman told CNN. "I think RNC members understand that."

The republican party is facing the challenge of covering up their lily white party. As the NYT reported when discussing this story,

The dispute illustrates a larger Republican challenge in the months ahead: how to oppose the first black president without seeming antiblack. There are no black Republicans in Congress, and a party spokesman could name only 2 blacks among the 168 members of the national committee. Katon Dawson, the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, resigned from an all-white country club in preparing for his campaign to be party chairman.

There is a deeply unsettling racist tinge to the republican party right now. Im not sure if this is a symptom or a cause of their relegation to a southern party but if they hope to grow back to a national party they need to rethink their racial attitude. Otherwise they risk looking just as dated as the black face minstrel show from Holiday Inn.

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Romney v Palin

The Ap has a piece up on Mitt Romney,

It was a mundane task that highlighted Romney's change in fortunes: Instead of managing a White House transition, or preparing to assume the vice presidency, the man who failed in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination and was passed over by John McCain for running mate is focusing on his family and political interests.

And it may stay that way through 2012 and beyond.

The surprising ascendancy of McCain's eventual pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and her popularity among some GOP conservatives have left Romney wondering whether he could wage a viable second campaign for the White House, according to friends and advisers.

well let us see,

If John McCain is not elected president, which one of the following three possible candidates would you be most likely to support for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012?

Mitt Romney 35%
Mike Huckabee 26%
Sarah Palin 20%

Romney should be afraid, very afraid.

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GOP needs a new catalyst

Many have no doubt seen the fox video that details just how ignorant sarah palin was when she was selected to be the potential vice president. This is just the beggining of the internal war for control of the GOP. Sarah Palin is going to get obliterated in this fight. Many others are likely to be in the same boat. Palin, because she is an obvious target, and any remaining moderates because they will be outnumbered and encumbered with the failure of John McCain. With the moderates gone the dominante narrative for why they lost the election is going to be the economic crisis, sarah palin, and bush not being a true conservative.

Exhibit A,



Chafee is correct that the republican's failed in governance. They were good at winning elections but not governing. The problem is that he specifies the failure of Bush mostly in profligate spending. He blames Bush for not being a true conservative. So even Chafee has the wrong idea about what the conservatives need.

The conservative party at its core is a reactionary party. They run against things. Unfortunately after eight years in power they ran out of things that made sense to run against. To some extent this is where you can blame Bush because he undercut all of their arguments against the democrats with his abominable record. Bush alone though is not the answer. Look at the polling on the issue over at pollingreport.com and what you find is that a majority of americans side with the democrats on issue after issue.

The Republican party is stuck in a time freeze. They imagine that America is just as it was during 1980 when Reagan was elected. This is clearly not the case as the election of Obama proved. The white vote is becoming less powerful as time moves forward and the GOP has become the white party. They need to restart their outreach to minority communities, they need new rhetoric. Until we see people of color leading the Republican party i really doubt they manage to reestablish a national power base.

What the Republicans need most is new ideas. The ideas the currently run on have been neutralized in many ways. they no longer have welfare to run against, the terrorism smears failed against oabama. Abortion is not a winning issue with the voters they need to reach. Bashing guys is an issue that has just about reached its sell by date. Although several propositions were passed around the country attacking gay rights the age breakdowns suggest that they wont last very long. What is eventually going to spur a Republican resurgence is an Obama administration failure.

Obama is going to do something that does not work and as soon as that happens the GOP will latch onto that and ride it into the ground. As a party they do well in the opposition where they can be passionate and ideological without serious responsibility. They can tear down instead of building up. Until Obama puts a foot wrong though they wont have the location of their new attack strategy.

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Connections for McCain

one of the things i think make a big difference in how a person lives their lives is their ability to make connections. Not just personal connections, those are essential, but also cause and effect and relationship connections. I find that many of the most incisive and though provoking articles and comments are those that facilitate the connection of two ideas that people would otherwise view as unrelated. Most often for me this seems to present itself in glaring inconsistencies. when i see something that appears inconsistent, like sarah palins call for massive governmental oversight preceded by a demand for government to get out of the way, i cant help but point out that those wont go together.

Spotting the interdependency of ideas and actions and then synthesizing that into something for others to read is not an easy task. Often you can end up with the, "well duh", posts. Generally though the post that connect two things people overlooked provoke the most thought and debate. My favorite example right now is the efforts of john mccain to roll back the observable vitriol that marks his campaign rallies. McCain is getting credit from pundits and people in the blogosphere for this effort. Some have latched onto it as proof that mccain really is an honorable and decent man troubled by the tactics he is "forced" to pursue.

I of course see this entirely differently based on several things. The first is that McCain instigated all of this with his 100% negative campaign. He chose to use Ayers etc instead of campaigning on ideas. As David Brooks pointed out the Republican party is no longer the party of ideas or intellectual thought. It cannot be surprising that the candidate of a party without ideas runs on a platform without ideas. McCain is wholly complicit in the campaign strategy he has chosen. The crowning glory of this was actually the convention with the GOP speeches that went after Obama on all of the same topics as we see splashed across the headlines.

Second with how mccain is polling the people that still go to mccain rallies are those diehard of diehards. There has been talk of Obama butting against the ceiling of his support. This means that McCain would be scrapping the bottom of his. This bottom was always going to be the craziest of the right. The people who will look for any excuse to vote against obama, against any dem candidate. so we really see the base, the core of the gop without the veneer of moderate conservatives usually in front of the cameras.

What does it mean that the conservative movement has run out of ideas? it means the movement is dead. that entire branch of conservatism is dead. it has been tested in governance and has failed and yet mccain, instead of running on the glittering maverick brand, ran with the movement. It does not say much for mccain that he was unwilling to take charge and lead in a new direction when it became obvious the old direction was a dead end. Sadly he apparently fell victim to the mantra, conservatism cannot fail, you can only fail conservatism.

this failure and the failure of the mccain campaign will obviously lead to one of two possibilities, the gop continues to double down on the social emotional direction or reforms to something along the lines of mike huckabee. a populism mixed with social conservatism.

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Are Obamacans a Myth?

Obama’s crossover appeal has been one of the big arguments in favor of his candidacy. At least it was in the early days. Back in those days there was a lot of talk about post partisan governing moving beyond the divisions that have plagued us for decades. It sounded really good. Then there are the anecdotal reports of high profile Rs who are endorsing Obama and the rumors of those who might. Doug Kmiec, Jeffrey Hart, Armstrong Williams, Richard Whalen, Lincoln Chafee, Susan Eisenhower. Constant rumors about endorsements by Colin Powell and Chuck Hagel. The question is whether these types of voters exist in real numbers.

A hallmark of the Obama stump speech is his line about Republican support.

“They whisper to me. They say, ‘Barack, I’m a Republican, but I support you.’ And I say, ‘Thank you.'" Pause. Blink. Blink again. And then: "'Why are we whispering?’”

We have all heard the line. It sounds really good and against Hillary Clinton it was true. Andrew Ramano of Newsweek examined whether it will be true against John McCain, a real Republican. His conclusion is that the support for Obama among Republicans is a myth.

As I discovered from examination the last 18 months of head-to-head general election polls, the answer seems to be "no." In fact, John McCain's share of the Democratic vote has typically--and surprisingly--been larger than Obama's share of the Republican vote. In other words, it's not that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scared the Obamacan masses off, as some pundits have theorized--it's that they never existed (in any unprecedented way) to begin with. In December 2006--before the unfamiliar Illinois senator had officially announced his candidacy--McCain attracted 25 support among Dems versus Obama's eight percent among Repubs, according to a FOX News poll**. Those numbers tightened over the next few months of polling by various firms, but Obama never established a sustained lead. A February 2007 Quinnipiac survey showed McCain with 17 percent crossover support, for example, versus nine percent for Obama; in a June 2007 sounding by the same outlet, McCain still led 15 percent to 11. During primary season--between December 2007 and April 2008--McCain's Democratic number typically hovered between 18 and 22. Obama, meanwhile, never climbed higher than 13 percent.

This is probably all true. I have a different interpretation of the data though. What these polls do not account for is the dramatic increase in Democratic voter registration.

In a normal election, you would expect that the party registration would fall along fairly regular lines. People who have registered Republican in the past would stay as registered Republicans. However, in this election, Democrats are registering voters at a much greater clip than the Republicans are. In addition, we would expect that many who identified with the GOP in the past have drifted into independent identification. What this means is that those left as registered Republicans should be those who are hardcore believers. The entire spectrum shifts with former independents now registering as soft Dems and former soft R’s now either indy or Dem. Ramano followed up on his original post to answer a counter similar to mine.

In the meantime, we'll have to look at how Obama is faring among Independents to get a sense of whether "a non-negligible portion of the Republican Party from 2004 is today voting for Obama, [even] though these people no longer identify as Republicans." The theory here is that if a lot of 2004 Republicans are now calling themselves Independents and voting for Obama, he should be performing better against McCain with Independents overall than John Kerry performed against George W. Bush in 2004. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case. In August 2004, Pew found Kerry leading Bush by eight points among self-identified Independents, 48 to 40 percent. Currently, Obama's edge within the same subgroup is half that size, and when you include Pew's May and June results (44-44, 42-41) any statistically significant lead disappears.

Sure, it's impossible to discern whether Obama is outperforming Kerry among the "former Republican" segment of the Independent electorate without stats showing how these folks voted in 2004. He very well could be. That said, Obama's tie with McCain among Independents overall indicates that either a) his performance mirrors or lags behind Kerry's or b) McCain is compensating for Obama's gains by besting Bush among other types of Independents…

In other words, "there's little statistical evidence to support the claim that the number of Republicans who favor this year's Democrat is substantially larger than the number of Republicans who favored his predecessors"--or, if so, that they'll make much of a difference on Election Day.

Romano wants to use something like the NES to answer the question about people who switch parties or become non-aligned but as that has not been conducted for this cycle. We will be able to get a good sense of this after the election but right now, we have to do more legwork. We should not take national polls alone as the basis for determining if Obama has crossover appeal. There is a possibility that Obama is doing better with conservatives in different states or different areas of the country where the GOP support could be softer. Looking at individual states is also a way to examine the registration rates and records more closely.

True Independent has dome some examination of voter registration in four important states this cycle, Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada. What is clear is that Dems are winning the registration war. Using his analysis I think I can show that people are moving towards the Democratic Party and I think that some of these people must be disaffected Republicans. First Florida-

Look at the Indies registration numbers in FLA this year. Indies percentage share of the electorate has actually decreased over the past 6 months, not increased as it has done in all three prior Presidential elections. Republicans percentage share on the other hand is decreasing as it has in all three past Presidential elections, not by much but a drop off nonetheless. Now look at Democrats percentage share. It has actually INCREASED over the past 6 months! In none of the other three past Presidential elections has a party's share (Republican or Democrat) of the electorate gone up before election day. If this trend keeps, this may suggest a Democratic surge may occur in Florida, much along the lines Indies share has upticked in elections past by anywhere from 4 to 6% over their actual percentage of registered voters! Could it be that Democrats are acting like the Indies from Presidential elections past in Florida this year? If so, this would be a huge lift to Obama's chances of winning the state, and an equally large blow to McCain's chances.

This is a clear statement that people are moving from the Indy column and into the Dem column. If we accept that these Indys were soft R’s in the past, remember that the Rs managed to overcome lower registration totals in Florida the past two cycles, then Obama is taking that conservative and disaffected support. We see the same shift from Indy to D in Iowa

Look at the almost lockstep nature in which Indies registration numbers declined to the increase in Democrats numbers during the same time frame. Specifically, the large jump in numbers for Democrats occurred between January and May of this year, the same time that Indies experienced their largest drop in registration numbers. The reason this is a concern is that it suggest that perhaps the increase in Democrats numbers are more mirage than reality. If all the Dems have done is substitute what they got as a share of the Indie vote with now true blue Democrats then the increase in voter registration nets the party very little.

Remember though that Obama is still wining a percentage of R’s comparable to that Kerry won. Except now, we are seeing those soft Rs are already becoming Indy and D. We see this in concrete numbers for Nevada, specifically the month of May.


Date D R I
1/08 407,420 395,942 142,846
5/08 437,543 387,523 140,974
6/08 446,003 390,443 144,489

R and I are both losing hard numbers from January to May while the Ds gain. That looks like some Obamacans to me. Is it all about Obama? No. The change in the registration of voters is an ongoing trend. A Herald International Tribune article from Aug 6 details the ongoing shift away from the Republican Party.

For more than three years, starting in 2005, there has been a reduction in the number of voters who register with the Republican Party and a rise among voters who affiliate with Democrats and, almost as often, with no party at all…

Swings in party registration are not uncommon from one year to the next, or even over two years. Registration, moreover, often has no impact on how people actually vote, and people sometimes switch registration to vote in a primary, then flip again come Election Day.

But for a shift away from one party to sustain itself - the current registration trend is now in its fourth year - is remarkable, researchers who study voting patterns say. And though comparable data are not available for the 21 states where voters do not register by party, there is evidence that an increasing number of voters in those states are also moving away from the Republican Party based on the results of recent state and congressional elections, the researchers said.

Obama is reaching into the Republican ranks to get those who used to be deeper and more solid Republicans. The soft Rs have been defecting to either Indy status or Dem status. This would not show up in the polls that Ramano cites. Does this make sense and hold water? I hope so.

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