Star One Smart Blog's

A well-written essay by TNR's William Galston (he's far from being a Conservative writer; but to improve my 'center-right' cred I'll link to him this time) uses 'just the facts, ma'am' to show Democrats exactly where they went wrong.

It's putting numbers to a theme I've been pushing here for years now: the once-proud Democrat Party has been taken over by a far-left sliver of it's ideological base, and The Party of Donkey is now paying for it; because, you see, America the U.S. of A, the Republic that's stood for 234 years, is NOT a Left-Leaning Nation; we can't survive if we are forced by the Left in too far a pendulum swing in that direction. We are center-right, and the ideological purists on the Left dragged us too far in the wrong direction.

Barack Obama might seem to some to some of these far-left critics, the bloggers and pundits and other various assholes (Grayson, Markos 'The Pussy' Moulitsas, the Dust Witch Ariana Huffington) to be drifting towards center from their far-left bastion, but that's just not the case. BHO is adrift in his own vacant lot: he was raised by a Communist father (or fathered by a Communist mentor, take your pick); schooled in the company of (by his own admission) far-left Marxists and radicals and even actual real-death-bomb-throwers, then polished in the Church of Black Liberation Theology by the uber-crazy Jeremiah Wright. BHO is NOT a good man, and should never have been elected as U.S. President. Democrats should've listened to Bill and Hillary; they tried to warn.

So, Mr. Galston's numbers. After putting to bed the tired old excuses 'old people did this to us because we're taking their Medicare!' and 'young people didn't get out and vote like they did before!' and 'the far-left Dem base deserted because Obama didn't do enough!' we get to the REAL REASON: Independents don't like far-left behaviors, and it shows ...

We get more significant results when we examine the choices Independents made. Although their share of the electorate was virtually unchanged from 2006, their behavior was very different. In 2006, Democrats received 57 percent of the Independent vote, versus only 39 percent for Republicans. In 2010 this margin was reversed: 55 percent Republican, 39 percent Democratic. If Independents had split their vote between the parties this year the way they did in 2006, the Republicans share would have been 4.7 percent lower—a huge difference.

But why did they change? Here we reach the nub of the matter: The ideological composition of the electorate shifted dramatically. In 2006, those who voted were 32 percent conservative, 47 percent moderate, and 20 percent liberal. In 2010, by contrast, conservatives had risen to 41 percent of the total and moderates declined to 39 percent, while liberals remained constant at 20 percent. And because, in today’s polarized politics, liberals vote almost exclusively for Democrats and conservatives for Republicans, the ideological shift matters a lot.

...

So the 2010 electorate does not represent a disproportional mobilization of conservatives: If the 2010 electorate had perfectly reflected the voting-age population, it would actually have been a bit more conservative and less moderate than was the population that showed up at the polls. Unless the long-term decline of moderates and rise of conservatives is reversed during the next two years, the ideological balance of the electorate in 2012 could look a lot like it did this year.

So, it's clearly spelled out in the numbers. Change, Democrats, drop the far-left idiots who've destroyed your party's credibility. Send 'em packing, come back home, enjoy a NASCAR event, eat a hot dog instead of arugula, and lay off the memes for a change.

It'll do you a world of good, and the nation, too.

---