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Math first. A third of voters will back any Democrat, a third any Republican. Candidates only care about the middle third, and by basic definition, that group is largely moderate--not ideologically liberal or conservative. That's not to say the group is homogeneous or consistent, just that they generally have a moderate tendency.
Now, if a candidate pisses off people in his third, those people will still vote for him (I say him because, you know, that's our history), or at worst will stay home or vote third party. If the candidate pisses off someone in that middle third, then that person will vote for the other candidate. So the middle votes count twice--one against you, one for the other guy--whereas those on the fringes count once--against you.
Thus, in general, both candidates try to please the middle voters while angering their own as little as possible, since you can get enough of your own supporters mad enough to hurt your vote total.
Now, history. History always favors conservative politicians--people hate change unless everything really sucks, and even then they only want to change the sucky part, not everything else. So now, everyone hates Bush and the economy and the war, so they want those things to change. That does not mean, though, that everyone therefore hates everything Bush stands for and loves everything we stand for. A broke homophobe wants to change the broke, not the homophobia. That's a generalized historical reason. A more specific one is Civil Rights. When LBJ signed the Civil Rights Bill, he predicted he had cost the South for the Democrats for the next couple of generations, and that, so far, has been the case. It's not just about race anymore, it's about the South convincing itself that liberals were the enemy and Republicans were their friends.
The thing is, that can all change, and may be changing now. Every generation or so a politician steps in and goes against conventional wisdom, and either changes the dynamics, or more likely, takes advantages of changes no one has so far recognized. Reagan did that for the Republicans in 80s, for instance, campaigning on different issues than the conventional divisions had accounted for before then. Kennedy and LBJ did that, too, as did FDR and Lincoln and others. Presidents who take over where history books start new chapters.
So, historically since the 70s "left" has been frowned on by the South, and so it's been hard for a candidate to appear too "left" and still win. The only Democrats we've had since Kennedy were southerners who could break up the South by winning their home state--Texas, Georgia, Arkansas and Tennessee.
Obama might be in a position to change things. It looked like that a month ago, but lately he's been acting like he's afraid to believe that. We'll have to see. He's got polling that measures key areas constantly, so he knows better than any of us what people are saying they want. There is always room for a charismatic leader to convince people they want something else, though. Maybe Obama will be that type of leader.
Anyway, just my thoughts, and opinions, and they are as likely to be wrong as right. But I like to type, so there they are.
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