No, I am not rehashing the Primaries. Enough deeply offensive things were said then, over more than a year, and the wounds are still with us. Looking back, at the endless posts on electability, I wrote at the time:
Jan-12-08 ... What are the candidates out there doing at the moment other than sniping? They are scrambling to address the economy, because, as even the Bush Administration knows, we are on the edge of a recession. Nobody wants it. Nobody is talking it up.
Polls on perceived negatives and strength mean little when the election is 10 months away and the unemployment rate may be (heading towards) 10% by then. Look around. The Fed is talking a half a percent rate cut, the Administration is negotiating with congress on a $100 billion tax cut / spending package, the dollar has crashed and consumer confidence is at historic lows.
Projecting the present as the future is foolish at the best of times, let alone now.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=4044628&mesg_id=4044628The term 'Polarizing', while ubiquitously leveled at Hillary, was mainly short hand for enerizing the Republican Base. And that Base was energized all right, not by a Democrat but the most polarizing figure in American Politics, Sarah Palin aided by nobodies like Joe the plumber. Republican polarization was celebrated by a capitivated MSM. Amidst rhetoric of Real-America, Anti-America, Joe the Six Term Senator nailed it:
"What do you talk about when you have nothing to say?" "What do you talk about when you can't explain the last eight years of failure? What do you talk about? You talk about the other guy!"Even if Palin's star is shooting towards the frozen tundra, the intellectual decline of the Republican Party is, accelerating. Again. Joe Biden called it:
"This is not your father's Republican party, by the way. .. Their America is not the America I live in. They see something different than I see.
"Rick Davis, John's campaign manager, said 'this election is not about issues.' Everything I saw at the convention demonstrated that".Joe Biden called The Silence of the Republican Party, Deafening. It still is. Deafening on Birthers, Teabaggers. Glen Beck, wild conspiracies like FEMA concentration camps, and the thugs turning up at Town Hall Meetings.
As thoughtful conservatives jump ship. polarizing is just about all the GOP has left, other than a few thread bare talking points. Obama seldom calls out Republican by name, but still faces the full force of base fury.
Calling a Democratic Politician polarizing is at best a GOP projection. 'I welcome their hatred' FDR once said: The hatred of those who have nothing to say and even less to offer.