It ain't just DU

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

71. Stipulated, although there's a second half of the argument I didn't address in that comment.

What is actually going to motivate independents to come to the polls, as opposed to skipping voting. And that's more of a 'base' appeal. Ie, the folks more likely to be drawn out of 'not voting' are those who are drawn out because they actually feel they might get some more representation then they generally feel they have in a 'standard' candidate.

Go back to 2008. Masses of 'new' voters or sporadic voters came out in the general for Obama, who, despite his later more conservative or 'bipartisan' governing style, used lots of lefty-sounding rhetoric when campaigning. Those voters 'hoped' for 'change'. It was the promise of change that drew them out. They didn't want someone who was going to be just like every other politician.

So here we are, seven years later, and all we've really done is stop the bleeding. Despite the 'recovery', in which the wealthy recovered very nicely, more people are in poverty, more people are near poverty, more people are underemployed or have given up on looking for work entirely. (which, admittedly, makes the % unemployed look much better, since those people no longer 'count'.) Rather than being a country of workers, we've slapped a bandaid of subsidized healthcare on the wound, to cover up the fact than people aren't getting paid enough to pay for their own healthcare, and have less wealth than they did a decade before.

Voters still want someone new, someone who will get something done to put wages back in pockets, to rebuild wealth for EVERYONE, not just the richest. They still want 'Change'. And there's nothing less 'Changey' than a Clinton or a Bush. That's simply not going to excite sporadic voters or nonvoters to come out.