Reply #62: "The Base Is Safe" That's what Gore thought

[incapsulated]

Dangerous assumption at this point, I think. This election is so close it's a statistical tie. If he loses even %1.0 of the base who just stay home in the swing states, he could lose it all.

The base voted for Kerry because he was the frontrunner after NH, not because he was a flaming liberal. And certainly not because he generated such grassroots excitement. He can't count on that. He can only count on the hatered of Bush in the base right now.

No politician should ever take anything for granted. It's just not pragmatic.

I don't see this as making independents or swing voters warm to Kerry. This assumes they want him to move to the right, which I don't think is anything anyone can prove, or they feel some great need for "unity" which I've been hearing for decades with little proof. These same people voted for Bush, who threw stupid slogans at them, but would jump off a bridge before he would ask a Democrat to "consider" being his running mate, and nobody expected him to, either. What the polls do say is that they view Kerry's negatives as: undefined, flip-flopper. Which is how the rethugs are going to play this, imho.