Who Really Decides?

This also appears at the blog site of the Democratic Party. To read any comments that people have made about this brief essay please read it there.

The numbers may be a bit off, but about 200 million people will be eligible to vote for President in 2008. About 170 million of them are registered to vote. About 43 percent of those are registered as Democrats. About 33 percent are Republicans. More than one quarter of registered voters choose independent or no party affiliation at all.

As always, people who vote for the person not the party will decide the next election. Those are the people that both parties need to go after and convince that their nominee is the right choice. That is how I will vote in the next election, certainly not along party lines, and certainly not for a candidate merely because he or she belongs to a certain party.

A recent Mason Dixon poll showed that Hillary Clinton is the person people are least likely to vote for. 52 percent of Americans would not consider voting for her if she were the Democratic nominee. That same poll showed that 60 percent of independent voters will not consider Clinton either, and it is they who will really decide who is in the White House next year. That should, more than anything, put up a red flag to Democrats as they go to the primary elections. If they truly want to control every branch of government, they need to put up a candidate that independents want.

For all the talk about voter manipulation, corruption, and election stealing, the one thing the GOP has done is put up candidates that the independent voter will consider. And then they sold the person. Democrats would do well to remember that, and not nominate Hillary.