The political spectrum is made up of four major groups and two minor groups.
The major groups are the left, the right, the center, and the registered but don't vote group. The two minor groups are the left fringe (Greenies etc.) and the right fringe (Libertarians etc).
To put the first group in perspective here are some numbers from the 2000 presidential election 156,421,311 people were registered to vote. Only 105,586,274 of them voted. The turn out was 76%. In other words 24 percent of the people who were registered to vote did not vote in 2000. That non vote category varies from election to election. The non vote category is made up of two groups. First are those that don't care who is president. They vote for or against local tax measures but don't vote for president. That is small number. The others are those that don't care who is president because they see no difference between the two major parties and don't have a fringe party with which they agree. They may vote the next time if a fringe to their liking is on the ballot. Their are a lot in the registered but don't vote group.
Fringe groups are always screaming to the main parties that if they just endorsed the agenda of their fringe group, they would vote for that major candidate. They somehow never figure out that if the major party candidate adopted their positions, the major party candidate would get no more votes than the fringe party candidates do. So the major party candidate will never adopt their views.. since is is a loser position.
As a result the fringe party voters never vote for a major party candidate on issues.
You say hey wait a minute... Ross Perot got 19 million votes in 1992 what about that. Fourteen million more people voted in 1992 than voted in 1988. Fourteen million registered non voters, voted for Perot in 1992 that did not vote at all in 1988. You say wait a minute... what about 1996. Well in 1996 Perot got nine million fewer votes than he did in 1992... and 9 million fewer people voted than did in 1992.
But what about the fringe candidates... wouldn't they vote for a main candidate if he shared their views? Think about this. Al (Earth in the Balance) Gore was Greener than grass. Can you say global warming, ozone layer, destroy your SUV...Cleaner air, cleaner water... that was Al Gore with a capital G. But 2.9 Greenies still voted for Nader. Gore was not Green enough for the Greenies. How green would Gore have had to have been to get the Greenies. I don't know but it is far out shade of green.
The same is true on the right. No Republican can ever be right enough for the far right. For if a Republican ever gave the far right what it wanted, it would cost the Repubican 12 million votes from the center to get a half million votes from the fringe right. That is not going to happen.
What do fringes do when they don't have a candidate that matches their fringe? They do one of two things. Some join the group that does not vote. Like the 9 million perot voters that stayed home in 1996. About one half of the remainder vote for the Democrat and the other half vote for the Republican.
How many times do the fringes have to tell us there is not a dimes worth of difference between the two parties, before we understand that if they do vote for a major party candidate they flip a coin to decide which.
Let me give you some more numbers just over 90 million people voted for president in 1988. Nearly 105 million votes in 1992 and 19 million voted for Perot. Almost 96 million votes in 1996 and 9 million voted for perot.
In 2000 the 105 million were back and they split dead even between Bush and Gore in a virtual tie. Wasn't the 2000 election almost a tie?
If the 104 million who voted in 1992 were nearly the same 105 million that voted in 2000, then the 19 million Perot voters of 1992 were split evenly between Bush and Gore in 2000.
My point is that the fringes don't matter be they 2.9 million for Nader or 19 million for Perot. If they don't vote for the fringe candidate they split their votes between the major two candidates. They never decide a race. It does not matter if they vote or not.. they are not important. They do not decide elections.
What is important is the center. The have decided every race but one in my memory. Gray Davis purposely drove the center away from the polls in california last year. That left only the Democrats and Republicans to vote. Since there are more Democrats then Republicans in california, Davis won. The turn out was 4 million fewer in 2002 than it was in 1998. ONly 6 million voted. The center did not vote.
But in every other race in recent times the center is the deciding factor. If a candidate can get more than half the center, that candidate will win. To win, a candidate must get all his base and more than half the center. Remember FRINGES are not base... count on it they are never base. That means a candidate must run on those issues that appeal to his base and over half the center. Issues that only have base support are not campaigned on in the general election. In office the elected official will try to implement what his base and more than half the center wants done. If a candidate tries to please his base he will lose the center. He has to have the center he can't win with out it.
There is one area that really confuses the base. When the other parties base and all of the center are for an issue, a president will likely endorse that issue too. If it is a defining issue for the center the office holder will do it. He has to have the center. And just as Clinton accepted welfare reform when all the center wanted it, Dubya accepted prescription drugs when all the center wants that.
For the right to win on an issue, it must make that an issue with which over half the center will agree. And arguments that persuade the base do not work on the center. If they worked on the center the center would be part of the base.
So what we and Bush must do, is try to move the center to the right. It takes a ton of time and very good salesmanship to move the center. Presidents can rarely do that. Presidents are in the business of pleasing voters in the center ... not changing their minds.
That is what others must do.
But remember this working to persuade fringe voters or fringe non voters is a waste of time. It is the centrists that decide elections and they must be persuaded. Remember if you can get all the center to your view, it does not matter which party holds the white house, that issue will be made into law.
That is how elections are won and the course of the nation changed.