I can't see a Ron Paul supporter switching to Democrat. Then again, what do I know? Both parties should disgust a Ron Paul supporter, you could hold your nose and go either way.

What an interesting process this has been on the Republican side. If Huckabee had dropped out earlier, then Romney would have got all the arch-conservative votes and probably won. If Giuliani *hadn't* dropped out, then McCain probably wouldn't pick up anything in the NE to speak of. The nature of the contenders and the timing of the dropouts had quite a lot to do with the results, IMHO.

Meanwhile, the Democrat thing is interesting for another reason. I live in MN, which will go Democrat as a foregone conclusion. Historically that's been because of the huge farming and iron mining communities. Now it's because of the progressive ultra-left greens. A friend of mine is active in the MN DFL leadership and refers to the historical base as the "fucking union idiots". And you see this in the primaries: Clinton is winning the historical base of working class and Obama is winning with the progressive urban Green/leftists. That huge rift in the Democratic party is a MAJOR problem for the Democrats. The new Democrat leadership is alienating the historical, working-class base and the base is switching to Republican in greater and greater numbers. The party is in grave danger of becoming the party of a relatively small group of intellectual elitists who've forgotten what brought them to prominence.

The attitude of the Democrat leadership shows this. They are bewildered at how "stupid" the working-class people are to support a group (Republicans) who have historically shown they don't have working-class people's economic best interest in mind. It's not stupidity, though. It's values: the typical working-class American has social values much more consistent with the Republican platform than the Democrat platform. There's a somewhat interesting book about this called "What's the matter with Kansas". Much more interesting, however, is to look at the problem from the point of view of value development, that is to say, the hierarchy of value development, similar to Maslow's "needs hierarchy". A good example of that is Spiral Dynamics. Bottom line is: people with progressive "green" values don't mix well with people with "conventional" values (blue values in Spiral Dynamics) -- and the Democrats are engaged in an internal battle between the two. If the greens would stop seeing the working-class as "stupid", then they could unite the party, but that's not going to happen.

My prediction is this rift will destroy the Democrat party, Republicans (who actually have a platform, even though it's mostly repugnant) will continue to rise and become the dominant party. A third option, libertarian (lower-case L) in values may rise to fill the gap. Who knows? Maybe more and more of the nation will evolve to green values and urban progressiveness and the Democratic party can stay viable. I don't see it, though. The working class vote is critical to a Democrat getting elected, and the only candidate who really spoke to the working man (Edwards) was never even a serious contender. It's sad, because there is a long, noble tradition of fighting for the little guy in the Democratic party.

I know, I know. Obama pays lip service to the union workers. But look at who's voting for him. He mostly doesn't get their vote.

Anyhow, long tirade. I'll probably stay home unless I can find a local election that matters to me. My only chance to influence things as a MN resident was in the primary.