Times are changing. The white vote is getting smaller as a percentage of the total. Hispanics and blacks are attending elite colleges. A black man has been elected president. McCain or someone like him could never capture the Hillary Clinton voters because those voters understand the need for universal health insurance and the disparity in income and wealth between the rich and the poor. Republicans still largely represent business interests and those of the wealthy that want to protect their tax loopholes that enable them to siphon off most of GDP. They won't own up to the fact that the welfare of working people has largely stagnated over the last several decades while that of the wealthy has increased dramatically. The voters you identify as Reagan Democrats are fast moving back to the Democratic Party as it moves further towards the center, while the Republicans move further to the right, off into fantasyland. The tired old Republican policies and prejudices no longer are saleable to more and more Americans.

The reason Democratic middle class voters have fled the republican party is that the party has fled from the Reagan days at full speed. Pat is right, they could care less about middle class job loss or illegals.

Sir;... Let us talk about your Chutzpah...How do you get off comparing a failed student lacking in insight, curiosity, and intelligence with an accomplished attorney and judge??? Sarah Palin has found her place... It is not that most mothers cannot manage a budget, or be commander in chief; but that one who does not have the sense to let go of a retarded child that stupidity concieved, and ideology gave birth to does not deserve political office..That child will never be a productive member of society, and if it is not already feeding off the public then some day it shall.... Hers is the party of denial, and they deny to the people of this society their rights, and their property just as slave masters once denied to their slaves their liberty and the fruits of their labor...This is our country, and all property and profits are held on the good will of the people...If it does not serve our interest; and if it makes us more weak than strong then we have the right to tax such property into extinction, or drive the owners from our doors...Law is nothing but a form of relationship, and if law does not serve our relationships -it needs to be trashed finally, and completely... We think we want law...We need morals, and too much of our law supports immorality...I think we can say of many liberals that their conception of law is that it is not written in stone, that it is not all form without meaning, but must mean something good to have the support of the people...Look at your country man...Of people in this world behind bars, we have three quarters, and in some communities over fifty percent of the men are under legal supervision... Rather than being a detriment to criminal behavior, the sheer numbers of adults in the system demand that the young prove themselves with crime rather than other brave deeds... It is a rite of passage into adulthood, even when that means the chances of getting a job or education after are nil...Look at Wall Street and the Bernie Madoffs... Are they more respectful of law than the side street criminal??? If we do not respect government, and you have been a leader in that cause, then it is not just as a lark, but because government so fails us in reaching our goals at the very moment that it helps those trying to defeat our purpose with ill concieve laws... Law has to work for people... Sure...Stupid laws can be made on the power of a mere majority, but if they will have our support they must work for us, and that day is long past...Bad laws like bad roads are the sign of an immoral society...We are so busy taking care of the dead, trying to make a dead letter constitution work that we cannot take care of the living, or take care of the future of this people...No Sotomayor in this land, and no number of attorneys will make it work... They are creatures of the form...But it helps that some one in this country can see through the form to the goal for which it was created... The constitution too is a form, and its goals are clearly stated...Was it created to support profit, property, slavery, or misery??? This is a rich land that was taken from us by device of law... We need to trash the law, and be the law... We will have this land back, or die without it... How do you think this situation will be resolved???...Thanks...Sweeney

Re: Elwood Anderson;...The more the wealth and profits of this land are sqeezed out of this people the more bitter, angry, and dangerous we become....I have heard some people feeding off the welfare of the poor abuse them for not working...Marx had it right that when people have the choice of starving to death and working, or starving to death and not working then they will relax...But how do we abuse anyone for not working when we have never had full employment, when people can graduate from highschool and even College without work skills??? We do not want to hate, and it is easy to see how well the rich have manipulated the hatred of the poor they have exploited to have the power to continue their exploitation... The great search for victims to accuse and abuse has hardly begun, but it is all misplaced... The great majority of this people are in the same life boat suffering the company of those who have sunk our ship...They have always turned us against each other so they could scoop up any unguarded wealth... It is time to see if they will sink or swim...Sir; the republican still have a lot of power, and behind that power are a lot of angry dispossessed, and hateful people who have ideologies where their reason should be... In addition, they have guns, and ammo, and they know how to use them... In spite of going to church, the only life they respect is in the womb...That is our world, and our America...This people has been so long abused that it is ready to bust, and if it should seem that the day labor they once imported to replace the day labor they refused to pay will join together to put them in their place, then they will not go easy... The country people of this land are dangerous, and even more dangerous out of power than in... What you say is true enough; yet, they not only prejudiced, but willing to act on it..We are not far from civil war..I am afraid that the liberals will suffer many a blood bath before they settle finally for slavery... ..Thanks...Sweeney