Great post.  I think it's correct.  There's no center out there anymore that the stupid Dems like Kerry are/were always trying to obtain.  They stupidly cite the huge number of registered independents in the various states to make their point.  Too may people, including most of the media, incorrectly makes a leap that a registered independent is a political "moderate."  You see this when the media talks about Connecticut and how Lieberman is a fit for the majority of Connecticut voters who are registered independent.  

The dirty little secret is that perhaps a majority so-called registered independents are not registered as a Democrat because they feel that the Democratic Party is too MODERATE and has acquiesed on their core beliefs for too long.  

When will most elected Democratic politicians realize that many people who stay home on election day and who are registered independents are demoralized because they don't see a fight in the Democrats for what they believe in and what they will do to actually make a change in the country?

To say there is no center is the same thing as saying there is no America.

The left, many times, can be just silly. Secular humanism often has nothing to do with the left's paid positions brought by the lobbies, sigs, and various meandering forces that push the party around on its axis.

The right, as we all know, is just out of touch.

Neither is worth being partisan for.
Indepedents are far and many , and often forced
during election cycles to choose the lesser of two evils.

What is conspicuously missing here is the fact that both parties have consistently taken pro-lobbyist, anti-third party positions time and again, effectively quashing the small donor base.

In fact, the donor base existed in 2004 only because there was a fiscally disciplined radical running as, effectively, his own third party. That man was howard dean.

A threat to the republicans, to be sure, so they funded an unprecedented propaganda campaign.

Change comes from the grassroots. Dems can do better.

Yeah right, that's why the one continuous trend in politics in the last 4 decades has been the rise of people registering Independent, from less than 1 percent in 1960 to over 20 today, both parties declining but the greater percentage coming from a decline in Democrats.

The Reps despite having had the presidency for 28 out of the last forty years, have never been able to break much above fifty in the Congress, on the other side the Dems were only able to barely break fifty% in one presidential race of the last ten.

The political class is stuck in a dichotomy of Rep/Dem that forces independents into a definition they no longer want, creating a volatility under the idiocy of contemporary politics that is unprecedented, something new is bound to rise, trying to keep turning out a mythical Democratic base is a loser.

This makes no sense chronologically:

As two more new books (significantly, neither of them is "The Architect") convincingly argue, the eureka moment came as Bush pollster Matt Dowd sat hunched over a computer screen in Austin, Texas, matching his survey data with the 2000 election returns.

According to "Applebee's America: How Successful Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Connect With the New American Community," a collaboration among Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik, former AP reporter Ron Fournier and Dowd himself, the Bush pollster discovered that the traditional swing voter was fast becoming an endangered species as only 7 percent of the electorate in 2004 had voted independently of party loyalties.

But there's a deeper problem here.  This says nothing about registered independents.  I realize that it's presented in a way that thinks it does.  But that's why I pointed out the chronological incoherence first.

In fact, CNN's 2004 election results show independents comprising 26% of the vote, splitting 48% Bush (up 1% from 2000), 49% Kerry, 1% Nader.  Dems split 89% Kerry, 11%. Reps split 93% Bush (up 2% from 2000), 6% Kerry.  There's no way in hell to square these numbers with what the reviewer wrote.

Looks like we'll either have to read the book for ourselves, or find a more reliable reviewer.  Because this account just doesn't make sense on the face of it.

But here's a parting thought: in general, no book is going to give a complete picture.  The reason is simple: they need to have a strong clear thesis for purposes of product differentiation.  But real social science is always multi-causal, often with a blend of factors from multiple time frames, levels of abstraction, etc.

One key factor all these books leave out is they cycle of imperial over-reach and reactionary politics, followed by an egalitarian re-alignment that Kevin Phillips discussed in Wealth and Democracy. By itself, it's no kind of answer, either.  But it's drawn from looking at much larger scale patterns than any of these books contemplate.  And that scale of patterns has its say, too, even if it's damn near impossible to see what it means ahead of time.

But the mistake most people make is in thinking that the Center has an ideology akin to the Left or the Right. Some political strategists (I call them losers) think that all they have to do is figure out what that ideology is, appeal to it, while not overtly pissing off the base, and the electoral votes will come pouring in.

But, as I said, the Center has no ideology. That is their defining characteristic. They are The Center because they just don't pay that much attention to politics and don't really care all that much about that the things that activate The Left or The Right.

So what does activate The Center? It changes with every season. It changes with whatever is the favorite TV show that year. It changes with whichver major league sports team is on top that year. It changes with the weather. Or with who has attacked us most recently.

You get The Center vote for you not by appealing to their non-existant ideology but by making The Center think that what they believe and what you believe are the same thing.

That's how you win The Center.