Millions of fringe Americans

Let's play fast and loose with some numbers. The last paragraph in Kuhn's article on fringe partisans rang true for me. I have friends I would consider fanatic Democrats and fanatic Republicans. So if 34% of voters call themselves Democrats and 24% of voters call themselves Republican, and 35% of those Democrats are fanatics (Bush knew about 9/11 beforehand, Glenn Beck is evil, etc.), and 28% of those Republicans are fanatics (Obama was born in Kenya, Chris Matthews is Satan). Now if there were 100,000,000 voters (I'm probably way-off there but let's keep it round and simple), 34 million are Democrats and of them, that makes 11.9 million fanatic lefties. These are the people who wouldn't mind Sarah Palin dying in a plane crash, who visit DailyKos every day, believe everything MediaMatters says, watch Keith Olbermann every night, who think Dick Cheney is more evil than Joseph Stalin, and are quick to hate anyone with an (R) by their name. Of the 24 million Republicans, 6.72 million won't miss Sean Hannity, get all their news from Newsmax and WorldNetDaily, think Obama secretly wants to turn us into the Soviet States of America, that the government will play eugenics on old people if the health care bill passes, and are quick to hate anyone with a (D) by their name. And both of them are quick to see the mote in the eyes of their brethren across the aisle without noticing the beam in their own.

So based on these flimsy numbers, we have a lot of crazies. But if almost 19% of the electorate is extremist, is it really crazy? Is it really fringe? Maybe this lends some light as to why so many communites online that deal with politics are so mean-spirited and nasty. And I go back to this paragraph:

A few years ago, an Emory psychologist scanned the brains of self-described partisans. Partisans were able to notice the hypocritical statements of the opposing candidate but not the inconsistencies of their preferred candidate. Ideology, it was determined, showed effects similar to drug addiction.

Now there is an ebb and flow to power, and also party affiliation. The Democrats gained in 1992, and lost in 1994, gained in 1996, lost in 2000, lost in 2004, gained big in 2006 and 2008.

Remember how lost and disorganized the Democrats seemed in 2004? Then they found a leader they could rally behind in Obama (and benefitted from Bush's failures with Abu Ghraib, Katrina, and the recession). The Republicans are now where the Dems were in 2004, except their 2008 might not happen until 2012 or 2016 or 2020, depending when the good leader emerges.