Disjointed Campaign Discourse?

Brian Beutler of TPM has an interesting take on the seemingly-disjointed rhetoric coming out of the 2012 campaigns for national office.  From the story:


 

If the parties believed the 2008 election was about to repeat itself, or that President Obama was so damaged that Republicans were headed to a decisive victory of their own, the news these days would look a lot different. But what the data show, and what the parties’ actions reflect, is the fact that familiar Democratic and Republican coalitions are taking shape again — that an evenly divided electorate will determine the outcome of the 2012 election, much as it did in years past.



And that means the parties are fighting for votes at the margin — locked in equal and opposite efforts to rally their own bases, depress their opponents’ and maybe, if they’re lucky, make inroads with typically hostile constituencies.


Aim the past weeks’ disjointed news through this prism, and an ordered logic comes out the other side.

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1 May 2012