Found via Making Light, a 2005 post on Kung Fu Monkey that's become relevant again as Bush's poll numbers have broken the 30-percent barrier (traveling downward, I mean) in several major polls.
Let's be nice and say that on what passes for the left in the U.S. there are 23% of the people who would support a Democrat no matter what. I give the Democrats a lower number because there is good evidence that Bush voters are actually delusional, believing a raft of falsehoods about his actual positions, and Kerry voters in the last election had a much better knowledge of the facts about each candidates' position.
So the sum total of crazy people is close to or perhaps slightly above 50%.
It may be that the proportion of crazy people fluctuates with time, so that back in the Nixon era the Republican base really was only 22% (Nixon's lowest popularity rating in the months before he cut and ran.) Which leads me to suggest that the health of a nation is closely related to the total fraction of crazy people, and when it exceeds 50% things get very bad indeed.
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Let's be nice and say that on what passes for the left in the U.S. there are 23% of the people who would support a Democrat no matter what. I give the Democrats a lower number because there is good evidence that Bush voters are actually delusional, believing a raft of falsehoods about his actual positions, and Kerry voters in the last election had a much better knowledge of the facts about each candidates' position.
So the sum total of crazy people is close to or perhaps slightly above 50%.
It may be that the proportion of crazy people fluctuates with time, so that back in the Nixon era the Republican base really was only 22% (Nixon's lowest popularity rating in the months before he cut and ran.) Which leads me to suggest that the health of a nation is closely related to the total fraction of crazy people, and when it exceeds 50% things get very bad indeed.