Didn’t you just connect this general partisan attitude of the Rolling Stones reporter to ideological tyranny, in re: Bob Dylan?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/09/14/why_romney_will_win_115452.html

Regarding today’s equivalent to Reagan Democrats: I would characterize my parents as classic Reagan Democrats and it has been interesting to observe my five older siblings and their evolving political identities. None of them would call themselves conservative even though their sensibilities are obviously so. My impression is the so-called brand of conservatism has taken a real beating in the last couple of decades, and the result is that todays equivalent to Reagan Democrats are a lot more reluctant than their 80′s counterparts to acknowledge what they are.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t pull the lever like their 80′s counterparts. At the moment my supposition is that the pollsters are hearing what these closet Reagan Dems in the sample think the pollsters want to hear, and not how they will actually vote. My understanding is that this is exactly how the Wisconsin recall vote played out. Walker was consistently underestimated in polls, even the exit polls on voting day.

Like I said, I am skeptically optimistic.

“It’s not entirely clear to me that there are any more Reagan Democrats.” In one sense that is true, but I was using it as more a of a short hand for people who are not part of the right-center coalition, but who might be won over (if not totally reliably.) I’m regularly struck by the “conservative” policy instincts of people on taxes, abortion, entitlement policy, but those same people have never considered voting Republican. It isn’t entirely their fault. They have never heard a Republican message that made sense to them. Some of it is media consumption. some of it is how conservative candidates talk. some of it is stuff I’m missing (no doubt.) Despair would be more justified if the center-right was doing a good job talking to these people.

I once thought that conservatives could always take comfort in the periodic mugging of liberalism by reality, which is what brought Reagan in in the 80′s. I think the verdict is still out on this generation. But an Obama victory in 2012 in these conditions would imply a lot more about where the country is, in my view, than the relative weakness of Romney’s ability to connect.

Among other things it would imply that we now have an electorate that has passed a kind of tipping point where the majority of voters are now more persuaded by the aura of Opra-esque celebrity, than the practical effects of policy on their own lives. Which is amazing if you think about it.

I am observing rather than making excuses, but my sense is that media consumption on the part of many persuadables is more passive than that. It is more not tuning in (they aren’t tuning into overtly politicalliberal media like MSNBC either.) I think a lot of other things are also at work. Imagine a Reagan who can’t really talk to working-class whites in non-Southern cities and suburbs and you have a sense of Romney’s problem (and it sin’t just Romney’s problem.) Due to demographic changes, the “Reagan Democrats” of this era will be different people who will partly come from different social groups than the Reagan Democrats of the 80s. The Republicans haven’t figured out how to deal with this yet and are hoping that supermajorities among the demographic America of 1980 will pull them through. I haven’t figured it out either of course.

I do intensive study on some of the most democracy-pessimistic texts that exist in the literature, such as Plato’s book VIII of the Republic, or Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, and even I am shocked. This election should not be at all close, and even if Romney wins (which remains my prediction) I will remain deeply troubled by it being this close. America is not well.

And Peter, the worst part is they probably think they are being tough and realistic.