Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Tip O'Neill It is always difficult during an election year to separate the wheat from the tares until the elections have been concluded, at which point most information is stale and useless to politicians on the make. One important datum in the 2020 elections, as in all elections, concerns base turnout and negative campaigning. What turns people off often turns them out. That is why so called “negative political ads” excite and alarm politicians and media adepts. It is generally assumed that President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden both have unbudgable base support, that early campaign polling is reliable, that election messaging must appeal beyond the base to unaffiliated voters whose political preferences have not been sufficiently probed by Harvard and Yale political scientists, that state politics is less important than federal politics, and that political results in elections are determined by   personalities rather than policies, which might explain why ...