Today's Wall Street Journal Opinion page is quite the read. James Q. Wilson (??) writes about how useless 'approval' ratings are for predicting elections. I could care less about that (the poll coming up this November 2nd is the only one that counts), but he does briefly mention the two political bases. Put somewhat clearly, N% of regular voters will vote for a Democrat "...even if the candidate is Genghis Khan" and M% will vote Republican "...even if the candidate is Atilla the Hun." This is all within reason of course (Atilla the Hun cannot be a married gay man). Mr. Wilson sets M% = N% = 40% which is a safe bet, I suppose. I tend to lean more towards 45% for both. Point being, between 10% and 20% of voters wield significant control over who will become president. It's funny (and sort of sad) that John Edwards tried to make this point during the debate last night. People's brains almost popped when he brought it up (well, Larry King's peanut brain nearly turned to butter).

John Edwards: "I appeal more to Independents and Republicans so I stand a better chance of winning."
Larry King: "I am a moron. John Kerry has won most states. He appeals to Democrats more. He is HUGE like gay marriage!"

Then the two Johns started arguing about who appealed to Independent voters more. Anyhow, John Edwards is goddamned right. Fourty percent of voters will vote for an obnoxious chimpanzee before switching to Republican at this point in time. For what it's worth, most of that 40% find John Kerry to be very 'electable'. The question is, who can bring in a majority of the vacillating 20%? Even more speculative, who can bring in the people who have never shown up to vote?