In 1980, the Democratic and Republican parties went in different directions with regard to how to win elections. Knowing that so-called "swing voters" only represent about 5% of voters, Republicans worked hard to get out their base of hard-core right wingers. Believing that they could bring "swing voters" to their side, Democrats move to the right and aggressively compromised the ideals of the new deal, talking instead like Eisenhower Republicans. Time has shown that the Republicans had a better understanding of the American electorate then the Democrats.

The big question for 2020 is twofold: will the Democrats learn from this and embrace a base strategy that brings to the polls more than 5% of voters who otherwise wouldn't have voted; and will Donald Trump's immigration and fear-driven base strategy of putting crying brown children into cages like animals work, or has his Bizzarre behavior shrunk his base to the point that his base strategy no longer is effective for Republicans?

-Thom