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I think the analysis on Trump misses the point. This issue is not so much a left/right/ moderate thing. It’s a nonvoter/ voter thing. The highest participation rate in recent years was 2008 when roughly 65% of those eligible voted. More typical are participation rates just north of 50%. It doesn’t take a brilliant mathmetician to figure out that if a large number of those otherwise nonparticipants show and show to support or oppose on e candidate, there will be one helluva large effect.

You can’t explain something like that in right/left, red/blue terms because that has nothing to do with it. These are the folks who given their druthers would have nothing to do with any of that. They’re voting because the urgency of the situation or the unusual attractiveness of the candidate.

I’ve seen one election like this in my life:1980. I think it possible that 2016 is a repeat. The issue though is more a sort of quiet nationalism than some sort of reaction to the tired old left right fight.

I certainly agree that on election morning Joe Sixpack does not jump up and exclaim, "by God, the damn leftists have got to be stopped and even though I am a lunchpail blue-collar Democrat I nevertheless am essentially a conservative who must vote with the conservative Republican."

These are labels that pollsters, pundits and consultants put on demographic groups but that does not mean that these experts can not come pretty darn close to predicting precinct by precinct how these people will vote and, as you point out, whether they will vote at all.

I agree with you they will jump up and vote if they feel it is a matter of survival or if they are emotionally moved by a candidate. And, yes, I believe that the numbers could be moved dramatically if the stars align and Joe sixpack can somehow be energized. There is a proviso, however, there is a kind of law of equal and opposite reaction meaning that if the conservative base is energized that might also energize the leftist base. This pushback becomes more acute a problem when race is introduced. I try to point out that it's also a problem when gender is considered, for example, what excites me as a crusty, curmudgeonly, disputatious male conservative might turn off a female voter and I will never understand why.

Anyway, we are at the end game with the border a sieve, the economy a creature of the Fed, our debts mounting out of control, our enemies emboldened, our national consensus disintegrating, our Constitution abandoned, our political leaders sold out, it appears that our last chance is at hand. This is not the time to navel gaze but to "attack, repeat, attack!"