Will: Dems’ Message Is ‘If You’re Not Careful, Republicans Will Shoot Black People’

George Will: Dem Campaign Message Is "If You're Not Careful, Republicans Will Shoot Black People" (RealClearPolitics)

"So far it’s a bet they’re not decisively winning to put it mildly because so many of these Democrats are running unreasonably far ahead of the president’s approval rating, so voters maybe more intelligent than they’re sometimes given credit for. They can separate these things out and they can split their tickets.

On the other hand, the Democrats have made this as a kind of double down on 2012, when they said Mitt Romney causes cancer, essentially, and he killed my wife and ran all those awful ads. This year it is Republicans hate women and if you’re not careful, they’ll shoot black people. And that’s what it’s come down to in the closing days as they try to energize their base.

The problem I think the Democrats have is not with angry partisans, they show up all the time. The real answer -- and there is a very smart Republican consultant, that’s not quite an oxymoron yet, but this guy named Tim Mooney, he lives in Arizona, says that in wave elections, turnout actually goes down, and in wave elections, it’s not that the angry partisans show up, they always show up, it’s that the mildly peeved stay home, they’re depressed.

And what the Democrats are worried about is that their base is mildly depressed."