The Tea Tax and the Stamp Acts were among the notorious Navigation Acts which essentially both deprived the colonists of various rights and expected them to pay for such items as having the army quartered in their homes. One of the most infamous of these acts was that there was to be no manufacturing in the colonies, ie, they were to ship raw materials to the mother country in English bottoms and receive them back as manufactured goods. Since WW II, we have pretty much gone out of the shipping business and have farmed out most of our manufacturing. Go figure.

As one on the inside of the Corzine campaign, I began complaining sevral months before the loss that we were ignoring a major resource: We were not going into traditional Republicrat areas to encourage our own partisans. [nb, I was a team leader for a crew of canvassers in Somerset County.]

We focused on areas where we had significant majorities and encouraged them to vote. Many of them did but we lost in the marginal areas because we had not reached out to them. Had we done what Obama did and reached out to every single area, we would have won instead of being swamped by indifference.

All of the polls were based upon likely voters of both parties. Too many of the likelies stayed home. I knew for sure we were in trouble on Election Day when turnout was reported as light. In New Jersey, that usually means that the Republicans have turned out and the Democrats have not.

In the New York case, the Republican candidate was being beaten by the so-called independent candidate and would probably have won a three way race. The independent was supported by Palin, Beck, Cheney and others of that ilk. She pulled out and endorsed the Democrat so strongly that many of her voters switched to him. He won.

Passion makes for strong messages. It's lack and lack of clarity [on the issues] loses elections.