Typically a non-incumbent markets themselves as offering change, and the incumbent offers 'stay the course', this one, for president anyway, is a bit of an anomaly in that regard.



Well, yeah most do deliver in part. Of course its important to understand that to most regular voters - not to be confused with most citizens - have anywhere from 30-100 elected officials they vote on during a 2-6 year period. Most of the people jaded on the presidential tend to be the sorts who think 'off year election' is a mid-term, and couldn't name their own councilman, trustee, state treasurer, etc. Most regular voters are not actually too interested in massive change, dem or rep, and generally consider stump speeches more of a mark of intent and idea, concept and goal, then ironclad promises, and the candidates if asked would say "Well no, of course I can't promise X, it's just that 'And we're going to fix the Y' sounds a lot better than 'And it is my intent, as circumstances permit, to attempt to achieve a fix on Y or the best compromise solutions possible'". Most regular voters don't blame candidates for obvious hyperbole just because some naive sorts lack any common sense or understanding of how hard it is to move bills in a check-n-balance system.



The candidate matters to me, but I tend to consider the primary the time to do that. As far as I'm concerned voting in a party's primary amounts to pledging to support the winners of that primary, barring the really bizarre or unforeseen. But certainly my efforts on behalf of a candidate, in terms of funds and time volunteered, will vary a lot by my opinion of them.



Oh, much better. Golden Age thinking tends to gloss over that 50 years ago about half the Democrats were a bunch of racist Klan members and the GOP was a touch schizophrenic in ideology. Go back a hundred years and both sides took bribes. 20 years ago though? Hard to say, the cold war had just ended and the parties were trying to adjust to the change in everything post-Reagan. I'd say better though. Things suck right now but over all things have improved almost across the board as a function of time.