Not everyone will recognize that stupid and ignorant are two different concepts. Someone who is stupid is just not very bright whereas ignorant means you just don’t know. In the world of politics stupidity is more forgivable than ignorance. I mean we can all call the names of some pretty stupid Senators, but all you need to win an election is to be smarter than a few thousand people who would vote for you. You don’t even need to be brighter than average.
The people who win elections study the process and work with their own circle of friends. Sometimes the circle of friends is the ICM party, sometimes it’s the Democratic Party. Very rarely it’s the Republicans. It seems that the voters are looking to chose those people who will work together. One year they have faith that the Democrats will work together and so elect a majority of Democrats. For one election in 1990, they believed the Republicans would work together and elected four out of seven Republican Senators.A few years back a “Crucian Coalition” formed which was a fairly radical Native rights group. They worked together during the whole election and while they got trounced by the Democrats, as a group they did better than the Republicans who didn’t work together at all.
There is a certain amount of logic in that security in groups is greater than the Lone Ranger getting shot at all the time and by being part of a group there are seven fewer people shooting at you.
Where or not the above explanation is entirely true, the historic record shows that no first term senator has won an election running as an independent since Chucky Hansen in 1986.
Seems that we have a lot of Lone Rangers running around who are independently ignorant of the Virgin Islands election process and history. Maybe this year one will get lucky and get elected.
I personally doubt it.
