For the fifth time in its last six tries, the Democratic Party has managed to parlay its massive lead in party identifiers into another presidential election debacle. One shameless Democratic apologist, groping for a face-saving excuse, has hit upon the bizarre idea that the Democrats lose presidential elections time after time because, being rational political calculators, they find it in their partisan self-interest to do so (Erikson, 1988). This tortured theory overlooks the obvious: Democrats are too stupid to calculate their self-interest.

Although this conclusion may seem unduly harsh, science has proven that Democrats are significantly dumber than Republicans, even when the differing social bases of the two parties are held constant (Sigelman, 1988). This intellectual deficit helps explain why, time and time again, the Democrats find themselves hopelessly out-organized, out-strategized, and out-maneuvered—in short, out-thought—by the wilier Republicans.