Back in the 1920s, Harold Hotelling made a strong case for making products similar to your competition. Very clever people immediately applied this Law to politics. Let's take a look at how this has played out, shall we?

The classic illustration of Hotelling's Law is two hot dog vendors on a beach. One would think that optimal position for their hot dog stands would look something like this:

With this positioning, customers have to walk the shortest distances. Stretching the metaphor to politics, the distance between one's own politics and the party for which they vote is relatively low. However, Hotelling's Law points out a different scenario:

The Left has moved to the center and is the closest hot dog stand to far more people. Let's call this the Hotelling Maneuver, though it could just as appropriately be called Clinton's Choice or even the Super Mario Strategem ("Run to the Right as fast as you can!"). As far as picking up elections, it seemed to be a good move for quite some time.

Kottke won't feed the troll, but I think she's something more functional than merely a rouser of rabble. Seeing an opportunity in the Hotelling Maneuver, the Right has done an amazing job of losing the battle in order to win the war. With the Left overextended (leaving room for Nader or even Dean, representing "The Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party", to spring up) they have shifted the entire culture by re-centering the national debate around the new party positions.

Bombasts like Coulter play a vital role in making less radical bombasts (like O'Reilly) seem completely rational. Her rhetoric opens up spots on the beach for people to fill, leaving the Left in the undesirable position of defending beliefs that they don't even hold, in order to stay in the middle.

Hotelling's beach metaphor may work for hot dog vendors, but the Right realizes that they don't necessarily need to sell every hot dog in order to further their agenda. In fact, with the Democrats having adopted a number of Republican frames, the Right can just hang out and collect dividends on their hot dog franchises.

It seems to me that the only way out of this mess is for the Left to consider what they really stand for and start campaigning on that instead. They're going to lose a few elections, but it's what the country ultimately needs.