On Thursday I posted a series of charts that all documented a similar theme: Since roughly the year 2000, according to survey data, Democrats have moved significantly to the left on most hot button social issues while Republicans have moved only slightly right.
This wasn't meant to be a rigorous scholarly analysis. And you can argue about margins of error, question wording, choice of topics, and so forth. Still, the gaps are too big and the trend too consistent to ignore the obvious conclusion that over the past two decades Democrats have moved left far more than Republicans have moved right:
I've made this point many times before, and I want to make it again more loudly and more plainly today. It is not conservatives who have turned American politics into a culture war battle. It is liberals. And this shouldn't come as a surprise: Almost by definition, liberals are the ones pushing for change while conservatives are merely responding to whatever liberals do. More specifically, progressives have been bragging publicly about pushing the Democratic Party leftward since at least 2004—and they've succeeded.
Now, I'm personally happy about most of this. But that doesn't blind me to the fact that "personally happy" means nothing in politics. What matters is what the median voter feels, and Democrats have been moving further and further away from the median voter for years:
I've added a scale of 0-10 to these charts to make them easier to interpret. As you can see, in 1994 the average Democrat was at 5 and the average Republican was at 6. In 2004, that had changed slightly: the average Democrat was at 4 and the average Republican was just under 5. In other words, both parties had gotten a little bit more liberal.
But by 2017 that had changed completely. The average Democrat was at 2 while the average Republican was at 6.5. In other words, between 1994 and 2017, Democrats had gotten three points more liberal while Republicans had gotten about half a point more conservative.
That takes us up to 2017, by which time Democrats were quite obviously farther from the median voter than they had been in 1994 or 2004. And it showed: Our election victory in 2020 was razor thin even though (a) the economy sucked, (b) we were in the middle of a pandemic, (c) voters had had four years to see just what Donald Trump was really like, and (d) our candidate was bland, amiable, white, male Joe Biden. This should scare the hell out of liberals.
The best explanation for how 2020 played out comes from David Shor, a data geek who identifies as socialist but is rigorously honest about what the numbers tell us. Here's a long excerpt from an interview he did with New York's Eric Levitz a few months ago:
At the subgroup level, Democrats gained somewhere between half a percent to one percent among non-college whites and roughly 7 percent among white college graduates (which is kind of crazy). Our support among African Americans declined by something like one to 2 percent. And then Hispanic support dropped by 8 to 9 percent....One implication of these shifts is that education polarization went up and racial polarization went down.
....What happened in 2020 is that nonwhite conservatives voted for Republicans at higher rates; they started voting more like white conservatives....Clinton voters with conservative views on crime, policing, and public safety were far more likely to switch to Trump than voters with less conservative views on those issues. And having conservative views on those issues was more predictive of switching from Clinton to Trump than having conservative views on any other issue-set was.
....This lines up pretty well with trends we saw during the campaign. In the summer, following the emergence of “defund the police” as a nationally salient issue, support for Biden among Hispanic voters declined. So I think you can tell this microstory: We raised the salience of an ideologically charged issue that millions of nonwhite voters disagreed with us on. And then, as a result, these conservative Hispanic voters who’d been voting for us despite their ideological inclinations started voting more like conservative whites.
....Over the last four years, white liberals have become a larger and larger share of the Democratic Party....And since white voters are sorting on ideology more than nonwhite voters, we’ve ended up in a situation where white liberals are more left wing than Black and Hispanic Democrats on pretty much every issue: taxes, health care, policing, and even on racial issues or various measures of “racial resentment.” So as white liberals increasingly define the party’s image and messaging, that’s going to turn off nonwhite conservative Democrats and push them against us.
....If Democrats elevate issues or theories that a large minority of nonwhite voters reject, it’s going to be hard to keep those margins....Black conservatives and Hispanic conservatives don’t actually buy into a lot of these intellectual theories of racism. They often have a very different conception of how to help the Black or Hispanic community than liberals do. And I don’t think we can buy our way out of this trade-off. Most voters are not liberals. If we polarize the electorate on ideology — or if nationally prominent Democrats raise the salience of issues that polarize the electorate on ideology — we’re going to lose a lot of votes.
Now: maybe you're personally delighted by the Democratic Party's leftward march and maybe you're not. It doesn't matter. Despite endless hopeful invocations of "but polls show that people like our positions," the truth is that the Democratic Party has been pulled far enough left that even lots of non-crazy people find us just plain scary—something that Fox News takes vigorous advantage of. From an electoral point of view, the story here is consistent: Democrats have stoked the culture wars by getting more extreme on social issues and Republicans have used this to successfully cleave away a segment of both the non-college white vote and, more recently, the non-college nonwhite vote.
So why is it conventional wisdom to point to conservatives as "culture war mongers"? As I've mentioned before, it's a straightforward consequence of behavioral economics. For most people, losing something is far more painful than the pleasure of gaining something of equivalent value. And since conservatives are "losing" the customs and hierarchies that they've long lived with, their reaction is far more intense than the liberal reaction toward winning the changes they desire. This produces more outrageous behavior from conservatives even though liberals are actually the ur-source of polarization.
Here's the nickel summary of all this:
- Since 1994, Democrats have moved left far more than Republicans have moved right.
- This has produced lots of safe states in liberal places like California and Massachusetts but has steadily pulled Democrats farther and farther away from median states like Iowa and Ohio.
- Recently, white academic theories of racism—and probably the whole woke movement in general—have turned off many moderate Black and Hispanic voters.¹ Ditto for liberal dismissal of crime and safety issues. Hispanics in particular moved in Trump's direction despite—or maybe because of—his position on immigration and the wall.
- Democrats will remain on an electoral knife edge forever unless they can pull themselves back toward the center.
This is obviously not a popular proposal among the white activist class. But a dispassionate look at voting patterns hardly allows any other conclusion. Moving to the left may help galvanize the progressive base—which is good!—but if it's not done with empathy and tact it risks outrunning the vast middle part of the country, which progressive activists seem completely uninterested in talking to.
It is well within our power to break our two-decade 50-50 deadlock and become routine winners in national politics. All it takes is a moderation of our positions from "pretty far left" to "pretty liberal." That's all. But who's got the courage to say so?
¹And for God's sake, please don't insult my intelligence by pretending that wokeness and cancel culture are all just figments of the conservative imagination. Sure, they overreact to this stuff, but it really exists, it really is a liberal invention, and it really does make even moderate conservatives feel like their entire lives are being held up to a spotlight and found wanting.
I think the best way to determine how the parties have changed on these issues is to look at what they actually do when they are in power and how their members vote on legislation rather than looking at poll results. Let's start with immigration.
In 1986, with Republicans controlling the Senate and the Presidency, a bipartisan compromise bill granting amnesty to illegal immigrants who had been in the country for longer than 4 years, while enhancing border security and increasing penalties for hiring illegal immigrants passed with over 60 votes and was signed into law.
When Democrats had 60 seats in the Senate in 2009-2010 as well as a large House majority and the Presidency, no major immigration legislation was passed, or even proposed.
In 2013, with Democrats controlling the Senate and the Presidency, an essentially modern day equivalent was passed with over 60 votes in the Senate (though unlike the 1986 bill, most Republicans voted against it), but John Boehner refused to put it up for a vote in the House of Representatives.
Today, it's inconceivable that any such bill would receive more than a handful of votes from Republicans, and certainly would not be brought up for a vote by Mitch McConnell (who voted for the 1986 bill) if Republicans controlled the Senate and absolutely would not be signed by any Republican President.
So it's crystal clear GOP politicians have moved far to the right on immigration. There were some Democrats who voted against the 1986 bill, but not many--clearly the Dems have not moved left in practice as much as the GOP has moved right on this issue, and Democrats did not care to emphasize the issue when they had their best chance to implement change.
Regarding guns, same story. A bipartisan compromise passed and was signed into law by Reagan in 1986 (strengthening some gun control laws but weakening others). In 1993 and 1994 when Dems have control, the Brady bill and 1994 crime bill including the assault weapons ban pass with bipartisan support overcoming a filibuster. Even with Democrats holding 60 seats in the Senate in 2009-2010, gun control legislation was unable to pass (and not even proposed). In 2013, even with Dems controlling the Senate with only a couple fewer seats than they held in 1993-1994, the Toomey-Manchin bill fails to overcome a filibuster (with several Democrats opposing it). Today, no chance of any gun control bill getting more than a couple Republican votes and would absolutely not be brought up for a vote by Mitch McConnell.
On abortion, neither party has really passed much significant at the national level, and almost all the laws passed at the state level have been moving policy in a rightward direction. It's all about the Courts and the GOP of course has been much more ruthless than Democrats in getting justices approved and in blocking Democratic appointees. In 1975 (John Paul Stevens), 1981 (Sandra Day O'Connor), 1986 (Anthony Kennedy) and 1990 (David Souter), Republican Presidents nominated pro-choice justices. But then the rightward shift starts in 1991--Clarence Thomas was approved with 52 votes by a Democratically controlled Senate to replace Thurgood Marshall, shifting the court significantly to the right--the Democrats could have filibustered who even just denied the nominee a vote outright but they do not. Samuel Alito is confirmed to replace Sandra Day O'Connor in 2005 with Democrats unable to muster the votes to sustain a filibuster, shifting the court significantly to the right. Republicans abolish the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees to confirm Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett all with fewer than 60 votes--Kavanaugh replacing Kennedy and especially Barrett replacing Ginsburg representing significant rightward shifts. Now McConnell is openly saying he will block any Biden Supreme Court nominee in 2023 if he's back in power. So again, GOP politicians have moved well to the right, far more than Democrats have moved left, with the result that the Court is now poised to overturn Roe Vs. Wade.
Regarding racial issues, again all of the action is basically in the Courts. Democrats have never enacted or even proposed any radical legislation on this issue, and the Supreme Court keeps gutting voting rights and paring back affirmative action laws.
"Defunding the police" is completely a local issue, which has not been implemented in anything more than a few small areas. Joe Biden does not support it. Even if Democrats by some miracle got 60 Senate seats again, it's not going to be implemented on a national level given how many Dem politicians oppose it. So yes, it is completely a Fox News constructed boogeyman.
I could go on, but I think you get my point. Actions, not words, are what matter in politics, so when determining how a party has changed, look to what the party leaders do, not what the voters say they support. These poll results do confirm that both party's leadership is generally to the right of where the party's base voters are--seems like a pretty good argument to me to keep pushing the party leadership to the left!
"So it's crystal clear GOP politicians have moved far to the right on immigration."
George W. Bush, working with Democrats, passed the 2006 Secure Fence Act to build "two layers of reinforced fencing" along 700 miles of the southern border. Among the senators who backed it: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and current Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. This suggests the Democrats are the ones who have moved left. (To be fair, part of that is just a reaction to Trump's extreme rhetoric and idiocy on immigration issues.)
" 'Defunding the police' is completely a local issue"
As a practical matter that is true, but nationally it shows the philosophical forces at work moving the Democratic Party leftward. Perception becomes reality in politics.
Your conclusion that it's best to keep pushing the Democratic Party leadership to the left I think is not sound. Consider that 53% of white women voted for Trump in 2020. It's baffling that Democrats could lose the majority of white women when it comes to Trump. Among white women with no college - Trump won by 27 points. This is a group Democrats claim to want to help, and this just shows that Democrats sure aren't connecting with them. Yes, things like pushing for defunding the police, dismissing border security concerns, and declaring the country white supremacist really does matter.
"George W. Bush, working with Democrats, passed the 2006 Secure Fence Act to build "two layers of reinforced fencing" along 700 miles of the southern border. Among the senators who backed it: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and current Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. This suggests the Democrats are the ones who have moved left. (To be fair, part of that is just a reaction to Trump's extreme rhetoric and idiocy on immigration issues.)"
And now Biden is seizing private property to continue building Trump's border wall: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/15/biden-border-wall-texas-property/
The key phrasing: George W. Bush's fence.
If only it were the Big Beautiful Wall that your supreme pieeyed commander Donald Trump had promised.
White women can't be racists? Who knew?
Why is it only the actions of those in power that carry any weight? I'm a republican. When I vote I'm also thinking about the average person on the street. I see and hear the liberals (on Twitter, on sites such as this, Mother Jones, Washing Monthly, etc.) and some of their fringe opinions and I think about them when I vote. No, not because I want to "own the libs". But because I'm scared that if a democrat wins the election they either share some of these crazy ideas or that they may at least try to appease the left wing nuts in some way. I'm sure democrats do the same thig as well. They don't want any credence given to the lunatics that stormed that capital. The battle lines and inspirations for the culture wars are definitely not just formed by the actions of elected officials.
"So it's crystal clear GOP politicians have moved far to the right on immigration."
Huh.
"All Americans, not only in the States most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens...We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it."
President Bill Clinton, SOTU (1995)
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I would also point out that the Democrats have not suffered any electoral penalty for this leftward shift relative to the less rightward shift of the GOP. From 1968 to 1988 the Democrats lost 5 out of 6 Presidential elections and got 112 Electoral Votes or fewer in all 5 of their losses. Since 1992 Democrats have won 5 out of 8 Presidential elections with at least 232 Electoral Votes in each election, and have won the popular vote in 7 out of 8 elections.
Now in Congress, you could make a better case--1994 was a clear turning point where Republicans started becoming the majority party more often than not, after Democrats had been the dominant party since the 1930s. The fact that there are no longer very many culturally moderate/conservative Democrats in Congress as compared to the significant block of such Democrats in the past has hurt the party in Congressional elections especially in rural areas. Still, the Democrats are far from some sort of permanent minority like the GOP was from 1954 to 1994, and the leftward lurch of the suburbs is more beneficial to Democrats in the House than the rightward lurch of rural areas is to the Republicans--many suburbs are going from either right leaning to competitive or competitive to left leaning, whereas rural areas are mostly just going from leaning right to solidly right.
Regarding minority voters, it's absolutely true Democrats have to focus more on issues relevant to them and get out of the "ivory tower" so to speak that many liberal whites occupy regarding racial issues or risk further erosion with these voters. The lack of traditional "boots on the ground" campaigning and organizing in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic almost certainly hurt Democratic performance with Hispanics, and to a lesser degree Blacks.
Focusing on bread and butter economic issues instead of cultural issues, as Democrats are doing in 2021 with their trifecta with bills such as COVID relief, infrastructure etc. could help reduce class and educational polarization by actively helping minorities and less educated white voters in real world ways, rather than the vapid and theoretical bluster the GOP offers them. This dovetails with my previous point--look at what the parties actually do, not what they say!
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Good column. In the past, I would tell friends and colleagues: "I'm a Democrat, but I'm not stupid about it." Well, as the column documents, the Democrats are in Full Stupid, like the Republicans so often have been. I am unrepresented, and far from alone in that regard.
The comments here vividly illustrate just how stupid the Democrats have become. Congrats, kids, you are everything you claim to oppose. There is nothing good to say about this.
Amen! I can't believe how so many people just buy into the latest trendy issues. Have they really looked at what is going on? Oh, I guess they read The NY Times, so they think they know everything they need to know.
I'd love to return to the Democrats, but not until they pull that clown car out of the ravine on the left side of the road. Until then, I guess I'll have to hold my nose and vote for the Republicans. I can hardly believe it, but that's how it is. By the way, my congressional district is a "swing," and until the Dems knock it off with their craziness, I guess I have no real alternative but to support the R congresscritter. I'm not exactly holding my breath waiting for sanity to return to the Democratic Party, which has been captured by radicals bent on political suicide. What a terrible situation!
Joe Biden: Radical
Chuck Schumer: Radical
Nancy Pelosi: Radical
You, and others, mistake what the media like to emphasize over reality.
Further, the extremists in the GOP are far more extreme than anyone who is considered part of the "far left."
Wake up!
"By the way, my congressional district is a "swing," and until the Dems knock it off with their craziness, I guess I have no real alternative but to support the R congresscritter."
Troll much? You go right ahead and support the party of authoritarianism. The party that thinks Trump is their virtual god. Politeness prevents me from characterizing your comment more precisely.
On Trump - "He is highly biblical, and I would say to your listeners, we will in all likelihood never see a more godly, biblical president again in our lifetime."
Hmm. This is the guy who had sex with a porn star while his new wife Melanie was at home with their newborn son. This is the guy who 25 women have accused of sexual assault. This is the narcissist who lies constantly in extreme ways to try to help himself crush others. This is the guy who lies about the election and said he lost only by fraud to massage his ego, while doing great harm to the country. This is the guy who says he loves to get revenge, and his actions indicate this is one of his chief goals in life. The list goes on and on.
I guess hypocrisy knows no bounds when it comes to those who got duped by Trump.
I could easily prove enough of this by giving my name. My past donations are easily researched. But it would't matter; you are a "progressive," and your hatred and arrogance are unbounded.
As opposed to the GQP, which is NOT a clowncar?
De Santis's inability to put on a mask, Ted Cruz's Mexican holiday (& throwing his tween daughters under the bus after), Qevin Mc Carthy's embrace of conspiracy in his push to enable Devin Vacas's investigation into the sidelining of an ex-Vacas aide elevated to NSA in the dying days of the Jefe Regime, future GQP House Majority* Leader Matt Gaetz playing the county fair circuit with Marjorie Taylor-Greene's Hebraic Laser Carnival**, & Ron Johnson's vaccine denialism are not a circus sideshow?
*Funny, when you consider Matty likes his ladies to be of the age of minority.
**Wasn't expecting a dank memes reboot of Jerrell Walker's Kinetic Karnival, but then, the Southeastern U.S. where MTG was made is fond of magnet schools.
So this is "progressive" whataboutism. I didn't vote for Trump either time. Nor did I vote for the corrupt liars puked out there by the Democratic Party. Unlike you, I don't hate this country, and therefore I didn't support Caligula or Nero.
By the way, what is it about New York City being too corrupt and incompetent to even run a municipal election? And they think people will do anything but laugh and fart in their arrogant, stupid, lying direction?
I do appreciate Hillary Clinton for inspiring me to buy an AR-15 and name it after her.
I guess what the centrists want democrats to do is campaign on maintaining the status quo. Everything is fine. Democrats ought not campaign on meaningful change or cultural criticism, they need only promise to manage the government. These various crises (climate change, gun violence, systematic racism, income inequality, poverty, etc. can be left to take care of themselves without anyone making much effort to drive serious change.
Ok… does anyone think that they would be rewarded with large electoral majorities? I don’t.
Republicans, as near as I can tell, don’t care about governance at all. And they are rewarded for it. They only seem to care about owning the libs and demagoguery for the purposes of… well, for nothing. They have no agenda. So is have bipartisan agreement possible? The government should do nothing.
Right, and you want to triple the cost of fuel; confiscate guns while emptying the prisons and decimating the police; define whites as "racists;" and support every looter. You hate this country's guts, and actually expects others to sign on. Good luck. See ya in November 2022.
By the way, if you're so much smarter than mere human beings, please explain why the Democrats of New York City are too incompetent to run a municipal election. If you can't even handle the BASICS, just why should you be trusted with anything else?
I don’t care who you vote for. I mostly don’t really care about anything but keeping my job long enough to retire comfortably and to have that money last. I suspect that’s what you want too. The status quo serves my interests just fine. About the only thing I really want to change about government is for it to stop bombing and killing people all over he world. But Democrats and Republicans agree that’s ok. Go figure.
While trump didn’t do any harm to me personally until he fumbled the pandemic response, it is increasingly clear that republicans are simply the enemy. I’ll take incompetence over threatening any day. Good luck.
Otherwise it’s still an open question, can a centrist agenda actually win? Biden has no chance of accomplishing any of those awful things you are concerned about, so what’s the problem? He’s the centrist you desire and yet it seems like you still won’t go for it. What’s up with that?
I don't expect you to care. You are way too busy hating this country's guts to care about anything other than destroying it.
I don’t know… it seems like you are quite upset about your fellow citizens and their ideas. If you want to project upon me the ideology of your enemies, go ahead. I’m not that guy though. Good luck.
And this is why I don’t trust republicans… they are nuts. This is what Trump did to us.
State health officials are conducting informal focus groups and outreach to try to ease pastors’ concerns about discussing vaccination, but progress is often elusive, they said. Many pastors said they have already lost congregants to fights over coronavirus restrictions and fear risking further desertions by promoting vaccinations. Others said their congregations are so ideologically opposed to the vaccine that discussing it would not be worth the trouble.
“If I put forth effort to push it, I’d be wasting my breath,” said Nathan White, a pastor at Liberty Baptist Church in Skipwith, Va., a small town near the North Carolina border.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/03/southern-pastors-vaccines-497898
Let’s talk about trust if you want.
Jakejjj is a neo-fascist troll, not a centrist. Even Joe Manchin doesn't agree with Jake's mindless drivel.
Triassic sands, you're free to be another "progressive" racist who hates this country.
Justin, why should anyone trust you and your kind?
Good looking strawmen you assembled there. You left out progressive's plans to force you to become gay AND get an abortion.
Well of course! A rich "progressive" like you is fine with stiking it to the working class whose guts you hate.
"But it would't matter; you are a "progressive," and your hatred and arrogance are unbounded." Jakejjj
"Triassic sands, you're free to be another "progressive" racist who hates this country." Jakejjj
I'm assuming you are writing from a mental health institution somewhere, because your comments, in addition to being factual mush, and so overwrought and anxiety-ridden as to make me concerned for your well-being. If you aren't institutionally -- currently -- please see a psychiatrist and get treatment. If you are already taking medication, please see the doctor and have it adjusted -- it's not working.
I try to avoid arguments online -- they serve no point, but your comments are bizarre. The Democratic Party right now is dominated by moderates, but the media play up every comment by someone to the left in order to increase clicks. Yet, you've decided that the relatively few people you regard with horror -- wanting to address climate change and have everyone able to get health care coverage is truly horrifying -- are in charge, despite the objective evidence right in front of your face.
Then, you respond to people by telling them they hate this country. That is pure 2021 Republicanism and should have no place in the Democratic Party. You need help. Whether it is better information or just something to calm your overwrought nerves, I can't tell, but both seem to be a real problem.
Telling people you're going to have to vote for a party that has abandoned democracy and is currently seeking the ability to fix future elections and is dominated by certifiable neo-fascists is not a way to achieve credibility. I have no idea who you've voted for or to whom you've donated money, but you write like a troll.
Always good to hear from a communist who hates this country's guts. By the way, if you and Black Looters Matter want that civil war, bring it on. We are prepared.
Yawn.
Now, I'm a "communist!" And you are apparently something like 15-years-old and a pathetic imitation troll. Your parents need to put parental controls on your computer. In the fifties, they would have spanked you for being a brat.
"We are prepared." Who, you and your G.I. Joe action figures?
Chimps could do better.
Ignored from here on out.
I call 'em like I see 'em, Fidel. LOL
"The Democratic Party right now is dominated by moderates"
Seems to me Manchin and Sinema are the only two moderates left in the entirety of federal government within the Democratic Party
(and with Sinema, it seems only a recent change from her much much more progressive start in politics). And I cannot even begin to count the number of supposedly liberal Democrats publicly demanding they silently obey the most extreme voices in Congress (ironically in the name of saving democracy).
This is 100% contrarian nonsense, The Culture Wars were invented by Nixon (see War on Drugs, Kent State) and Pat Buchanan in the 1970s (see abortion, and NRA coup) as a way to divide and conquer, thus permitting a minority party (GOP) to gain and maintain power. It accelerated under Reagan (no new taxes) and went thermonuclear with Newt (see Whitewater, Impeachment, Buddhist Temple, Fox News). The Koch Bros and their fellow traveler billionaires funded this counter-revolution against the New Deal and Great Society to the tune of $100M+ per year (see Powell Memorandum 1971, Federalist Society, ALEC, etc). The glaring fallacy here is cherry picking the start date of 2000. The GOP had made the full transition to hard core right wing by then. The theft of the election in 2000 (see Florida) and Iraq war of aggression based lies, coupled with the Crash of 2008, and Tea Party activity was enough to start moving some Democrats to the left. This effect has been well studied, and books published on the subject. Kevin Phillips (worked with Nixon on the Southern Strategy) has a body of work on the subject. See The Emerging Republican Majority by Phillips. The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 by Wilentz. The Age of American Unreason in a Culture of Lies by Jacoby. Winner-Take-All Politics by Hacker and Pierson. Off Center: The Republican Revolution also by Hacker and Pierson. It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism by Mann and Ornstein. Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich and the Rise of the New Republican Party by Zelizer. How the South Won the Civil War by Heather Cox Richardson. If you go back to 1980, the polarization was in full swing thanks to Nixon's Culture Wars. In the US, “the timing of the introduction of Fox News appears roughly consistent with the acceleration of the growth in affective polarization during the 1990s.” https://www.vox.com/2020/1/24/21076232/polarization-america-international-party-political
That doesn't mean that the Progressives aren't the loonies NOW.
And ask Kevin Phillips what he thinks NOW. Oh, wait, you haven't heard from him lately because he's not saying what he's supposed to say. He's thinking for himself.
"That doesn't mean that the Progressives aren't the loonies NOW."
There is a bit of loonieness among some Progressives, but for all-out, off-the-charts loonieness look at the majority of people in the Trump base. To get so wrapped up in a cult of personality that they'll believe anything their dear leader will tell them - I don't know how people could get any loonier in a democracy. To blindly accept Trump's claim that massive nationwide fraud caused him to lose the 2020 election is loonie tunes stuff.
And to believe that Democrats are evil people (communists many Trumpers will tell you) who want to destroy the country is loonie tunes stuff too. These people are beyond the reach of debate.
I think that's what your kind called "whataboutism" until you started doing it. Tell me, hypocrite, do you wonder why you are laughed at? I don't.
"look at the majority of people in the Trump base"
Considering you are stereotyping 70 MILLION people here, I find your implied moral high ground on issues of bigotry, tolerance, and being the reasonable NOT extremist loony somewhat questionable.
Realty check: the Trumpers are the loonies NOW. See Jan 6.
"This is 100% contrarian nonsense... "
That defines KD2021. It's like he's trolling himself. I've visited and commented on his blogs for years, but I've had just about enough. So much now is "contrarian nonsense" that it's gotten harder and harder to find anything worthwhile. He doesn't have to, nor should he, adhere to some imaginary party line, but it would be nice if it weren't just noise.
He is still reeling from the ascent of Nate Silver to the heights of bloggeria millions.
Kevin was doing data journalism & chartporn back when Nate was still working on Wall Street & whacking off to ironical Baseball Fuy Remembrance.
My feelings as well. It is as if he is trolling the libs to get more clicks, now that he is working for himself. The bothsider nonsense is very corrosive to our democracy.
Speaking of... have you seen the Buchanan Project on Twitter? After the first post, I thought it was a parody of the Lincoln Project, but as it tweets more, I realized they are serious.
It would be funny, if not so scary.
Once you realize that the 0's in Kevin's charts are not really an absolute 0 but relative to some norm that is undefined (yes, the 0 is a percent change from something, but that something is undefined -- we're just supposed to assume that something hasn't shifted; speaking for myself, no can do), then you realize this is all meaningless.
David Shor's theory that "defund the police" was responsible for Democratic losses among Hispanics in 2020 has been, in my view, pretty strongly disproven. There are multiple longitudinal polls of Hispanics available, and they all indicate that most of the Great Latino Red Shift happened *before* George Floyd died.
Here's a trendline from Nationscape: https://twitter.com/rp_griffin/status/1368215034736828418
Here's another researcher saying that RDD bilingual surveys found the same timeline: https://twitter.com/nataliemj10/status/1370055573169967121
Here's a summary of 2020 polls from Latino Decisions, which also failed to find a significant increase in Trump favorability among Latinos after George Floyd's death compared to before it: https://twitter.com/TNG512/status/1367164163412267010
With regards to your general point, I think that the personal opinions of the party base are a very poor proxy for the positions of the party politicians themselves, much less voter perceptions of the positions of the politicians. So I don't see those polls as good evidence either way.
Hispanic voters are more favorable to strongmen candidates like Rick Skeletor & El Jefe Maximo de Maralago given their background in totalitarian (both left & right) LatAm states.
Good God, what a condescending "progressive" racist!
"Good God, what a condescending "progressive" racist!"
Progressives: we oppose racism and negative stereotyping and promote tolerance.
Also progressives: you know what THOSE people are like.
Happy 4th of July, fellow Americans!
https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/odwrl1/a_few_bangs_for_the_holiday_no_guns_were_injured/
Just thinking. The 3rd or 4th of July would be the perfect evening to murder someone. No one would ever hear the gunshot.
Trump? 😂
Perhaps I missed it, but where is the median voter on each of these issues in 2021? You can't assume it's exactly between the Democratic mean and the Republican mean.
How did you create a combined scale for the "overlap" graphs? The two distributions appear to cross at around 4.5.
I agree that some progressives have gone off the deep end on law enforcement issues. The person who first suggested "defund the police" should be flayed. But it shouldn't be difficult to support police (and effective law enforcement in general) while insisting police respect individual rights and refrain from killing people who do not present an immediate threat. Democrats also need to be clear that there is no fundamental conflict between border security and a humane immigration policy. But in the other issues you name, I see no reason to back off the progressive position. Sometimes it's just a matter of right and wrong.
My half assed internet research reveals that the idea has been around for over 100 years. Apparently W.E.B. Du Bois was a proponent.
The #DefundthePolice was a ground-up twitter thing and it went from there directly into the FOX propaganda machine where it was said to be a top priority of every living Democrat, ranking up there with killing babies and giving free stuff to the you-know-who's.
Kevin is alarmed at this and wants Democrats to spend precious time & money denouncing every straw creature FOX can come up with.
Barry Hussein Osama did just that when he held a press conference in 2011 to share his Official (Still Not) Longform Hawai'I Birth Certificate Supplied by the GQP Hawai'i Secretary of Health & Human Services... & that still didn't shut up the FOXnews yappers.
In fact, it just reignited GQP font expertise with taunts in the manner of 2004's George W. Bush-Texas Air National Guard file scandal, including "check the kerning".
There's something badly wrong here. The issue on which Dems are supposed to have become most partisan is same-sex marriage, which is about as settled (in Dems favour) as a culture war issue can be.
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Do you have data about left/right movement in the 80s? My memory is that the radicalization of the right (Reagan, Cheney, Buchanan, and Gingrich cast long shadows) came before any leftward movement on the part of the populace. Aren't you usually the one who says you need longer time-spans in your charts?
Also, could the leftward movement be seen as a response to the explicitness of the radical right Republican strategies of Mitch McConnell et al? (The data does not take place in a vacuum.)
Jesse Jackson's hard charge in the 1988 primaries followed by the blowout loss in the general caused the Democrats to spend the next 20 years "distancing themselves" from Jesse Jackson and any other well-known African American. The DLC was expressly created to move the Democratic Party away from everything Democrats had been working for since FDR. I get sick thinking about it.
I atteded the '92 D convention as a voluteer. Had a brief speaking part, and told 'em that the internet was how to get around the media's dead, lazy, sweaty hand. I wonder if any of them remember the Prophet.
You "progressives" are stuck in the past. You think, as do your friends in the dying liberal media, that you can lie like you always did. Um, guess what, nutcases? Your lies can be checked. All of the king's men, and all of his "progressive" "fact checkers," won't put Humpty NYT Dumpty back together again.
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Liberal vs Conservative is, in its very nature, a cultural conflict.
In details it's working out to be a team sport or tribal conflict too but that's something else.
"It is well within our power to break our two-decade 50-50 deadlock and become routine winners in national politics. All it takes is a moderation of our positions from "pretty far left" to "pretty liberal." That's all. But who's got the courage to say so?"
OK, I'll bite. Give some specific examples of "pretty far left" and "pretty liberal" positions on specific issues. Do the "pretty far left" positions have significant support among mainstream Democrats?
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This is nonsense on stilts, Kevin. In the sixties the Republicans used the Southern Strategy -- a deliberate pandering to racists who were afraid that black people were getting too many rights -- because they didn't have any other ideas that appealed to enough voters. So -- racism. A cultural war. In the seventies, the Republicans felt they needed another wedge issue in addition to racism so they turned abortion (supported by most evangelicals, who also voted for Jimmy Carter) into that wedge issue, culminating in Reagan going on bended knee to Falwell and Robertson and others in exchange for their votes and money. Neither the racism nor the religious bigotry was the result of Democrats moving to the left. The Democrats moved to the right at the end of the 80s, out of a fear that too many democrats were voting for Reagan, and they'd never win another national election if they didn't appeal to suburban whites and big business. And that was followed by Gingrich declaring that Republicans should wage all-out war against Democrats to win elections, and Norquist declaring that "bipartisanship is date rape." All the while Bill Clinton was governing like a Rockefeller Republican: shrinking the executive branch, eliminating welfare, passing a nasty crime bill, and delivering an historic surplus to his successor. And Obama came up with an entirely Republican health care plan -- Romneycare, which every leftist hated -- and they denounced him as a communist/socialist/terrorist/Kenyan/etc etc etc. The Republicans chose more than sixty years ago to win elections not on policy idea but by waging cultural warfare. It had nothing to do with Democrats moving left, it had to do with the fact that cutting taxes for rich people and cutting regulations on business just aren't very popular. You have missed the entire forest for looking at a small grove of trees.
You whine a lot, don't you? LOL
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