How do these two bits of conventional wisdom, which seem to directly contradict each other, sort themselves out?
My view is that the first one is false. The second one seems to be borne out by election data. Whatever Americans tend to call themselves (and I recognize that more call themselves “conservative” then "liberal), I believe that, fundamentally, America is a centrist country on economic issues, and a center-left country on social issues.
Many liberals on this board think that the Democratic party is ‘center-right’ (it is…if you compare the US to Europe), so there really isn’t a contradiction if you accept their basic assumption.
The US is a center country, by definition. There is no universal standard of left/right, and we seem to swing back and forth between our historical center every few years. The best measure of this is the House, which is the only national election that reflects the popular vote. The senate and the president are not popularly elected, so don’t necessarily reflect the mood of the country, on average. Those last two reflect the mood filter through the lens of the states.
Oh dear.
Have you, like looked at the social policies of other countries? Made the comparison on equivalent issues with the US?
Or is it your view that the rest of the world is rabidly communist left so that the US must occupy the centre? Could you name a couple of western countries that you would consider to be to the far right of US on social issues?
The “left-right” axis thing is sort of useful as a shorthand way of describing political views, but its a pretty fuzzy and mutable concept, and I think we do ourselves a disservice by using it so much while discussing politics. We’d be far better off if we discussed how much people feel about particluar issues, instead of trying to group dissimilar issues into large “left-wing” or “right-wing” baskets.
Trying to classify the American public as a whole on the axis is a pretty good illustration of how worthless the whole concept is. Americans want higher taxes on the rich, so they’re left-wing. But they want lower taxes as a whole, so they’re right-wing. A majority support abortion in some cases, so they’re left-wing, but a majority support some restrictions on abortion, so they’re right-wing. Most Americans are to the right of European norms*, so they’re rightwing, but most modern Americans are fart to the left of the political center in the 50’s and 60’s so they’re leftwing.
You could design some point system and try and to average across many issues and get an answer that way, but your result would depend very little on the actual “average view” of Americans and very much on the particulars of what issues you looked at and how you weighted them, making the whole exercise pointless.
*(treating “Europe” as a meaningful political unit is a pretty hazy concept in and of itself. So saying “Europe is to the left” is really a too-fer as far as obtuse and near-meaningless abstractions go).
There is no contradiction. America is indeed, by western world standards, center-right. But the Democratic party is also center-right by the same standards. (And the Republican Party is far-right.)
Since I’m American, I’m using the American definitions of “centrist”, “center-right” and “center-left”. I know by world standards Clinton and Obama are conservatives, but I’m just talking about American politics.
I agree- but I’m using American standards, not world standards. I’m speaking of the conventional wisdom among American pundits that “America is a center-right country”- I believe they’re speaking of American political standards, not world standards.
High turnout helps the Dems because more regular voters tend to vote GOP. First time or special event voters tend to vote Dem. High turnout means more first time or special event voters going to the polls.
I somewhat understand what you mean about the presidential election, what with the electoral college and all, but how is the Senate not popularly elected? Do you mean that representation is based on fixed-state allocation and not on population?
Well yeah this is the actual answer, i think iiandyii’s point is that America leans left but the right is a lot more likely to vote.
Other than the global average, if that is calculable.
However, if you really want to know how the American people break down ideologically, the best guide is the Pew Political Typology. Where any given one of the nine typology groupings falls on the left-right spectrum is a debatable point, but the typology at least tells us how many are at what points relative to each other. And partisan alignment is clearer: The “Mostly Democratic” groupings make up 37% of the general public, 40% of registered voters; the “Mostly Republican” groupings make up 20% of the general public, 25% of registered voters; and the three"Mostly Independent" groupings are all over the place, even WRT each other.
If the Republicans truly believed that America is a center-right country, then there would be no voter-registration hassles, there would be no “voter id” problem to solve. The Republicans would bend over backwards to register as many voters as possible, assured that the majority would favor them. This would have been just the wonderful news that President McCain’s re-election team would have been waiting for.
The U.S. is a centrist country. Not center-right or center-left, but an amorphous shifting center that coalesces around individual issues without any regard for where they might otherwise land on the political spectrum. The centrists are hard to characterize because they have very little in common with one another beyond the one politically crucial opinion that they share: extremes of any sort are not favored.
Neither the Tea Party movement nor the Occupy movement picked up any more than a fraction of approval. Both had few positions that could be articulated as positives; they were against things. The center can be against things as issues but they like being for rather than against. They can be for vouchers because they seem like a positive solution to the problems with public schools. And they stopped being against gay marriage not because the radical atheists infiltrated them but because the extremist position against them stopped making sense when they saw gays as neighbors and in-laws. Inclusion is always a positive; the U.S. center always moves towards inclusion, slow as it might seem at times.
Understanding that there’s a center rather than a type of center explains many things. With all the unhappiness with the two big parties, why hasn’t a viable third party sprung up? Because a third party can’t be on the extreme and get any traction. The only viable place for a third party is in the center. But the center has no distinct or unique issues that are not already being favored by one of the two main parties. Without anything to be for, the centrists won’t do anything radical, like leave an established party for the political wilderness.
Enthusiastic minorities can often win in local or state elections, especially if their opponents don’t go to the polls. There was a unique confluence of these elections in 2010, giving the Tea Party an enormous victory in the House. That fraction of the right went to the polls in presidential numbers; their opponents did not. Apparently this fooled many people into thinking that this was a trend rather than an anomaly. They thought this voting pattern would continue into the primaries. It didn’t, and it should have be obvious that it wouldn’t. The rest of the party voted in their usual numbers and the minority was already about at its maximum. No matte how many people think so, the Republican Party does not have a majority at the extremes.
Calling America center-right may be wishful thinking, it may be a defensive excuse that somehow the other side is cheating, or it may be a strategy that allows those in the middle to swing right and still feel good about themselves. It’s not a political truth. The U.S. is centrist and the position of that center bobs around like the bubble in a level floating on a rippling pond. It’s never still, and never will be.
You are assuming that the Republicans see themselves as a center-right party. I don’t think that’s true any more.
If you’re comparing against the world, which I’m not sure is the right thing to do, but anyway, then you have to compare against the whole world, which includes countries like Saudi Arabia and Belarus.
I’m really glad to see Romney standing up for a law passed in 1996 that he wants to keep around when he’s president. What an amazing, insightful man.
If we only use American political standards then aren’t we precisely in the center? Always?
Well, no (sadly).
If the GOP believe that America is center-right then they believe that America is waaaaaaaaaaay too far to the left for their taste. The nominal GOP today doesn’t want anything less than a far, far-right, theocratic oligarchy. You know this, 'luci!
Center-right voters are generally Dems* so of course the GOP doesn’t want them voting.
*in the days of yore (pre-Reagan) there would be quite a few center-right voters who would vote GOP. This is no longer the case.
Maybe the Democratic party is a center right party.