I guess I’m a liberal (although I’d have voted for Nixon and Reagan and more of a liberal by European standards), and this board is definitely left-leaning, being divided between the Obama-supporting standard liberals and the progressives. Also most of the conservatives are libertarian-leaning.
Moderate / Libertarian - I see this board is leaning liberal.
Moderate would have been a good option, or other. And people he is asking about modding, not membership.
Are conservatives discriminated against here is the question.
How do you get this understanding
from this?
Regards, Kyrie, liberal member who thinks this board, considered collectively, is reflexively antagonistic toward posts that express conservative viewpoints.
I’m some mixture of liberal and libertarian (but I voted liberal for the poll), and there’s no question to me that this board is liberal as the word is commonly understood in US politics. On a more global scale, I think of this boards as fairly middle-of-the-road, perhaps even slightly conservative. Perhaps.
From piss poor reading skills …
Illustrating how one sees what one expects to see … Yeah that’s it.
My apologies.
The board over all has more liberals than the general population … accepting that the of course it is pro-liberal. The discussion this spun off of was centering around whether or not liberals treat conservatives badly, worse than the other way around, and are institutionally discriminated against. My quote was a request for him to be open to the idea that such was more his perception than reality.
I misread based off of that. Again, sorry.
I don’t think your liberalness is as obvious as you think.
Shhhhh…
Regards,
Shodan
I assume the one “I’m conservative, and think the board has a conservative lean” was an attempted joke, outright error, or functional illiteracy?
Indeed.
My political views are socially liberal but fiscally conservative. I am fine with most of the liberal social causes, I just don’t want to pay for them. 
But if I have to take sides I would self-identify as a conservative.
This board definitely leans liberal and is also moderated that way. If you disagree with this statement, enlighten me as to which moderators identify as conservative. Unless I am missing something the number of conservative moderators here is not greater than zero.
This impedes discussion in a number of ways. Conservative members and guests may read the discussions but not participate because they see the results and leave it to the few conservative posters that do participate. Polite discussion and discourse is simply not possible on hot button issues. Rants and raves that support the majority view are let to slide. Because the mods agree. You are not going to get support from the mods to keep a discussion civil if it goes against the personal bias of the mods. This is only natural. A more balanced board would have a more balanced moderation team.
Conservative posters get moderated, liberal posts of pure vitriol get a pass for two reasons, the moderators agree with the expressed view, and two, nobody else reports the post as offensive, so there is not a need to moderate it.
I do appreciate the efforts of the few ‘token’ or ‘house’ conservatives whose posts are acceptable but there must be many others like myself who do not bother to engage on certain topics.
Reformed Republican here, now an independent (thanks, President Bush) who sees the board as liberal, but believes the mods strive to be as even-handed as they can. I stopped reading the Barbecue Pit as it seemed a forum used only by liberals to demonize the right, and I don’t need to put up with that.
I am what my wife called politically useless and politically harmless. My views are conservative on some issues and liberal on others, so for the last two Presidential elections I have written in candidates (Giuliani in 2008 and Huntsman in 2012).
What, no love for the Monster Raving Loony Party? I shall be writing a stern letter to my local representative, Whopping Lord Foghole.
It is not a secret the SDMB is liberal-leaning. As a conservative-libertarian, I have simply learned to tolerate it.
And… it amuses me that the libs on this board have changed some of their views over the years after getting spanked on certain issues. Take gun control, for example. Throughout the 2000s, the SDMB was decidedly anti-gun, and *many *posters spent *many *hours arguing the Second Amendment does not apply to common citizens, that no one has a right to keep and bear arms, etc. Today they are cowering in the corner and licking their wounds.
I went with “liberal poster and see a pro-liberal lean,” but the lean is pretty mild. One of the best things about this board is that there are a fair number of outspoken conservatives, whose range of knowledge, clear thinking, and courtesy (and lack thereof) runs the same gamut as the board as a whole. The board would be much less entertaining or enlightening were it otherwise.
And because the board membership does happen to lean liberal, I have to give special kudos to the conservatives here. It would be so much easier for them, in terms of personal energies spent, to abandon this place. Thanks for stayin’ and playin’!
I went with “Liberal poster and see a neutral board”.
If “conservatives” don’t post more here then that’s their own goddamned fault. If they can’t back up their ideology on a message board then maybe, just maybe, it’s because their ideology sucks to begin with.
I see the same complaints about “liberal bias” at Fark and Reddit. Or pretty much any site on teh intertubes that isn’t a conservative echo chamber.
Mind you, if the US Democrats had put up the likes of Sarah Palin as a VP candidate in 2008 I’d probably be too ashamed to post as well. And also keep in mind that US Democrats are hard-right when seen through the eyes of the rest of the Western world. There is no “Left” in America.
Rick Perry and Rick Santorum both came close to being the 2012 Republican candidate for President of the United States before they were beaten out by Mitt Romney. Michelle Bachmann was even in the late running for the GOP nomination, for fuck’s sake.
Bias? There’s no bias. It’s just that the GOP tries to get people elected who are quite clearly idiotic scum. If your Party is putting forth Newt Gingrich as a “Family Values” candidate then maybe the problem is with YOU.
I am a liberal, and I see it this way: Most of the posters here lean left. Given that most of us lean left, I have to say that the majority of posts that involve politics in some way, also trend left.
In my casual observation, most of the conservatives here cannot support their positions. (We have excellent conservative posters here, though. I may not agree with them, but they present their cases well.) There are a couple of posters who are rather thick-headed. That is, they are presented with evidence, and then either ignore it completely or else ‘move the goalposts’. Such behaviour makes them look silly or obstinate. Not that we liberals are innocent. I have seen the same behaviour in gun control threads, for example.
In any case, when presented with an obstinate conservative poster that will not acknowledge presented evidence, refuses to provide counter evidence, changes the question in the middle of the debate, and so on, liberal posters will pile on, creating a hostile environment. I know that more than a couple longtime conservative posters have left the board when they felt that they were being shouted down by the rest of us.
We do lean left. But we need conservatives here, lest we become just another echo chamber. We need conservatives who are able to present evidence (especially when requested to do so) and who can make a rational case for their positions. We liberals should probably be less harsh in our debates. It’s just difficult when some of the opposition does not debate well.
I’m generally conservative/libertarian- I see the moderating as pretty fair, but in general, the posters are very liberal and dismissive and hostile (on occasion) to conservative ideas. If you don’t believe it, take a look at the Elections and Great Debates boards. There is also lots of posters who post liberal topics knowing that there’s all kinds of lefties who will agree and pat them on the back for agreeing with them. I’m not saying conservatives don’t do that. Hey, everybody loves to have people agree with them. But I’ve seen more liberals be oblivious to, and dismissive of, those who don’t agree.
This. Mods almost always neutral, but many posts with wink,wink,aren’t we just the greatest,us conservative haters slip through.
Also, what C. Montgomery said.
I think this board leans Cat Lady.