Oh, really? We must have missed that memo up here in Maine, where independent Angus King was elected governor and then later as US Senator. Many local officials in Portland have been Greens, actually iirc Portland is considered a Green stronghold.
And Vermont, to their everlasting credit, has Bernie Sanders. The memo you missed is the one on the meaning of “almost always” in describing the national dominance of a two-party system.
I see there has been a back and forth between John, wolfpup and GIGObuster on this, but I think the ‘correct’ answer is that on some issues the Republicans have moved right verse where they were ‘In recent decades’, and on some they have moved left from then and on some they are essentially the same. And pretty much the same goes for the Democrats. Mostly, however, the American people have moved left on some issues, right on others and stayed the same on still others, and the political parties represent the relative position of those voters. To a lefty such as yourself and others in this thread it looks like both parties have moved right. I assure you, to a righty such as my dad the entire country has lurched alarmingly left. The reality is that the parties have stayed pretty much the same relative to the US center. Issues change, with older issues falling out of favor in some cases or being repackaged or viewed while new ones come up, so it’s difficult to really judge where the party of Reagan would have stood on issues important today, or where the party of Carter would have stood on issues important to the Democrats today. Certainly the party of JFK is not the same one as the party of Obama, and you’d be hard pressed to say that the Dems have moved right across the board from there.
I think that’s true to some extent, because for one thing there have been really sweeping social changes that Republicans have been dragged kicking and screaming into having to face that they would very much have preferred not to. Women’s rights have empowered women with career opportunities, and economic realities in many cases have pretty much necessitated them, thus transforming the nature of the family. Being gay is no longer the awful stigma it used to be. But I don’t see any of this as evidence of Republicans “moving left” – they’ve tended to oppose such social changes, and most of them still do. I see it as Republicans being forced to adapt to inevitable realities while resisting them as much as they can, while in other areas like economic policy and health care where they actually have options, ISTM they have intentionally and assiduously moved to the right.
Likewise, the 50s and 60s were a time of great militarism in both parties due to the Cold War and the perceived Soviet threat. That’s been a huge change but I don’t even see it as ideology, right or left, just necessary policy changes reflecting new realities. And there were still enough militant lunatics around to engineer a completely pointless invasion of Iraq.
Honestly, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with any examples of major issues where Republicans have moved left, as a matter of reconsidered ideology. I’d be really interested if you had any concrete examples. It seems pretty clear to me that the overall trend has been to the right. Whenever I hear conservatives complaining about things shifting left, it always seems to be about the ACA (which attitude seems to be just historical amnesia, as I already explained) or the supposed disintegration of the family and the rise of gay rights, which I sort of addressed above. Are there any real examples?
No.
There may be some confusion here with regards to “social” issues (gay marriage, abortion, marijuana) and “economic” issues (like top marginal tax rates, minimum wage, unions).
It’s absolutely true that the country has moved left with certain social issues.Gay marriage and legal weed for example. Post Roe vs Wade america is a leftward shift with regard to abortion. Getting a divorce is now much easier than it used to be. But with regards to economic issues, there’s been a sharp rightward shift.Economic inequality has sharply increased since the 1970s. CEO salaries skyrocketed:
If the federal minimum wage in 1968 merely kept up with inflation, it would be$10.55. If it had kept up with the overall productivity growth of the economy though, it would be $21.16 per hour!
I tried to make that “social” vs. “economic” distinction in #44. What I believe is a key difference is that social issues by and large tend to be the result of non-directed social evolution rather than policymaking. It wasn’t anyone’s brilliantly inspired legislation that made gays gradually come out and become mainstream (laws for the most part, when and where they existed, criminalized them). It wasn’t any law that made marijuana practically as common as beer (again, laws tended to do the opposite; look up Harry J. Anslinger and the criminalization of cannabis, which federally I believe is still a Schedule I narcotic). And abortion in a number of countries, not just the US, was helped along by Supreme Court rulings.
So in the case of social changes, laws tended to lag behind and to be driven by underlying changes in social values and mores. No party really did a great deal to advance those changes except in the face of immense social pressure (or a Supreme Court ruling), and Republicans pretty consistently opposed them. But in the case of economic changes, this is where policymaking really holds sway – tax laws being the obvious example, employment law, minimum wage, financial and environmental regulation, so-called “right-to-work” union-busting, etc. etc. And that also includes things like health care, science funding, environmental protection, and so on. And this is primarily where I believe both parties, as per the evidence presented, have moved to the right, with Republicans driving some of the most misguided policies that have so greatly increased income inequality and further enriched the wealthiest echelons of society.
[QUOTE=Blalron]
There may be some confusion here with regards to “social” issues (gay marriage, abortion, marijuana) and “economic” issues (like top marginal tax rates, minimum wage, unions).
It’s absolutely true that the country has moved left with certain social issues.Gay marriage and legal weed for example. Post Roe vs Wade america is a leftward shift with regard to abortion. Getting a divorce is now much easier than it used to be. But with regards to economic issues, there’s been a sharp rightward shift.Economic inequality has sharply increased since the 1970s. CEO salaries skyrocketed:
[/QUOTE]
Like I said, it depends on the issue and on your focus. Economically, I’d say that from a left wing/liberal perspective we have shifted ‘right’, relative to where the center was 20 or 30 (or 40 or 50) years ago. From a social perspective you’d be hard pressed to say we’ve shifted right, however in those same time frames. It’s all about what gores ox you and what issues are hot button ones for you. For my dad, his perspective is the country is going to hell and it’s because of the massive shift left (by which he means socially and probably, from his perspective, internationally). For you and others in this thread the hot button issues are economic, where you see the US moving alarmingly to the right and the economic gap widening, GINI getting out of whack and the like. To ME, I see things as just a shift in priorities and general public radar, where the ‘center’ is, as it’s always been, in flux, and the two main parties staking out their claims around that shifting center. For me it’s a feature, not a bug, and I’m pretty happy with a large social shift left and, again to me, a more moderate economic shift sort of quasi-right, since to me the left has more of a handle on things social but is pretty unrealistic and pie in the sky when it comes to economics, while the right is down right distasteful generally on things social while having a better handle (compared to the left anyway) on things economic (well, economic conservatives do, generally…Tea Party and other brands of ‘conservative’ not so much). It’s all going to hinge on your world view though.
Getting back to the OP though I don’t oppose tightening up legislature about campaign financing, but it seems to me that when this has been tried in the past there are always unintended consequences, so the reality is probably that we will have to live with it in some form or another. Since both sides benefit from it, it’s probably a wash, but it would be nice if there was a way to put real limits on wealthy people really distorting the system as they do now…assuming there is a way to do that while maintaining freedom of speech.
One idea I like is to give every voter a voucher (let’s say $50) to donate to a candidate or candidates of their choice.
I saw a boilerplate rant the other day about how the government is too big and too easily corrupted by bribery-type stuff and this “regulatory capture”, which was an excuse for a smaller government. It kind of befuddled me, because the source of this corruption seemed to be from the private sector, so if we deregulate them, what then? I mean, if they are corrupting politicians, is it only because there are so many politicians and once those are cut way back, the business leaders will find their true noble and decent hearts and rainbow butterfly unicorn kitten?
Princeton University study: U.S no longer an actual democracy.