I haven’t seen them move “steadily to the right” at all. Obama advocated for assault weapon bans. Hillary Clinton too. Before that John Kerry did as well, and so did Al Gore, so I suppose they weren’t really moving farther to the left, but in what ways do you think they came to the right? When Scalia passed away, my impression was that Democrats were practically salivating at the thought of all the new gun control measures they were finally going to be able to enact.
Politicians dishonest about what they want to do? Perish the thought! I do believe Democrats have been worse on this account in recent years and I’ve argued it extensively. Hillary Clinton was the end result of that trend of overstrategizing a candidate’s political positions. I’d just call it deception, but your mileage may vary.
I think it’s because expecting delusional people to behave rationally is a lost cause. Invisible sky pixie believers are apt to believe anything.
I consider myself an “LBJ Democrat.” I support the New Deal, Great Society but am socially moderate, peace through strength. Limited gun control but no further than the Brady Bill. Pro-hunting, although I am not myself a hunter. Pro-Gay marriage (more of a “I don’t care who anyone fucks” attitude more than enthusiastic support), anti-marijuana (I grew up in a “druggy” household so I have a bad relationship with drugs), anti-police militarization. I believe in mandatory rehab rather than mandatory prison for drug offenses, though, unless they are of a violent nature.
Pro-Union. Anti-Communist. I believe in blanket amnesty for current “illegal” residents but tight immigration controls otherwise; anti-free trade; Realpolitik foreign policy, ideally not a hawk unless I feel the situation demands it. 110% Pro-Israel. Anti-term limits for both Presidents and Congress. Pro-Science (we should be allocating at least a quarter of the budget to fight climate change and protect coastal areas). Pro-Space.
I would ideally love to see our defense budget cut in half. A smarter military, not a larger one.
Cutting Medicaid is a poor people issue. “The common man” is working class, as in he works and only receives benefits that relate to working, such as unemployment insurance, Social Security, etc. which he supports, because they benefit him. Medicaid benfits “other people”, and is thus a waste of his tax dollars.
Although I would note that Republicans are suddenly becoming a lot more solicitious of middle class entitlements than they used to be. And while they want to cut taxes for the wealthy as always, for the first time they seem to be deficit conscious. We are just getting too close to the reckoning day when Medicare and SS will have to be cut and new tax cuts will bring that day even closer.
This is actually the first GOP administration in a generation to not cut taxes as one of its first legislative priorities. That demonstrates a change of some sort.
So far in this thread we’ve got “the common man’s a troglodyte” and “Invisible sky pixie believers”. Gee, I just can’t fathom why those people aren’t lining up to support Democrats. :rolleyes:
Chronos, you’re going to have a tough time re-claiming (or is it just claiming?) that pro-Christianity mantle when your fellow travelers refer to them as “invisible sky pixie believers”.
I think gun control has been pretty damn low on the list of priorities for Democrats for the past decade or so since the AWB expired. They (or at least many of them) bring it up again after mass-shootings, but with zero chance of success (since there are lots of Democrats who have adopted the NRA’s fundamentalist view on it, in addition to the Republicans), and whine about it a bit, and then move on.
Maybe not a massive shift, but still a shift, I think. Obama had it right when he noted that America has accepted that the current level of violence is just a logical consequence of America’s overall desire for very little restrictions on access to guns.
Thank you for the straightforward response!
Fair enough. In a way, a reshuffling of priorities is a shift, even though I don’t think it means their underlying policy preference has changed much. They seem to be slowly accepting the political realities of the issue, at least in a lot of cases.
Democrats used to be able to reach those voters. And they’d better learn how to do so in the future, because while our future is less white, it’s probably going to be a lot more churchgoing as the Latino population grows. And Latinos have shown that they are far from a sure thing for the Democrats, even with Donald freakin’ Trump running. Being able to talk sincerely about faith and respecting the deeply held religious beliefs of voters is important.
I criticize Obama a lot for picking really stupid legal fights with Christian organizations, but he did talk the language well. At a time when many liberals have been trying to equate Christians still opposed to gay marriage as basically KKK members, he’s been preaching patience and acceptance of differing views. That’s good advice to take.
Mind you, I don’t dislike the common man. I’m as common as they get (on welfare). But my peers seem to be more into style than substance. I know a lesbian married couple in P.A., for example, who didn’t have any idea what Trump stood for, but voted enthusiastically for him, and love him still simply because he wasn’t Hillary. I am 26, and I believe my generation (and the Baby Boomers) are more emotion-driven than fact-based.
Medicaid is no longer a poor people issue since it was expanded under Obama. Many working people are on Medicaid, and many more have a family member who is on it. Many additional working people receive subsidies for insurance, which wasn’t spared by GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare.
Cutting taxes is one of this administration’s first legislative priorities. They’ve just failed to achieve it as yet.
To be extra-charitable, even his infamous “cling to guns or religion” comment was made (rather ham-fistedly) in the spirit of trying to understand the perspective of rural folks.
His comment epitomizes the problem Democrats have: It’s not what they say, but *how *they say it, which hurts them. Comments like that of Obama’s or Hillary’s “deplorables” speech are meant well, but phrased in a way that sounds elitist and condescending. Democrats are too honest. This has been a problem since Jimmy Carter.
Yeah, I think Obama was always a little schizoid about religion. He didn’t seem particularly religious himself, but his many years in Wright’s church gave him an affection for people of faith.
They aren’t honest, but in a long campaign the way they really feel slips out. Mitt Romney showed off his elitism in a private gathering and got recorded. I’m sure we all remember that one.
As for the overall thrust of the thread, I’m not sure if there’s been a realignment. I think the divides are still largely along identity issues – that is, Americans who think opposing white supremacism is still very important, and Americans who don’t (whether or not they support white supremacism). Nate Silver noted that the “strongest correlate” he’s found for Trump support is Google searches for nigger (other researchers have noted similar phenomena: Study: racism and sexism predict support for Trump much more than economic dissatisfaction - Vox ). Trump is the first Republican in a long time who really embraced white identity politics, and the first in recent decades that was openly and strongly embraced by pretty much all of the prominent American white supremacists. And they’re still the ones most supportive and most enamored with him, which IMO explains the Arpaio pardon, the defense of the white supremacists at Charlottesville, the abandonment of the Dreamer children, etc.
Maybe. If Medicaid does garner that much of a reaction from working class voters, that would tell us something. Republicans haven’t really been able to do anything on that yet other than to not expand Medicaid. And they don’t seem to have paid for that at all.
Tax reform actually, and it’s supposed to be revenue neutral. That stupid 401(k) idea they recently floated, assuming you’ve heard about it, was part of an effort to make the numbers add up.
The most populous state in the union just increased the strictness of their assault weapon ban, making many of the rifles I own illegal. They also banned standard cap magazines, effectively confiscating many of the magazines I own. I’m less sanguine about “low on the list of priorities”.
But isn’t that a realignment? Identity was not nearly as big a predictor of voting behavior in the Reagan/Bush era. Latinos were much more competitive, young people were much more competitive, Asians much more competitive. African-Americans still went 90% Dem, but it seems like everyone else was up for grabs. The Reagan/Bush era also began a trend towards the parties becoming much more ideologically distinct. But that’s a rare condition in our political history, so maybe we’re just seeing a snap back to normal, with parties mainly being divided among ethnic, regional, and religious lines.