There are less conservative posters because conservatives are in the minority in America. Perhaps 15 percent. Like I explained often, the repubs run by getting single issue voters to vote for them
. There are people who just care about guns. It over rides every thing else. They may not be conservative in many other regards. But they mistakenly think the repubs care about gun rights.
There are people who vote on abortion rights. They are so anti abortion that they vote for repubs while much of their life they may be leaning liberal or toward the middle.
Then the gay anti gay marriage people are galvinized by the repubs pretending they care about “keeping marriage safe from the weird gays who want desperately to bring it down”. I never figured out why they would want to, but there are people convinced that is true. They may have many liberal leanings.
The fact there are less conservative posters is just logical. There should be, especially when you have to add the smarter people are generally liberals. They would seek out interesting debates sites as opposed to conservatives seeking corroborating propaganda sites.
For myself, I’ve stopped caring about whether the board is bent to the left or right. It is what it is. I tried to fight for civility and balance on this board years ago, for the simple reason that a board with an equal number of conservatives and liberals is a rare, valuable thing, and I hate to see one side ‘win’ and drive off the other and have this place become yet another tedious internet partisan echo chamber.
Unfortunately, that’s the way its going. So whatever. Maybe that’s just the inevitable progression of any open debate forum on the Internet. Once the balance shifts in one direction, it just starts steamrolling along until the smaller side is driven off. Maybe that’s why the SDMB was just a rare, refreshing island in a sea of internet crap. But it’s slowly sinking.
I now just post when I feel like it. And that’s becoming less frequent with every passing week - especially in Great Debates. I find myself posting more often in Cafe Society and General Questions, where you can still talk to people without some clown divebombing the thread with snark and vitriol or crazy political conspiracy nonsense and hatred.
I think a lot of people feel the way I do, and the result is that Great Debates is slowly dying. The first page contains a week’s worth of messages, when it used to contain maybe a half day’s worth. At a time when people are becoming more politically active and the internet community is ten times as big as it was when this place opened, Great Debates is a pale shadow of what it used to be. The people who should really care about that are the people running this board.
My own posting frequency has dropped to maybe a quarter of what it used to be, and I suspect it will continue to drop. And I don’t really care. There are lots of other things to do with my time, and there are now better places to have serious debates on the internet, where people can still debate issues without being attacked just for being on the ‘other side’.
Why do you constantly say things that are just patently untrue? You do this ALL The time. It’s like you don’t even care what the truth is - you just spew whatever sounds good at any given time.
Not only are Conservatives the largest self-identified political group in the U.S., they outnumber liberals by more than 2-1. Independents who identify as conservative have increased from 30% to 35%. Only 18% of independents call themselves liberals.
So, you had it pretty much backwards. It’s liberals who are the smallest political group in America, and Conservatives are the largest. By a more than 2-1 ratio.
I know this won’t stop you from posting the same lie in the future, but I’m writing this so that any lurkers reading this won’t be taken in by your bullshit.
You’re also wrong about the smarter people being liberals, but those stats have been shown to you repeatedly and you still won’t shut up about it. Look it up yourself.
Thus neatly explaining how that overwhelmingly common group who turn out to vote with the higher frequency than the smaller Liberal grouping managed to get stompewd in the last two congressional elections.
Someone’s fucking with the figures somewhere, Sam.
Um, no. The Dems managed to bring in the uncommitted independents, like myself. Neither Conservatives OR Liberals has enough of a lock to win without support from the large undecided centrists. I’m sure you can do the math…assuming Sam’s cite is correct, that means Conservatives would have around 40% (presumably of those likely to vote)…that would mean that, even if everyone of them voted there wouldn’t be enough to win an election. Simple, ehe?
Nah, you’ve got to toss in figs for voter turnout by party affiliation and the like. From the stories we’ve all heard about Republicans taking their civic duty more seriously than us libs or indeps, that 40% ought to give em a lock on congress, and the white house. Plainly is doesn’t, so some of the figures are wrong somewhere.
If I had to guess, I’d say that 40% is really running something like 25% nowdays; however, I’ve no desire to go hashing around in piles of numbers over this. I’ll just take Sam’s dismissal of** Gonzo’s** post with the large grain of salt that it deserves.
Well, identifying as conservative doesn’t automatically translate to voting for Republicans (nor does liberal/Democrat). I’d guess that while many Americans has some misgivings about certain civil-rights issues, most of the time they’re not dumb enough to vote that way to the detriment of their fellow citizens.
There are many kinds of ‘conservatives’, just as there are different types of ‘liberals’, so, at a guess, it would depend on the questions asked in the poll. As Bryan Ekers notes, just because one self identifies as a conservative doesn’t mean they voted Republican…just as, I presume, some non-zero number of self identified liberals don’t vote Democrat in any given election. I know people who are economic conservatives (and would self identify as ‘conservative’) who voted for Obama, for instance…and I have an aunt who is VERY liberal (and definitely self identifies as ‘liberal’) who voted for McCain in the last election (for, sadly, racial reasons).
So, what if there wasn’t? What if the SDMB was one of the more political message boards, but still mostly people who didn’t give a rat’s? Card-carrying members of the Apathetic Party, centrist by default, devoid of partisan commitment, not because they don’t know the issues, but because they can’t be bothered to care?
If the President lies us into a ruinous and futile war, and one guy bitches and we all say like “Yeah, sure, Doggyknees, thats a bitch, but if you don’t mind, we’re talking about Facebook issues here…”
I’m with Airman pretty much on how I’ve responded to the direction of the board in the past couple of years. I joined back in 2002 (I think) and used to post daily. I was thrilled to find a board where the posters were intelligent and used proper english. I didn’t have to explain context or historical references.
Things started to unwind with the Iraq war and Bush’s re-election. Bush was “teh evil” and if you agreed with anything resembling a Republican position, you were obviously a racist, gun-loving, bible-thumping dittohead.
Just recently I was posting in a GD thread and made the point that many people on the left are anti-military. To me, that’s been a basic truth of american politics for the past 40 years. Not here. Posters on the left can throw out any and every cliche about the right that exists and either silence or an amen chorus ensues. But if anyone tries to make any point that reflects poorly on liberal ideology or those who practice it, then it becomes a game of what I’ve termed “cite tag”.
“Many people on the left are anti-military”
“Cite!”
The call for a cite at that point is an attempt to discourage me or other posters from further participation by trying to force us to give a footnooted and approved presentation of a fact that anyone with even a basic grasp of american politics and history would agree with.
I still read and enjoy the pit, cafe society and other forums. But Great Debates is pretty much a liberal echo chamber.
I’m a liberal who has followed this board for 8ish years now; I never post much, but you all have no idea how formative it’s been for my political worldview. Your names, writ large in blue underlined text, are as those of the great political philosophers in my eyes. Sam Stone, shall I compare thee to a Benjamin Disraeli? Okay, so I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek here, regardless…
Every time gonzomax befouls a thread with his dull-witted left-wing seborrheica, I, and the rest of the lurkers, lose a dozen brain cells. Conversely, if Bricker makes an astute point about the role of the executive branch (ideally, one with not too much lawyerly hypocrite-baiting ) our politics are subtly deepened and enriched. Sure, it might not appear as though a debate has been won or lost, or that anyone’s opinions have been softened. But I’m certain that when you argue in good faith, you reach a good many people whom you do not see and influence the direction of the public in a way you cannot know. Because I vote religiously, and I integrate the views I read here with my own, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who does so.
So if you’re a conservative and you can’t get motivated to debate in good faith in the face of a torrent of left-wing invective, my hope is that the opportunity to influence who knows how many nascent political identities is one that you’ll find too enticing to pass up. Because I promise that’s an opportunity you have and forsake when you defer to the Usual Suspects.
And who listens to Der Trihs, gonzomax, ElvisL1ves, and (increasingly) Diogenes on the subject of politics anymore anyway? They may be lovely people in other contexts, but you can’t let them kneecap you like this. Because then The Terrorists Win.
Put simply, I think you’re always in danger when you make this kind of assertion though. You’ve hedged it with “many people on the left” and used the ambiguous statement (subject, as it can be, to somewhat divergent interpretations) “anti-military.” Who is the left? The Kos community? The Center for American Progress? What is anti-military? Hating the troops and wanting them to die (Der Trihs)? Wanting to spend less on defense? I hope you can see there’s a big spectrum of opinions in there. You’re saying something that is going to mean a hundred different things to a hundred different people. Of course everyone is just going to take offense, you’ve given them an opportunity to do so and this is the internet we’re talking about.
He said that you derail threads with your snark, not that you’re directly insulting him. He’s saying that what you see as just humor is snark that drops the tone in a lot of threads you post in. IIRC, you and I have never directly crossed paths on this board and I think Doors is correct.
) our politics are subtly deepened and enriched. Sure, it might not appear as though a debate has been won or lost, or that anyone’s opinions have been softened. But I’m certain that when you argue in good faith, you reach a good many people whom you do not see and influence the direction of the public in a way you cannot know. Because I vote religiously, and I integrate the views I read here with my own, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who does so.