On most issues that you can name, the liberal side has more to lose than the conservative side, yet there is not a noticeable enthusiasm gap.
Abortion is the most obvious, and recent, one - but one could also name guns, LGBT, environment, etc. Let’s go with abortion first. Conservatives have diligently spent decades whittling away at Roe and abortion while liberals did not do particularly much to enhance or solidify abortion (such as never codifying Roe into federal law, or trying with as much might to get pro-choice justices onto the bench the way pro-lifers did.)
This despite the fact that, by definition, liberals have much more to lose. Nobody is going to force a pro-lifer to have an abortion against her will, but a pro-choicer could most definitely be denied an abortion against her will. You would think that logically the pro-choice side would have far more intensity and dedication to the cause, but there is no noticeable “enthusiasm gap.”
Same with almost any other issue. Liberals typically have much more to lose than conservatives, but you would never tell it from the way they fight.
Some data for your consideration, sans conclusions, courtesy of Pew (n=10,221).
The first graphic breaks down the general population according to political typology:
Pew assigns Establishment Liberals and the Progressive Left to the liberal faction. Combined, liberals are represented by 19% of the sample population. There are three conservative typologies: Faith and Flag Conservatives, Committed Conservatives, and Populist Right. Together, conservatives are represented by 28% of the sample population.
I think the issue is liberals simply have more diverse issues under one tent.
If you are LGBTQ you care about those issues. If you are an immigrant you care about that. If you are for healthcare then you focus on health care. If you are concerned about the environment then that is what motivates you.
Conservatives are motivated to “own the libs”. Certainly you can draw lines among conservative issues that they care about but they are MUCH better at marching in lock-step to the one idea that liberals must be defeated.
Liberals never get on the same page anywhere near like that and, often, they can even oppose each other (do we spend limited money on teacher salaries or saving the spotted owl?)
Further, conservatives are more animated by hate and fear. They think what little they have is being sent by liberals to black or brown people and it enrages them. They never get that the 1% has their hand far deeper in their pockets.
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. ― Lyndon B. Johnson
The book The Hype Machine is largely about digital marketing. However, it discusses American politics because it attempts to answer if foreign countries can influence American elections.
(Aside: this remains an understudied area without definitive conclusions. The answer is likely that tight races and swing states are vulnerable since some people can be manipulated to vote or avoid voting at all. However, seeing an ad, even clicking on it if you might buy an item, is very different from being convinced by it; pre-test probabilities are hard to measure after the fact. Digital media measure clicks better than “lift” and so are often much less effective than one might think despite millions of exposures).
The book suggests that American mainstream political opinions have not actually shifted much in the last sixty years. Most people are still moderate. What has changed is that parties have become more rigid - being a true Conservative might mean feeling a certain way about reproduction but also about the environment. The Internet and social media is only one of many causes of this. Canada still has plenty of social liberals who are economic conservatives - but so does the US.
Liberals are passionate about these issues. But one big problem with the left in this country, is that they have a tendency to form circular firing squads at the drop of a hat, and oftentimes over pedantic bullshit that most voters, even most liberal voters, couldn’t care less about.
Of course, this isn’t to say that the right doesn’t have its own factional squabbles. But, as someone mentioned above, they’re also much better about falling in line when need be. You can see evidence of this in Trump’s rise to power. There were plenty of people in the GOP who didn’t care for him. In fact there were many who despised him. But, when push came to shove, they were pretty much all willing to fight tooth-and-nail for the guy, because they had their eye on the big picture, which involved, among other things, lowering taxes and stacking the judiciary with Federalist Society stooges. Trump may have been an asshole who reveled in flashing the middle finger to the GOP establishment, but said establishment was also aware that he was going to pay off big time for them.
Even on the rare occasions when the left does unite long enough to fight their way out of a paper bag, they often wind up overplaying their hand and tripping up on their messaging (“Defund the police” is a good example of this), or just tripping over themselves in trying to decide how to set their priorities.
I do not think there was ever a remotely serious politician who wanted to “defund the police” (as in end police departments.
We have stupid things the left says and stupid things the right says but, those stupid things are an albatross around the liberal neck while stupid things the right says are applauded and encouraged by those on the right.
It is absolutely the case that on some issues the left has tripped up on messaging. But I don’t think “defund the police” is really one of them. There was a small number of advocates who literally said they wanted to Defund the Police, clarified what it meant, it was centered around Minneapolis, and it was almost to a one denounced to some degree by Democrats at both the national and local level almost everywhere else, almost from day one. The whole “Defund the Police” narrative is almost entirely just “really good right wing propaganda.”
This happens in large part because the right has a significant conservative propaganda machine, Fox News being the crown jewel of it. The left hasn’t been able to build anything remotely comparable.
Liberals are convinced that they will win eventually because, over time, they pretty much always do. Also, so many have bought the “good guys always win” mantra that the need for personal involvement seems less pivotal to the ultimate result.
Conservatives know that they’re trying to hold back the tide of history so they’ve got to be passionate. It’s pretty much all they’ve got.
I do not want to hijack this either but suffice it to say that was the point. Conservatives intentionally misrepresented what was being said and their supporters happily ran with it.
Using your examples, liberals were very very passionate about LGBT rights in the 2000 and 2010s. There was a lot of effort and money in getting LGBT rights.
Why you see less passion in, say, abortion, is because it was the law of the land and I think most people, including voters, don’t have as much passion for something they’ve already won as opposed to something they need to topple (like anti-LGBT laws).
What we really want to do is determine what percentage of the population meets the various measures of political engagement, with a breakdown of “liberal” versus “conservative” versus other. The data is all there, we just need to put it together.
For example,
Please indicate if you have done each of the following activities over the past 6 months.
Attended a political rally or campaign event in person (including in a vehicle)
Typology
% of general population
% who attended a political rally or campaign event in person
% of sample who falls under this typology and attended a political rally or campaign event in person
Typically radical-right views are easy to articulate. They are black-and-white while the liberal side is all shades of gray which make it difficult to agree let alone work together.
Abortion: pro-life is don’t kill any baby from the moment of conception. pro-choice is abortion is OK until viability (which changes with improvement in medicine) or is it the quickening. Is 16 weeks to late? Certainly no one advocates abortion during contractions but we did allow for partial-birth abortions. …
Gun Control: pro-guns is that the guv’ment can’t tell me what guns I can own and can’t own. pro-gun-control means no assault rifles, but what about bump-stocks. Oh and background checks too. Actually it means no guns at all - even pistols … unless you really need one. Now let’s talk ammo to ban along with magazine size. And no matter what laws we put in place we need stronger laws because someone always falls through the cracks and uses a legally bought gun.
Illegal Immigration: Conservatives say deport their asses and build a wall so they don’t get back in again. Liberals claim they are not for open borders but want to allow for illegal immigration that falls within the purview of the laws … except when it doesn’t. It’s somewhere on the spectrum between letting hardworking people in to improve their lives and not letting the criminals in … somewhere in the middle of all that.
And it’s important to note, that even the conservative judges who voted to overturn RvW had to lie about their views on RvW in order to get their seats on the Supreme Court.
The knew that being honest would cost them the nomination, because they know their opinions are only supported by a minority of US citizens.
It’s hard to get day-today passionate about a topic that even your opponents are willing to admit you’ve already largely won. Until they rat fuck the Supreme Court in order to force their beliefs on everyone else, of course.
Liberals may have more of an agenda; they have things they want to achieve and they have no problem working with other people if that will help them achieve their objectives.
Conservatives may see things more in terms of a confrontation. They want to divide issues up into two sides and then they want their side to win and the other side to lose.
