Posted on 11/03/2017 4:36:30 PM PDT by Sir Napsalot
The Democratic Party has learned to stop worrying and love “big government” liberalism. The party’s top presidential prospects are advertising their ardor for socialized medicine, free public college, universal child care and paid family leave.
Even the party’s moderate senators are now pushing for the same kind of public health insurance option that their centrist predecessors killed in the early Obama years. And the party’s 2018 platform — the consensus agenda that ostensibly unites all Democrats, from Joe Manchin of West Virginia to Bernie Sanders — calls for vigorous antitrust enforcement to prevent mega-corporations from rigging the economy against working people.
The party’s resident “sensible centrists” are horrified: “Has the entire Democratic Party forgotten the words ‘George McGovern’?” they cry. In column after column, they have been imploring their co-partisans to remember a fundamental fact: America is a center-right nation, where nearly 70 percent of voters are moderate or conservative, and just 25 percent are liberal. Over the past eight years, Democrats lost sight of this inconvenient truth — and lost control of more than 1,000 state legislative seats, the House, the Senate and the presidency.
This argument may sound coolheaded and pragmatic. But its core premises — that American voters are hostile to progressive economics and have punished the (increasingly left-wing) Democratic Party accordingly — actually rest on ideological conviction, not empirical evidence.
In truth, the Republican Party’s dominance has little to do with the American electorate’s “center-right” ideology. We know this for two simple reasons: First, the vast majority of that electorate has no ideology, whatsoever. And second, when polled on discrete policy questions, Americans consistently express majoritarian support for a left-of-center economic agenda.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
To prove the first point, the author cite a 1964 essay that said people don't have ideology, they vote for "the one that appeared to best represent their people, a group they might define with reference to class, region, religion, race or partisanship itself."
It is almost a nod to further 'identity politics'?
Liberty is the founding principal of the America Republic, and the American people hold to that principal.
Ummm, it's because the questions are worded so the liberal pollsters get the answers they want.
They say they want leftist policies until they are told their taxes will go up to pay for them.
Were all the "Americans" polled US citizens?
Then there is this -
“When we look past ideological self-identification to polling on discrete public policy questions, America appears to be far more center-left than center-right. In a recent analysis of Democracy Fund Voter Study Group survey data, the political scientist Lee Drutman found that 73.5 percent of the 2016 electorate espoused broadly left-of-center views on economic policy.”
Democrats can’t capitalize on the popularity of major progressive public policies is because of a variety of reasons, then the author went off rail into evil Republican talking trope.
That sounds to me like the author is saying More Massaging the Message.
The NY Times didn’t seem to want to accept crushng democrat defeats all over the country as evidence.
I hope they continue to believe that, as it will only continue to erode their party.
Why post nyt trash?
Also, nothing at all addressing the erosion of religion, traditions/traditional values, etc.
Just for ‘economic’ reasons, because of polling showed majority favor progressive policies, the author concluded America is not center-right.
Isn’t it used to call ‘tunnel vision’?
Opposition research?
And the party’s 2018 platform — the consensus agenda that ostensibly unites all Democrats, from Joe Manchin of West Virginia to Bernie Sanders — calls for vigorous antitrust enforcement to prevent mega-corporations from rigging the economy against working people. …Hmm; that sounds familiar. Could this Levitz fellow have gotten it from . . . ?
Corporations grow on every hand, and on every hand not only swallow and overawe individuals but also compete with governments.The contest is no longer between government and individuals; it is now between government and dangerous combinations and individuals. Here is a monstrously changed aspect of the social world. In face of such circumstances, must not government lay aside all timid scruple and boldly make itself an agency for social reform as well as for political control? “Yes,” says the Democrat, “perhaps it must.” …Of course: Woodrow Wilson and his socialistic pontificating.
We are not center-right. We are a majority far right population, but with 15% of the population that either belongs in a mental institution or in jail.
As the dems drive straight off a cliff at warp speed...
After WW2, the left set about to get control of education at all levels. After three generations have churned through the indoctrination mills, America is no longer center right. Too many now embrace any method of giving up more control of their lives to government. Women especially so.
I used to be center - right. Then I got my first paystub, and I’ve been Right ever since.
Hmmm.... Interesting that all of those left of center Americans came out in droves to elect Donald Trump.
A huge majority of people are conservative....with their own money.
unless you are one of those who can vote themselves an increase in pay, you voted TRUMP. Just look at Detroit, or Venezuela. Or Zimbabwe
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