"What America’s leftward shift means for elections"

[applegrove]

What America’s leftward shift means for elections

By Bill Schneider at Reuters

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/02/18/what-americas-leftward-shift-means-for-elections/

"SNIP........................................




With each new poll, it’s becoming clear that the United States is shifting to the left. A majority of Americans now supports same-sex marriage. And legalization of marijuana. And normalization of relations with Cuba.

Gallup reports that, in 2013, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as liberals reached its highest level since 1992. True, it’s only 23 percent. Conservatives, at 38 percent, still outnumber liberals. But the trend has been slowly and steadily upward for liberals since 1996, when it was 16 percent.

This shift is due entirely to Democrats becoming more liberal — 29 percent of Democrats in 2000, 43 percent in 2013. At the same time, Democrats have won the national popular vote in five out of the six presidential elections since 1992 (all but 2004). Barack Obama won a majority of the popular vote twice — something Bill Clinton couldn’t do.

The New America has come to power. It’s a coalition of 10 Democratic constituencies that united to elect and re-elect Obama: young voters, working women, single mothers, African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Jews, gays, educated professionals and the “unchurched” (the nearly one in five Americans who have no religious affiliation). Eight of those 10 constituencies — all but Jews and African-Americans — are growing as a percentage of the electorate.




......................................SNIP"

[blkmusclmachine]

1. Some of "America" may be going Left, but DC is jammed into "Hard Right."

[progressoid]

2. Leftward shift? Barely.

Socially, there is some movement to the left.

But politically, it's more of a rejection of the old, white teabagger, GOP rather than a shift to the left.

Other than a few exceptions, I don't see our party being moving to the left.

[jeff47]

3. Politics always lags behind.

It'll catch up.

[socialist_n_TN]

10. "Other than a few exceptions, I don't see our party being moving to the left"........

That's because the Democratic Party is only "left" in a relative sense. They're there to give us the illusion of a choice. IOW, you have a choice between a RW Democrat and a bat-shit crazy Republican semi-fascist.

There IS no left in any real sense of the word in United States electoral politics.

[msongs]

4. too bad there is no left political party towards which to shift lol nt

[Cha]

5. KICK!

[Wounded Bear]

6. Until we shift left economically, it's all for show...

Social issues are nice to win on, but what is really needed is a hard progressive shift in economic policy.

[socialist_n_TN]

11. Agreed, but that won't happen with the current electoral set-up.....

Because left wing economic populism won't come out of the Democratic Party and it CERTAINLY won't come out of the Republican Party either. There's too much money involved in the political status quo (neo-liberalism or as we say in this country Reaganism) for anybody in the political establishment to buck that system.

[Triana]

7. Unfortunately, the gutting of the VRA, Citizens United and extreme gerrymandering...

....have more than offset this shift.

[deutsey]

8. If true, what this means is

the elites are going to have to work even harder than they already are to undermine the electoral process in America.

[socialist_n_TN]

9. I hate these polls that rely on "self identification" as a metric as to where........

people are politically. It makes MUCH more sense to look at where people stand on ISSUES, rather than self-identification. It's more of a true indicator of where people actually stand on the political spectrum. And on ISSUES you might as well throw the ones that call themselves "moderate" into the leftward side. Because on ISSUES, those moderates are almost as fully left and the liberals are.

[TNLib]

12. I think we are turning into a single party country.

Because the GOP has gone off the rails with their teabagger loony take over no one has any other options. Meanwhile the Democratic party has been taken over by corporatist that are moderate on social issues.