poll on your political ideology

[steve2470]

Last edited Sun Mar 23, 2014, 03:23 PM - Edit history (2)

Simply curious, that's all. One of these gets done once a year or so, IIRC.

I'm not a political scientist, so I'm sure many will be choosing the "Other" option to explain. Thanks for your patience.

ETA: I did not include Moderate for innocent reasons. If Moderate is regarded by political scientists as a political ideology, then next time I shall include it. No agenda implied in my poll. YES, middle ground is possible.

ETA2: I erred putting capitalist as a political ideology. It seems to be considered an economic ideology, so, my error.


Steve

34 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Marxist/Communist
	0 (0%)
	Socialist
	9 (26%)
	Leftist Libertarian
	4 (12%)
	Liberal
	12 (35%)
	Progressive
	5 (15%)
	Conservative
	1 (3%)
	Anarchist
	0 (0%)
	Capitalist
	0 (0%)
	I have no political ideology
	0 (0%)
	Other (see my post)
	3 (9%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. I like the poll. I see some haven't shown up yet. lol nt

[steve2470]

2. I'm sure it will be interesting

I know I missed some categories.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. You sure did! LOL! You needed to capture the "visiting RWers"

They are very much here.

[steve2470]

4. yes lol maybe a few will be honest and say conservative

We'll see.

[JaneyVee]

5. Liberal moderate socialist capitalist.

Seriously.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Social Democrat

and no, it is not on your list, nor do I expect it...

[War Horse]

30. Same here

Although maybe that's covered under "Liberal"? Dunno...

[JayhawkSD]

7. Undefined, but fiscally responsible liberal perhaps

I tend to be socially liberal, with traces of libertarian perhaps. I favor a decent social safety net, but believe that other than that government should not intrude in our personal lives. Government should regulate business sufficiently to assure that competition is maintained, or that when it cannot be that the public interest is paramount. I oppose federal defecits under normal conditions, but am sufficiently Keynesian to favor stimulus spending in economic hard times provided that government debt is reduced in economic good times.

I think modern economic talk, with its blather about how a one-year butget will save so much money in ten years, how deficits only matter as a percentage of GDP, how governments never repay debt but allow it to somehow magically disappear due to inflation, and how a nation can become more wealthy by taking money out of its left pocket and putting it in its right pocket are utter nonsense.

A one-year budget will only save money for one year, debt matters as a percentage of your income and not as a percentage of what your employer spends, inflation punishes workers and poor people more than it rewards debtors, and there are reasons for taking money from one taxpayer and giving it to another but it is a stopgap measure and does not improve the overall economy in real terms.

[FrodosPet]

39. Pretty much this

If we are not on the same page, I am on the next one over.

[MineralMan]

8. I clicked Progressive.

Philosophically, though, I'm a socialist. However, when it comes to political activism, I work to get the most progressive Democratic candidate who can win elected. I'm lucky. I live in a progressive area, and we elect progressives. Not everyone is so lucky. Sometimes, they have to elect Democrats who are not completely progressive or lose to a conservative Republican. That's obviously not the best thing, but any Democrat who will vote with the Democratic caucus on important issues is better than any Republican who will certainly not vote that way.

Is that a compromise? Well, yes, it is. But it is overall results that matter the most, as we've seen in the past 6 years. Our results could have been much better, but we have a House that is controlled by Republicans. That's not progressive at all.

[steve2470]

9. 100% agree with you, let not the perfect be the enemy of the good and the possible nt

[MineralMan]

10. An excellent slogan in every election year.

Thanks! Voltaire had it right. Whether le mieux means the perfect or not is a matter of discussion, but the translation is just fine.

[sabrina 1]

22. That slogan would be relevant if anyone in real life actually expected 'perfect'. We've

been aiming low for decades, just trying to get some 'good'.

It is a lie, iow, each time it is used. The lie is aimed at Liberals, always was.

But since you brought it up again, maybe that's the problem, we SHOULD be aiming higher.

As everyone knows if you aim low you will most likely hit way lower than your target.

I prefer this slogan:

'Aim for the sky and you might a hit a tree.'

Every election cycle we are told not to expect much, just go vote and hope for the best. The best under that advice, means 'crumbs' and we should be grateful when a few come our way.

I think it's time for change. I think we SHOULD aim for the sky from now on.

In every endeavor, sports, business, anything, it is those who aim for the SKY who succeed. Those who don't have faith that they can get close to what they deserve, never do.

That jaded slogan DISCOURAGES voter turnout. It should be put to rest, and replaced with something that ENCOURAGES voter turnout.

Thanks for reminding me.

Way past time to change our tactics.

[mike_c]

27. ^^^^ this ^^^^

+1

[Mojorabbit]

54. + a gazillion. nt

[Kaleva]

11. All the above as it depends on the issue.

[pipi_k]

14. That's...

what I would choose also.

Depends on the issue

[LittleBlue]

12. Economic socialist, social libertarian

My main concern is money, how it's distributed and how it's spent.

Who fucks whom, what you smoke, what you say, what you wear, etc., none of these things concern me.

[adirondacker]

21. Ditto. nt

[Aerows]

44. Right on that train with you

I don't care what you smoke, who you fuck as long as it is between consensual adults and I am free to, debate, walk away from or turn off whatever bullshit you are saying.

[canoeist52]

60. Yes, my view as well. I don't really like labels that divide us.

[Throd]

13. Flaming moderate.

[TBF]

15. Libertarain Communist but you didn't have that option

[brooklynite]

16. What happened to Moderate?

Or is the OP asserting that there's no real middle ground?

[Kaleva]

18. That was lumped in with Marxist/Communist

[steve2470]

19. I guess I have not heard Moderate used as an ideology

To me, capitalist comes closest in my categories. If the political scientists on the board say Moderate is a category, then I accede to their expertise. I've always thought of moderate as capitalism but neither socialist nor fascist.

Not trying to imply no middle ground. Hell no.

ETA: I did put an Other category. I'm not a political scientist. Geeze louise.

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. Because that is not a political ideology that any is familiar with

[brooklynite]

36. If you're going to scale the survey with "liberal" and "conservative"...

"moderate" will fall into the middle.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. No it does not, since Liberal and Conservative are listed in

Political Science Surveys. Moderate is not. Moderate is used as a self descriptor, not a political philosophy.

It is one of those wishy washy terms that could also describe a moderate socialist, a moderate republican and a moderate democrat

Notice, socialist is a philosophy, neither democrat or republican are. There are solid reasons for that, both are coalitions, not ideologies themselves.

This is extremely basic poli sci 101 by the way.

[Common Sense Party]

34. I'm a moderate.

If someone doesn't like that, tough noogies.

[LWolf]

17. Other.

Leftist libertarian with socialist leanings.

[Tikki]

20. I would describe myself as an environmental activist..maybe that makes me a progressive.

I always answer 'environment' on any list for #1 priority.

Most of the time it never even showed up as a category from my former stupid
repug congressman in the newsletters and polls he sent.


Tikki

[Populist_Prole]

23. Before I vote: A question

What's the difference between liberal and progressive? Seriously.

[steve2470]

24. I don't know

Some like the word progressive, some prefer liberal.

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. Depends on the decade`

no serious, a certain POTUS in charge of the US as the Great Depression hit us was one of the last Progressives of the progressive era. These days Progressive has become short hand for liberal.

[steve2470]

58. a question nadin if I may

Have you read a lot of poli sci ? It seems that way. Thanks.

[nadinbrzezinski]

59. Yeah, I did a lot of that in college

(Minor in it in undergraduate) and these days I cover local politics. The theory is so different from the practice.

My major is in History, and graduate one of my areas of study was US history.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

25. Why isn't "liberal" on the list? N.T.

On edit: oh, it was, it just had a big blue bar when all the others were green, which clearly makes it invisible too me. Or something.

[steve2470]

28. fwiw, wiki on "political ideologies"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_ideologies

Yes, I know it's Wikipedia. It's a starting ground.

[morningfog]

29. You left out "Party-liner."

[rdharma]

31. Democratic Socialist (Bernie Sander's style) NOT to be confused with........

"Social Democrat" ....... which is often the title that third-way neo-Liberals like to use to describe themselves.

[progressoid]

35. Other: Progressive Liberal Socialist.

[brooklynite]

37. Recognizing that this poll is self-selecting...

...the notion that 30% are communist/socialist should settle the argument of whether DU is representative of the Democratic Party at large.

[Aerows]

46. It means that at least 30% of DU'ers that responded

are educated enough to actually know what those terms mean. I'd wager that far more frequent DU'ers, since this is a political forum, actually know enough about political science to know what those terms mean, not just as interchangeable terms used by pundits to demonize the "horrible person to the left of me" of the week (or day).

[oldhippie]

40. If capitalism is an economic rather than political ideology, ....

... isn't that also true of Communism? That what I learned (about a half-century ago.)

[steve2470]

41. in the wiki article it lists communism as a political one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_ideologies

I'll wait for the poli sci people to tell us the "final verdict".

[DireStrike]

62. If Capitalism is, then yes. But neither one is really pure economics.

You can find a pure economic theory of either one, but the inevitable question is "why does this model not conform to what we see in the world?" The answers to that question are inevitably political. However, there isn't really a "capitalist" answer or a "communist" answer. There are many political sub-groups, each with different answers.

[Boom Sound 416]

42. All I know is

Tolerance is not a la carte

[a la izquierda]

43. Other: Democratic Socialist nt

[NuclearDem]

45. Leftist Libertarian and anarchist are the same thing on the grid.

[octoberlib]

47. Democratic Socialist nt

[Danger Mouse]

48. I put other -

I consider myself a liberal - probably now more than ever.
I lean socialist, but I'm practical about it. Ideologically, I'd like to see the U.S. become a lot more of a socialist state, but realistically I believe that any changes in that direction will be small and incremental.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

49. Whoa! You've ignored about 50% of the members here.

I guess I could have answered "Other" because I didn't see Democratic Socialist, so I decided to play along. I wasn't sure if I was a Liberal or a Progressive until I read an article by David Sirota. He says:

Let's be clear - most progressives are also liberals, and liberal goals in better funding America's social safety net are noble and critical. It's the other direction that's the problem. Many of today's liberals are not fully comfortable with progressivism as defined in these terms. Many of today's Democratic politicians, for instance, are simply not comfortable taking a more confrontational posture towards large economic institutions (many of whom fund their campaigns) - institutions that regularly take a confrontational posture towards America's middle-class.

So I went with Progressive, whom Sirota defines thusly:

A "progressive" are those who focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules.

So why do I say you're ignoring about 50% of the members here?

You're not capturing the Obama-Clintonian Third Way Democrats. There is so much animosity at DU simply because those left of the Third Way are at odds with the Third Way.

As a result, this poll is like asking a men to vote when half of the population is made up of women.

FAIL

[steve2470]

51. we disagree

you can answer Socialist and then put your comment here...not enough spaces to list every possible permutation....once Skinner gives us polls with 100 spaces, we'll be good.

YMMV.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

52. That was an interesting point of disagreement

[steve2470]

53. ROFL smilies always win a debate

You're a democratic socialist. That's a subset of " Socialist ".

Go look up the phrase "political ideology", which was my poll question.

We're done here.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

55. Your poll sucks because it's like asking men to vote when 50% are women.

That's a better point of disagreement.

[Ohio Joe]

50. Liberal... But I think I am moving more toward Socialist as time goes on...

Meh... Regardless we have so far to go that it is unlikely I'll see it in my life time... Still you keep going though.

[mmonk]

56. Democratic socialist.

[Half-Century Man]

57. If you are unsure.

Or to find out if you know yourself........
http://www.gotoquiz.com/politics/political-spectrum-quiz.html

[riqster]

61. Truman Democrat.

God knows how that fits in with the above options, but I sure as hell don't fit in any of the present-day parties.

So I bust ass to elect Dems, but refuse to join the party.