America Is Becoming a Bit More Liberal. That's Pretty Unusual Six Years Into a Democratic Presidency
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/05/america-becoming-bit-more-liberal-thats-pretty-unusual-six-years-democratic-presiAmerica Is Becoming a Bit More Liberal. That's Pretty Unusual Six Years Into a Democratic Presidency.
—By Kevin Drum
| Fri May 30, 2014 12:21 PM EDT
Why are there more moderate Democrats than moderate Republicans? This has never been because Democrats are spineless wimps who won't stand up for liberal values. The main reason is simple: there aren't very many self-identified liberals in America. There never have been. Self-IDed conservatives have outnumbered self-IDed liberals by 10-15 percentage points for decades. This means that Democrats are forced to appeal more to the center than Republicans are.
But Gallup reports that this is changing. On social issues, the ID gap has narrowed to nearly zero. On economic issues conservatives still have a healthy 21 percentage point lead, but that's way down from 2010. Here's the chart:
In one sense, you should take this with a grain of salt. Sure, there are now more self-IDed liberals, but that's compared to 2010, a high-water mark for conservative identification.
In another sense, this is pretty unusual. Normally, the country gets steadily more liberal during Republican presidencies and steadily more conservative during Democratic presidencies. This is, presumably, because voters get increasingly tired of whoever's in power and more open to the idea that the other guys might have better answers. But this time that hasn't happened. There's too much noise in the Gallup chart to draw any definitive conclusions, but if you compare the numbers now to the average from the last few years of the Bush presidency, the country has actually gotten a bit more liberal. That's something that rarely happens six years into a Democratic presidency.
The trend is more noticeable on social issues, which shouldn't surprise anyone. On gay rights in particular, the country has plainly moved in the direction of more tolerance, and conservatives are just flatly out of step. As this trend continues—and it's inexorable at this point—the conservative position strikes more and more people as not merely misguided, but just plain ugly. And you don't self-ID with an ideology that you think is ugly.
It's a funny thing. People say they don't like President Obama's foreign policy, but it turns out they approve of the specific things he's doing. They say they don't like Obamacare, but they like the things Obamacare does. They say they don't like Obama's economic policy, but they largely approve of his actual positions. You see this over and over. It doesn't look like Obama is doing much to move the country in a more liberal direction, but in his slow, methodical, pragmatic way, he's doing just that. A lot of people might not know it, but they're attracted by his no-drama approach to incremental social change. It frustrates those of us who want to see things change faster, but in the end, it might turn out to be pretty effective.
= new reply since forum marked as read
about the ACA and Obama's presidency.
Every president in this nation has had to deal with the right wing nutjobs that, for some odd reason, this country seems to breed like rabbits.
To say he did one thing does not mean other things are insignificant.
oi gevalt (that's the Australian/rocksteady/yiddish version), manny up! 
Duh. 
I could use a good sucker bet. 
It's very late and I'm really tired. I first read it as: he'll be remembered as a true car salesman.
Myles Horton, Freire, Alinsky, the priest who founded Mondragon, Mother Jones, Matles and othe IWW folks, I came to realize that the only hope is for the oppressed to be led into helping themselves learn to take control of the assets, via business and ownership. (Some can rise to the occasion, but most times the human spirit has been beaten down so much among those with little or no income that they simply don't have the means without outside assistance and encouragement).
Because even in the French Revolution the people who started it became the last victims of the same guillotine that cut the heads off the tyrants in the beginning, and the wealthy took over. Mother Jones and the IWW and Industrial unions tried to encourage people to take control. Their efforts were associated with the communists and the socialists to hurt them, even though they said they rejected those ideas as not useful here, but they were never able to create what they meant because Gompers and the Business\Trade Unions, along with the government, business, and most of the population killed them or ran them off or carved them away from the effort with incentives. And here we are today.
Mondragon isn't a perfect example, but their rebellion, against a much more bloodthirsty dictator, was to teach a group cooperative principles and enough technical skills to build current technology, then borrow money from neighbors and begin to operate those assets as a cooperative. Today their revenue is in the billions of euros, and their unemployment is less than the areas around them. Even the Steelworkers have started to worked with them.
I think people get caught up in the admittedly delicious site of the serial killers we call bankers getting even a tenth of a percent of the pain and horror they have caused others through their theft and malfeasance, but that does nothing to make sure their victims can walk away from their oppression, or even to help them realize how screwed over they really are, by many they trust.
Instead I think there are populist ways we could structure it so people learn how they could free themselves from this plantation, these rentiers and perhaps not return. But in order to do that we would have to quit being so afraid of each other, and I think the world is gonna burn up b4 that happens.
Thank you for the video.
and not a Revolution without them.
But it seems we are getting bogged down in agreement.
I just doubt that any "revolution" is going to do much good. The truly wealthy see those as a moneymaking opportunity, pit their lapdogs against "them" and enjoy it like Stanley what's his name at the basketball game. And perhaps with faster Internet access than the people whose tragedy they benefit from.
I think that the people's tactics are wrong. I don't think relying on the wealthy to do what would be against their nature to do, again, and expecting a different result, again, is a good strategy.
The people, 99%, whomever, need to fix themselves, adopt as part of their culture the learning of how and why to take over assets and run them for themselves. Help each other, not the tyrant. That's how profit is made here, so find ways to disrupt it and change the flow to themselves, like any good business person, socialize what makes sense.
But if we could fix our broken culture and learn from places like Mondragan, or people la Boetie (quit helping the tyrant - he/she only has what you gave them, eh?)....we could...
<fantasy interrupted>
snort. I'll wait for evidence that we aren't still burning ourselves up.
Especially late at night, when somehow the contraction 'who's' sneaks in where I no damn well it should be the possessive. My keyboard betrays me. Then I wind up feeling like Urkel, thinking "Did I do that?"
We need another 12 years of Democratic Presidents.
from now until 2014, then, after being swept into office, will enact a FDR/JFK/LBJ agenda in anticipation of even more gains in 2016!!!!111!1ones!!
I can be pretty funny sometimes.
And then it no longer sounds so far fetched.
So, yes, we are going to see a whole lot of executive action on a whole lot of issues that members of the Democratic base hold near and dear. Why do you think that Obama suddenly got over his cold feet on gays in the military and gay marriage? Dems win by increasing their own voter turnout. And results were astounding. By showing that they had a spine on that issue which the GOP claimed to have made taboo, the administration caused a 180 degree change in public opinion.
By turning Gay Rights into the Civil Rights of the 21st century, Obama and the Democrats have revitalized the party. Americans love this about the Dems--the fact that we stand up for everyone. That we stand for fairness. So, we will see the administration stand up for voting fairness, pay fairness, fairness for immigrants, fairness for the aged----
Oh, and I am going to toot my own horn a little. Back in 2010, when Citizens United caught everyone by surprise for the first and only time (Dems are now raising money as fast as the GOP) and the GOP regained the House, I advised the president to start using his executive superpowers to overcome the inevitable gridlock and wall to wall House hearings which I knew were on the horizons. It took him a while, but I am glad that he and his staff finally came around to my way of thinking:
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/556
Here's for you, Mr. President, this blond is no Marilyn Monroe, but she loves you (and especially Michelle 
) all the same
