Can we put the “America is a center-right nation” myth to bed now?
Thirty-one percent of Americans describe their views on social issues as generally liberal, matching the percentage who identify as social conservatives for the first time in Gallup records dating back to 1999.
Gallup first asked Americans to describe their views on social issues in 1999, and has repeated the question at least annually since 2001. The broad trend has been toward a shrinking conservative advantage, although that was temporarily interrupted during the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Since then, the conservative advantage continued to diminish until it was wiped out this year.
Rather interested to see where this poll goes five years from now. The trend seems pretty clear.
Open thread.
Southern Beale
Would be interesting to chart this next to that recent Pew study showing religion dying in America. (link at the link, etc.)
SFAW
And the poll only focused on self-assessment. When they ask questions about specific or broad issues, but leave out the labels, people go for the liberal side somewhat more often. Kind of like when they ask about a certain health-insurance program – something labeled “Obamacare” usually scores lower than something labeled “ACA,” even if the respondent is given an otherwise-identical set of conditions.
Jerzy Russian
Have these poll results been unskewed yet?
SFAW
@Southern Beale:
Except for Islam, no doubt. Of course, the up-tick in Mooslims is from all those ISIS fighters streaming across the US/Mexico border.
Thanks, Obama.
beltane
The trend is clear. I’m guessing it will take the Beltway media fifty years, give or take a decade, to pick up on it.
SFAW
@Jerzy Russian:
Dean Chambers will get right on it, once he does his latest update to his “Barack O’Fraudo” website.
SFAW
@beltane:
Really? Lissen, I gotta bridge, runs between Brooklyn and Manhattan, that I’m willing to part with for a bargain-basement price.
Amir Khalid
The American MSM has its own well-noted — here, at least — bias towards the centre-right. As long as it has a collective political and business interest in the matter, it will maintain that the American public thinks the same way it does.
OGLiberal
Interesting significant uptick in 2009. I think that was less people identifying with conservative policies and more people registering their discomfort/anger that a brown guy was now president – e.g., those lifelong Dems in West Virginia who voted straight ticket Dem all their adult lives and continue to do that in 2008 except for one particular office.
DanF
I blame the Internet with all it’s wires and tubes.
cahuenga
Seriously, how can you look at the leadership of the two major parties and think that our nation is anything but center-right?
And as long as that remains a fact… Center-right remains a fact.
Matt McIrvin
The article then goes on to explain that if you ask them about economics, “conservative” still has a wide margin over “liberal”. We’re a vulgar-libertarian country, “socially liberal and fiscally conservative”, as people always like to say as if this were an intuitively obvious way to be.
People still hear “fiscally conservative” and think it means “fiscally responsible”, regardless of what conservative politicians actually do.
Frankensteinbeck
Hey, look at 2009 and 2010! Funny how that’s the only sharp change from an otherwise smooth process. In both parties, interestingly.
Jeffro
Ahem, here’s the REAL central myth of America: a majority of us would rather American be like Sweden (aka, ‘socialist hellscape’)
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/americans-want-to-live-in-a-much-more-equal-country-they-just-dont-realize-it/260639/
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin: the article is lying about that…we’re actually not fiscal conservatives at all…
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/americans-want-to-live-in-a-much-more-equal-country-they-just-dont-realize-it/260639/
Cervantes
Central America is not a myth!
justawriter
I am not optimistic, especially as the right wing shit machine starts to gear up for 2016, especially since they will have 30 years of faux Clinton scandals to re-“investigate.”
cahuenga
@Matt McIrvin:
You mean socially neutral and economically conservative.
Splitting Image
Keeping in mind that Gallup predicted a Romney landslide in 2012….
That said, I think the poll results are consistent with a group of people who were following conservative media through to Obama’s election, had a spasm of panic in the Fox freakout over the passage of ACA, and who drifted away from the conservative movement as it promoted crazier and crazier spokesmen. People who thought that Bob Dole was all right aren’t necessarily going to vote for Ted Cruz.
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin: and @Jeffro:
And this is why Republicans use ‘fiscal conservative’ to cover their racism. A considerable number of people don’t want racist policies, do want financial responsibility, and haven’t caught on to what ‘fiscal conservative’ really means.
EDIT – @Splitting Image:
The FOX freakout was itself so ludicrously conspiracy-theorist insane that nobody fell for it without some other factor making them nervous.
EDIT EDIT – And note, the conservative-leaning were already freaking out and getting more conservative the instant Obama got elected. They didn’t wait for ACA to become an issue.
Amir Khalid
@cahuenga:
“The leadership of the two major parties” =/= “our nation”
bemused
Recently I read that legislators think their constituents are more conservative than they really are. They also don’t legislate to reflect the views of Americans increasingly more liberal on a number of social issues. Why, I don’t know. Rightwingers make a lot more noise? Legislators are too influenced by money, corps?
Jeffro
@Frankensteinbeck: They use it to do that, sure…and at least as important to them, they use it to cover the true magnitude of inequality in this country.
It’s been illuminating to see in the news that Faux News made both Rs AND Ds think the country was more conservative than it is…that’s closely aligned with the GOP’s interest in making people think there is no way to be fiscally conservative and support government spending (of any kind other than the military, I suppose).
Jeffro
@bemused: You beat me to it while I was typing =)
cahuenga
@Amir Khalid:
They make the laws, decide what is funded, and who is killed. They are our face.
Matt McIrvin
@Splitting Image: Gallup’s polls aren’t the best; I think you can assume that any of their results has a significant systematic skew of some kind, though it’s impossible to say what.
But they have the advantage of having been around for a long time, asking people the same questions in some cases over decades, so they’re good for historical trend comparisons.
redshirt
I am rather – notably – depressed that I don’t see much change in our political climate since 2008. 6 years of Obama has seemingly done nothing to change the course of our insanity.
SFAW
@cahuenga:
Amir’s point is still correct.
Marc
If you’re far off on the extreme left it would probably seem to you as if both major parties are center-right. That says more about you than it does about them.
Matt McIrvin
@bemused: The other thing to keep in mind is that conservative voters have much more consistent turnout, so from the perspective of a politician who wants to win elections, the electorate arguably is more conservative than the country. Especially in the lower-publicity elections: midterms, special elections, off-year local elections.
Frankensteinbeck
@bemused:
The former. During the ACA debate, liberals agreed that the medical system is a mess and needs reform, then debated what reforms would work. Conservatives screamed in town halls about death panels.
Media distortion is also a big, big factor. I saw with my own eyes the national media pretend LA wasn’t seeing a gigantic, city-wide 100,000 person demonstration about immigrant rights, and instead discuss a thousand people at a Teabagger rally endlessly.
NorthLeft12
From a Canadian observer, to say the US is center-right is being generous. How about right-right-center?
I would be interested to see what the criteria is for Americans to judge where they stand on the political spectrum. From what I saw of the questions, it is up to the responder to judge what they think they are. I would like to propose that the average American has pretty much lost their frame of reference as both of the political parties trend farther right each year.
Right Wing Positions – austerity, balanced budgets, no tax increases/tax cuts for rich and corporations, free markets, aggressive foreign policy, military action sooner rather than later, emphasis on military, security, and punishment, unfettered right to gun ownership, minimal regulations on businesses, many regulations on individual freedoms [except guns], no recognition of institutional prejudices or any action to even the playing field, minority [including women] rights not recognized outside of existing laws, personal responsibility/government cannot fix anything.
Left Wing Positions – government regulations and actions to protect environment, minorities, consumers, workers, and women, negotiation in foreign policy first, second, and third, with military action as an absolute last resort, responsible economic policy to promote growth and job creation with little emphasis on short or medium term budgets, everyone needs help at some point/government can provide that support and help.
Matt McIrvin
@Marc: Or if you’re simply accustomed to the politics of, say, a Western European country or Canada. The right is currently ascendant in many of these countries, but it’s a right that wouldn’t be too far off from, say, the US Democratic Party of 1996.
SFAW
@redshirt:
Perhaps not, but the drop from 42 percent to 31 percent in self-described idiots conservatives seems fairly significant.
cahuenga
@SFAW:
Technically, yes. If that is any comfort.
And as the linked poll points out – We ARE center-right. Essentially neutral socially and still very conservative economically.
Matt McIrvin
@NorthLeft12: I think the rightward drift of the US Democrats actually peaked sometime in the early 2000s and has reversed since then, largely as a reaction to the disasters of the Bush II era. But it’s a slow and subtle process.
Germy Shoemangler
Interesting essay about “Socially Liberal But Fiscally Conservative” and what it really means.
bemused
@Jeffro:
Majority of Americans want to strengthen Social Security and Medicare, lower the retirement age, not the opposite. I’ve wondered why Republican voters are not screaming about this unless they are blaming Democrats. I have heard some say they were ok with SS “personal” accounts so they could manage their retirement “better” themselves! This was after I said senior citizens didn’t buy G W Bush pushing personal accounts. They hate Dems so bitterly that they have convinced themselves to believe the propaganda.
Tim Dickinson had a chart in Dec(?) Rolling Stone showing how Americans poll on immigration and other issues compared to the legislation. Legislators aren’t doing what majority of us want.
SFAW
@NorthLeft12:
Political establishment, no real argument on that.
But, as Amir noted, the political establishment is not the same as “the nation” or the populace. Is Canada the people, or Stephen Harper? If Harper, does that mean Canada is a right-winger’s paradise? The same could be said/asked about Egypt, Iran, North Korea, and so on.
The poll, and the overarching discussion, is not really about what the elected “leaders” do, although that can also be debated under separate cover.
NorthLeft12
@Matt McIrvin: Adding on to your comment, it is apparent that the fiscal conservative side trumps the socially liberal side.
How many times have you heard “Yes, I fully support [fill in liberal agenda item here] ..but we just can’t afford it right now.”
But this never applies to any part of the security [military, police, intelligence, etc.] apparatus.
Matt McIrvin
…consider: in 1992, Jerry Brown was running for President with a campaign revolving around a flat tax. No prominent Democrat would do that today. Brown surely wouldn’t.
In 2000, the Democratic nominee for Vice President was Joe Lieberman. Again, would not happen today. Hillary Clinton has backed off from her husband’s 1990s stances on gay rights and welfare reform.
Things are changing. Slowly.
Elizabelle
Violet or Valdivia, forget which, has been telling us for ages that we are a country with a center-right media.
cahuenga
@Germy Shoemangler:
Also, the polls reflect a “self description” of the respondent’s views. Does socially liberal mean the same thing to someone in Georgia, Kansas and California?
Frankensteinbeck
@bemused:
I’m not sure of this. At the least, I think Republican legislators are giving their constituents what they want. You just have to factor in that people have conflicting desires, and are willing to sacrifice some things they want to advance a higher priority.
dogwood
@bemused:
The fact that elected officials see their constituents as more conservative than they actually are is a reflection of the fact that conservative constituents are the most vocal and the most likely to vote.
Roger Moore
No. America as a center-right nation will never lose its pull as long as the punditariat is right of center.
NorthLeft12
@SFAW: Harper is arguably an average Democrat, although the party in Canada that calls itself Liberal, is really a slightly leftish Democrat.
As I mentioned above, lets judge the country by what they actually do, not what they say they want to do. In that case the US is probably the most right wing of the developed countries.
Matt McIrvin
@NorthLeft12: Yeah, the whole “the nation is broke” shtick. I’ve been hearing that since I was a kid, except for the brief period in the Nineties when the government was actually running a surplus, and then the bien-pensant thing to say was that we should pay down the national debt.
I think the rise of Krugman as an economic pundit is a hopeful sign: the guy bothers to say things that sound shocking, that the federal budget is not like household finance and a good economy is not just a matter of balancing the federal books. But many Americans still take the state of the economy and the state of the federal budget as somehow synonymous.
bemused
@Frankensteinbeck:
Who could forget those townhalls, shudder.
Media is a very big factor. There have been a lot of other peaceful protests, events, liberal conferences with huge numbers and barely a mention in media. One MN caller to Thom Hartmann show not long ago was having a discussion with a Republican woman about climate change and when he mentioned the huge numbers at protest for climate change legislation, she had never heard of it, didn’t believe it because it wasn’t reported on Fox.
How many people remember the large protests when GW was inaugurated?
SFAW
@cahuenga:
As I said earlier: the poll only addresses self-descriptions. That is not really a valid metric, because you end up with Lake Wobegon. The poll has some validity re: trend analysis, however.
Had the Rethugs not done their damnedest to turn “LLLLLLLLLiberal” into an epithet on a par with “lying, treasonous, pedophilic, mother-rapin’, father-stabbin’ motherfucker,” and had they not been working the refs (i.e., what used to be an active Press) for 30-40 years, it is highly likely that the number of self-described liberal would significantly outnumber self-described conservatives.
opiejeanne
@bemused: There were protests?
Matt McIrvin
@bemused: Americans want the US’s fiscal policies to be somewhere to the left of where they are, but they think current policies are far, far to the left of where they really are, so they think they want them to move to the right.
If you survey Americans you will find, for instance, that they think the US spends a colossal amount of money on welfare programs and foreign aid, when these are in fact tiny fractions of the budget. (Part of it is a shell game in which large “entitlement” programs like Social Security and Medicare are spoken of in terms that conflate them with welfare when politicians want to make welfare look like a giant drain, and then rhetorically separated when politicians want to present as defenders of them.)
Frankensteinbeck
@bemused:
I only vaguely remember them. I was much less politically aware, but the catastrofuck of the Bush Years forced my hand. Too much was going blatantly, look-at-the-number-of-dead wrong for me to not pay attention. Then Obama was elected, and I was beaten over the head with the reality of deep, widespread racism in our country.
Germy Shoemangler
The term “liberal” was being mocked as early as 1966, and by the Left!
Phil Ochs song from 1966: “Love Me I’m A Liberal”
I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I’d lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don’t talk about revolution
That’s going a little bit too far
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
And I’m glad the commies were thrown out
Of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
As long as they don’t move next door
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can’t understand how their minds work
What’s the matter don’t they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
Yes, I read New republic and Nation
I’ve learned to take every view
You know, I’ve memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I’m almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There’s no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I attend all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
And I’ll send all the money you ask for
But don’t ask me to come on along
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
Sure once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
Ah, but I’ve grown older and wiser
And that’s why I’m turning you in
So love me, love me
Love me, I’m a liberal
cahuenga
@SFAW:
I place the blame at a liberal’s inherent willingness to compromise. For decades liberals have been “holding their nose” during the election cycle, compromising and compromising further with an absolutely inflexible opposition. Decades of compromise has led to the choices we have now – A horrible choice and a half-shade less horrible choice. All are plutocrats and corporatists.
Yeah, I know… PURITY! That’s right. I have limits.
bemused
@dogwood:
So true. Just from reading letters to ed in MN papers, it’s the rightwing that predominate those pages.
SFAW
@NorthLeft12:
First of all, “average Democrat” has no practical meaning in this country. Maybe in Canada, if there is a Democrat Party. The distribution of views in the Democratic Party in the US, however, is non-Gaussian.
Second, after all the shit I’ve read here (since I don’t follow Canadian politics that much) about how right-wing Harper is, or at least all the right-wing things he’s done, I guess I have a tough time reconciling the idea that he’s an “average Democrat” – unless you consider Joe Manchin an “average Democrat.”
Matt McIrvin
@Germy Shoemangler: I have seen right-wingers quote that song without irony.
srv
You people forget the ebb and flows of history and that tsunamis aren’t a single wave.
A new Reagan will finally push the New Deal and it’s boomer afterbirth into the ash heap of history once the true cost becomes unavoidable. Just like Reagan Democrats, Millennials will find the Right Way after a decade of fail. Bee Gees or Beyonce, people always wake up from their stupor.
bemused
@Frankensteinbeck:
People don’t remember because media didn’t show much of that. I was kind of shocked to see clips of those protests in some documentary I can’t remember now. I do remember thinking, wow, media sure avoided showing those images.
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
I think you’re letting your depression influence what you see. There are a number of areas where the US has moved distinctly to the left since 2008. Marriage equality, and treatment of LGBT people generally, is an obvious one. Less obviously, look at what’s happening with the discussion of income inequality. It’s moved onto the radar to the extent that even the Republicans are talking about what to do about it, and raising the minimum wage is getting a lot of attention, and a fair amount of policy attention. Criminal justice reform is now a real issue, to the point that Nebraska has just voted to eliminate capital punishment. There’s a serious chance of rolling back some of the domestic spying powers that were implemented in the USA PATRIOT Act.
Redshift
@Matt McIrvin: I wouldn’t mind people’s buying into the deficit obsession so much if they weren’t also dumb enough to use it as an argument for voting Republican. Given that out of the three Republican administrations in the the past thirty years, one more than doubled the national debt and one nearly did so, anyone who actually cared about deficits would never vote Republican again.
Phil Donahue
@Southern Beale: Religion isn’t dying, it’s shrinking to it’s hard nutty core. The Catholics and mainline Protestants are peeling away, but the evangelicals driving the legislative crazy train are holding steady. Granted, they’ll have less cover and support for their policies, but they’ll still be a powerful force for a too damn long time.
Knowbody
You forgot the part where the vast majority of liberals in 2015 are where conservatives were in the Reagan years, and conservatives in 2015 are Bircher fringe lunatics. The one issue where that’s not true is on same-sex marriage.
If anything this country is reactionary far right. Obama is a Reagan Republican and Clinton is to his right.
Germy Shoemangler
@bemused:
They have the biggest mouths, and they comment excessively on all my local news. For all I know, they’re a minority, but they amplify themselves and make it sound like a huge crowd.
One thing I’ve noticed: sockpuppetry. I’ve seen several RWtrolls post under a variety of names in comments sections of progressive blogs and news sites. It’s easy to spot, same writing style, same misspellings (there’s one troll I’ve been following who spells “Hillery” and makes the same mistake under various aliases. And he will sometimes have conversations with himself, agreeing and praising himself!).
It never occurs to me to visit a tea party blog and troll them. I just don’t see any reason to. I wouldn’t be changing their minds. And yet the RWNJs haunt every progressive site and troll and troll and troll.
I haven’t seen this phenomenon here too much. Maybe the banhammer is strong here.
SFAW
@cahuenga:
Not really sure for what issue you’re assigning blame. But, if you think the electorate doesn’t want to describe themselves as “liberal” because of liberals’ “inherent willingness to compromise,” then you’re off the mark. Yeah, there might be some small percentage who use that as an excuse, but it’s probably on a par with people whom hate current Democrats because of the Civil Rights Act.
Again, you seem to be addressing issues regarding the political establishment. That’s not what the poll was addressing.
Kryptik
@SFAW:
Yeah, of all the things I keep hearing, i could see the Consesrvative Party up there being, on average, similar to our Dems, but Harper himself seems like he’d be a perfect fit for W’s GOP, if not necessarily the current set of even more crazy right-wingers.
bemused
@opiejeanne:
Tens of thousands booing and jeering at his limo in 2005. I don’t remember seeing that at the time but did later in a doc. Of course media could have shown it but I was too pissed off to watch.
cahuenga
@SFAW:
No, not my point at all. Just a viewpoint (vent) of how we arrived where we are.
Mike J
@cahuenga:
The leadership of the parties are the people that get elected. If you want more liberal leadership, find a liberal. Get him or her elected. Do that in enough other districts they have a voting bloc. Wait for them to get seniority.
But that’s too hard, people will whine. Which is why it won’t happen. Modern liberals are more likely to stay home and pout when something is too hard.
Matt McIrvin
@Knowbody: Obama is not a Reagan Republican. Reagan wasn’t able to enact reactionary policies to the extent he wanted to because he had to deal with a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives (and, at the end, a Democratic Senate as well). Obama is in the inverse situation.
bemused
@Germy Shoemangler:
Oh yeah, the wingnuts always have their megaphones with them. There is one local paper with a rightwing editor who allows a section for rants and raves with no signatures. As you can imagine, it is a horror. It’s not just the vitriol, it’s the jawdropping stupidty. I almost feel sorry for some of them.
cahuenga
@Mike J:
My point was simply: Actions speak louder than words. It’s easy for an individual to tell a pollster that they consider themselves to be socially liberal, but the outside world sees it something entirely different.
Splitting Image
@bemused:
Money is undoubtedly a factor, but so is the fact that Tea Partiers tend to make a lot more noise than the rest of the country. I seem to recall that when Tim F. was organizing people on this blog to call their Reps and encourage them to pass the Senate health care bill, some of the staffers said that they were being swamped by people demanding that they kill the bill to prove they weren’t secular-socialist Islamofascist commies in league with the Terrorists. Hardly anyone was calling in support of the bill.
A lot of that is down to organization. The same churches that work to get their members out to vote for Republicans in the midterms also get them to harass politicians outside of election season. They are successfully working the refs.
SFAW
@Mike J:
Oh yeah? Well, because of your mean-spirited comment, I’m going to stay home in 2016.
Howard Beale IV
BREAKING: Michael Sam signs a 2-year contract with the Montreal Alouettes in the CFL.
FlipYrWhig
@cahuenga:
Unfortunately for you, without the liberals willing to compromise, there’s a bit of a problem insofar as the proportion of uncompromising lefter-than-liberals is probably about 8% of the public. Coalitions are for chumps! Let’s lose forever and then
NO CARRIER
SFAW
@cahuenga:
But what has been happening is that persons holding more-liberal positions are self-labeling as “conservative,” not the other way around. Because of the “hostile workplace” for liberals, the percentage of self-labeling has lagged the actual (based on their views regarding individual issues).
MomSense
The challenge is really that the likely voters are more conservative than the nation as a whole and the voters we have to hound in Presidential election years but do not have the ground game to hound in the midterm election years.
Some of the big issues that just do not move legislatively like climate change and immigration would get much more support in Congress if we could turn out Latino, young, and progressive voters reliably.
cahuenga
@FlipYrWhig:
And how’s that worked out for you?
Omnes Omnibus
@cahuenga: OTOH, the fact that someone now considers him/herself to be liberal also means that when a policy is described as liberal, the person will be more disposed to favor the policy.
FlipYrWhig
@cahuenga:
Oh, right, I forgot the persuasive power that comes with declaring most self-described liberals, already a minority of the public, to be not _truly_ what they think they are, but actually a bunch of quislings and corporatists. That always goes over well.
Knowbody
@Matt McIrvin: Because Obama had such problems implementing his drone war, spying on all Americans, and now a trade deal that will finish off the middle class.
You’re right, he’s not a Reagan Republican, he’s far worse.
FlipYrWhig
@cahuenga: I’ll admit that poseurs and faux radicals HAVE kept me amused for about 15 years running. So there’s that.
Zandar
@cahuenga:
I place the blame at a liberal’s inherent willingness to stay home and not vote, then bitch about how bad our voting choices are.
NorthLeft12
@cahuenga: I guess this is exactly what I am trying to say.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Thank you, Amir.
Marc
@FlipYrWhig: He’s already identified the parties as horrible and slightly less horrible, so I think that calling him someone on the far left is quite reasonable. There is nothing wrong with being a political minority, but he absolutely doesn’t speak for someone like me – Sherrod Brown is my senator, for example, and my politics aren’t radically different from his.
FlipYrWhig
@Zandar: Tut tut, Zandar, that’s not liberals, that’s leftists, who know liberals to be bourgeois and quietist. Know your internecine identifiers!
Betty Cracker
I think it’s a myth that “purity progressives” are the leading cause of the lack of Democratic electoral success because they stay home to pout about subpar pony production. That happens sometimes, with catastrophic consequences (election 2000), but I think it’s pretty damn rare, and there have to be a number of stars aligning just right to make this group a pivotal factor.
The people who are politically engaged enough to go into ear-splitting snit about single-payer or drones or whatever typically DO show up to vote. The real problem is the tens of millions of people who can’t be arsed to drag themselves to the polls. Unfortunately, OUR voters are more likely to fall into this category than wingnuts.
Shorter: What Zandar said.
Paul in KY
@Germy Shoemangler: Sounds like you are describing Libertarians. Or, as I call them, people who are too pu$$y to call themselves Republicans.
Fair Economist
@cahuenga:
No, the conservatives “compromise” just as much. Who’d they nominate in 2012? The guy most responsible for the system used for Obamacare. That would be like us nominating the hawkiest supporter of the Iraq War in 2008.
What they do differently is that when they support the Republican candidate they simply *ignore* any moderate stances and blather endlessly about conservative ones. Liberal complain endlessly about any deviances from True Progressivism and ignore positions of agreement. The net result: only conservative positions get aired, constantly pushing the Overton Window to the right.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: We didn’t need her to tell us that.
Matt McIrvin
@Knowbody: Reagan wanted to eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy, massively and expensively expanded the US nuclear arsenal, and his administration floated the idea of firing a “nuclear warning shot” to show the Soviets we meant business. To his credit he didn’t actually start any direct shooting wars between the US and countries larger than Grenada, but he gave massive support to right-wing creeps, proxy wars and violent insurgents the world over in the name of fighting the Commies, in some cases using blatantly illegal means. It may not seem like it, but the world is actually a much more peaceful place than it was at the height of the Cold War, and Reagan was an enthusiastic Cold Warrior.
The drone war? I am opposed to the drone war, but in overall destructiveness it’s a fraction as bad as Bush’s invasion of Iraq. People using it to paint Obama as the warmongeringest president ever are going specifically looking for ways in which Obama is the warmongeringest president ever.
Paul in KY
@Germy Shoemangler: Guess Phil was trying to make a buck…
FlipYrWhig
@Marc: Right, that’s just basic coalition politics. Want more leftists, or your liberals to be further left of center? Well, roll your own. IMHO politicians go to where they think the votes are. If there aren’t enough people left of center, they go trawling among the right of center. Democrats have been attempting this for like 30 years. It doesn’t always work. When it does, you get a nonzero number of Heath Shulers. Because numbers. Build a movement, spawn leaders, make them candidates, and vote them into office. BUT ITS HARD BECAUSE OF THE CORPORATISTS. Oh well, tough shit, get cracking.
srv
@Betty Cracker: The only people who voted against Reagan were leftists.
They were a problem then, and they’re a problem now.
Paul in KY
@Phil Donahue: Good point there.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: Democratic voters are more likely to be working long hours; more likely to get fired if they take time off to vote (regardless of what the law says); more likely to be in districts where there are few polling places and the lines are hours long; and much more likely to be college students thousands of miles away from the districts where they’re actually registered to vote, actively discouraged by the townie government from registering locally, forced to jump through hoops to vote absentee and unfamiliar with local issues at home.
All these things suppress turnout; it’s not just apathy.
Goblue72
@Germy Shoemangler: everyone I know who calls themselves socially liberal / fiscally conservative has been a douchebag. And usually a white male.
Germy Shoemangler
@Betty Cracker:
I’ve heard people say they’re afraid of getting on a jury duty list if they vote. And they will drive all over for a big mac or to stand in line for “American Sniper” but see election day as an insurmountable challenge. Would mail-in ballots be helpful? They’d have to find a mail box. It’s a quandary.
Paul in KY
@Goblue72: i.e. a Libertarian :-)
SFAW
@Matt McIrvin:
Liar! They’re all moochers (T-bones, Cadillacs, etc.)
Liar! They don’t work (see above)
There doesn’t seem to be any problem in places like Brookville (NY), Rolling Hills (CA), Kenilworth (IL and NY); the moochers should move there – if they ever decide to WORK for a living.
cahuenga
@Betty Cracker:
“Purity” has no purpose other than as a pejorative and as a tactic to end discussion. It says you will freely cross lines that I will not, and surely others will cross lines that you will not… This is normal and goes both ways, welcome to humanity. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having moral and ethical limits.
japa21
@srv: Really? I voted against Reagan twice, as did my wife, and believe me, we can hardly be described as leftists. I prefer to call us people who care about our fellow humans, something that Reagan was not.
SFAW
@cahuenga:
Oh, please. Yes, yes, you’re morally superior because there are certain things, up with which you will not put.
We’re talking political labels (among other things), not whether you’d support slavery or whatever.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: I think that is the gist of it. Conservatives hammer on the rightest-wing positions they can, but once the candidates are established, they get in line behind their candidates and pretend they’re model conservatives. With liberals the internecine ideological battles are all out in the open.
But I think it does less to actually suppress voter turnout than people imagine. What it does do is keep the media narrative from moving leftward.
Linnaeus
@Betty Cracker:
Agreed, and it’s a myth that I’ve grown tired of. It doesn’t even seem to make a lot of sense internally: on one hand, “purity progressives” (a term, by the way, that has a very slippery definition) are a small, unrepresentative minority of the Democratic coalition, but at the same time, they’re powerful enough to spoil Democratic chances at the ballot box.
There are a whole lot of other factors involved that outweigh any “purity progressive” effect, if such an effect even exists.
Linnaeus
@Germy Shoemangler:
We do that here in Washington. We don’t even have polling places anymore.
SFAW
@Linnaeus:
Such as Ben Nelson pulling the shit he did on Obamacare.
Germy Shoemangler
@Linnaeus:
Do you have a higher percentage of people voting? Are mail-ins effective?
srv
@Linnaeus: Progressives are the Koch’s of the Democratic Party.
cahuenga
@SFAW:
Funny, from another point of view it might appear that slapping “purity” labels around might sound morally superior..
Matt McIrvin
@Linnaeus: I worry a bit about going to all mail-in ballots, because in places less prosocial than Washington state I could see all manner of abuses happening: since there’s no way to keep them truly secret, they’re subject to old-fangled 19th-century style vote-buying and intimidation. E. g. show me your ballot marked the right way, mail it in while I’m watching, and get paid/don’t get fired/don’t get beaten up.
Germy Shoemangler
@Matt McIrvin: Is there any evidence this is happening in Washington?
Matt McIrvin
@Germy Shoemangler: Not as far as I know, but Washington isn’t, say, South Carolina.
SFAW
@cahuenga:
That might be your point of view, wouldn’t surprise me. But it has used more often as a response on the order of “yes, yes, we would prefer that Policy X contains much more Factors A, B, and C. But it’s highly unlikely to pass that way, so let’s go for the half-a-loaf that we CAN get, rather than hold out for a full-loaf-or-nothing.”
The term gets used primarily in a political-workings context, not in a great-moral-issues-of-our-time context.
Jimgod
@Linnaeus: Thank you. Polls have demonstrated this since the purity emo-progs were wrongfully blamed for the 2010 Teabagger Wave. Fact is, independent voters, who are some of the dumbest people on the planet, will switch parties in a heartbeat, those that bother to turn up. In close elections where the Democratic bases don’t show in numbers, that will decide the outcome. Despite all this evidence, the “left” is still used as a scapegoat. You see it in some of the debates over the TPP, if you oppose it, you’re labeled an emo-prog. It has the unpleasant effect of making a meaningful debate over genuine concerns all but impossible.
Matt McIrvin
@Goblue72: Well-off totebaggers, in my experience. Often self-described independents who pride themselves on voting split tickets and insist they can see good points in both parties.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: I’m aware of those obstacles and we’ve discussed them here many times; they are serious and appalling. But I suspect apathy is more of a culprit than those factors. Otherwise, how to explain the dramatic drop in voter turnout in midterm elections? It routinely drops from 50%+ to 30%+, and there’s no reason (that I’m aware of) to think it becomes more difficult to vote in non-presidential election years. Nope, people don’t get off their asses and vote. It’s a huge problem.
Linnaeus
@Matt McIrvin:
We’ve had all mail-in ballots for a few years now, and there doesn’t seem to have been any serious problems with things like voter bribery and intimidation (granted, I don’t have any numbers handy, but our Secretary of State office keeps a very close eye on this stuff). I’m not sure that Washington is more prosocial, or at least, it has some areas that might be less so. Voter turnout has gone up since we instituted it. I suspect that the benefit of increased voter turnout would outweigh any problems with voter intimidation – it’s usually a much bigger problem for someone to find a way to get to the polling place and have the time to vote.
srv
@Jimgod: This just goes to prove the point that Obama has been the most divisive President in more than one dimension.
Linnaeus
@Jimgod:
I remember reading somewhere that most self-described independents actually have fairly stable and consistent party preferences in elections. They just don’t say that they do. “True” independents are much less common.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: I see it as a matter of degree: these various obstacles all increase the amount of motivation you’ll need to get up and vote, so that a level of motivation that would be sufficient for a retiree in a gated community with a convenient polling place is insufficient for you. In presidential elections, the election is all anyone hears about for a year plus, so motivation is probably cranked up as high as it will go. For the off-year City Council and bond issue election, not so much.
Betty Cracker
@cahuenga: FWIW, I generally agree. It is important to persuade people to accept half a loaf if that’s all that’s realistically possible instead of ending up with nothing, but persuade is the operative word. My point is that those who are bitching about “purity progressives” sinking the Democrats are barking up the wrong tree.
Tenar Darell
@Betty Cracker: I seem to remember a few people pointing out that not enough Democratic reps get primaried from the left. Basically they’re not properly afraid of us engaged voters. So that Eric Cantor, who was OMG, willing to work towards immigration reform, got ousted by Dave Brat (in a relatively safe district). But, someone like Chuck Schumer, who was apparently responsible for shepherding the Fast Track vote in the Senate, will not get primaried in New York. (Now if I could only remember where I’ve read stuff like that so I can find the post; Digby’s place mebbe).
Jimgod
@Linnaeus: Yes, I should clarify that the 10% “true” indies are the dummies who switch. The majority are partisan but too chicken-shit to own up to it. But the post-election polls did show the same “true” indies who voted Dem in 06 and 08 voted Rep in 10. And I’ll bet you they voted D in 12 and R in 14 as well. Cause Obama promised things and they didn’t happen yesterday. Or something.
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
I can’t stand the ‘purity progressives’, which I define as anybody who thinks the difference between the Democrats and Republicans isn’t glaring. I also don’t think there’s enough of them to bother with. Our problem is that very different circumstances motivate liberal and conservative voters, and especially during Obama’s presidency it has been very easy for the Republicans to motivate their base in off years, while our voters look at all the gridlock in Washington and think ‘Why bother?’ That gridlock, alas, is why we do need to bother.
Germy Shoemangler
@Linnaeus:
I have heard people say “I’m neither republican nor democrat. I’m independent.” And then they go on to express opinions right out of the republican talking points playbook (drug test welfare recipients, fight voter fraud, climate science is undecided). I think they’re a proud bunch and think of themselves as being individualists when they’re not.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Apathy = lack of motivation, no? Sure, there are degrees, but the fact that people need an American Idol-style drama between presidential contenders to overcome the obstacles pretty much boils down to “can’t be arsed to drag themselves to the polls,” IMO, notwithstanding the difficulties stipulated. It’s unfair, yes, but so were poll taxes, billy clubs and fire hoses, and turnout was actually higher back then.
Linnaeus
@Germy Shoemangler:
I have a friend who is kinda like that: he says he’s an independent and thinks that “all politicians are the same”, but his general political outlook leans conservative. He’s not as bad as the people whom you describe (he does have some genuinely progressive views), but if I were a betting man, I’d say that he votes Republican more often than not.
Linnaeus
@Jimgod: I agree that those kinds of voters are the bigger challenge in terms of getting them to vote for a Democratic candidate.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
And the people who are deliberately throwing up more obstacles to voting, so that fewer people are willing or able to do it. The workplace protections we have for voting are great if you have an easy commute and an uncrowded polling place, but they aren’t very helpful for people who have to travel for hours on public transit to get to and from work and wait hours longer in line because their polling places are overcrowded. Not to mention the extra hoops because of voter ID laws. If we want more people to vote, we need to put a very high priority on a new VRA.
jl
The GOP know that youth is merely a special interest group, and are acting accordingly.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Thank you Amir, this needed to be said. An exclamation point, even…
dogwood
@Tenar Darell:
What you say is true perhaps in House races, but in Senate races it can prove disasterous. In 2010 the republicans would have re-elected Dick Lugar, perhaps unseated McCaskell, and definitely flipped Biden’s seat to the second most popular Delaware politician, Mike Castle.
FlipYrWhig
@cahuenga:
Just spotted Chez Benen:
So you’re right, in a sense, but it’s also the very heart of the problem: self-identified liberals not only _go along with_ compromises, they _actively endorse_ compromise as a political tool. That’s before we even talk about “moderates.” You can say liberals _shouldn’t_ be so compromising, but it runs deeply in the liberal heart. Leftists maybe don’t feel that way, but there aren’t very many of them. In a system where a majority is necessary, this kind of thing is an enormous Gordian Knot.
FlipYrWhig
@Tenar Darell:
Well, that’s also kind of a testament to how little dissatisfaction there really is between mainstream Democrats and the leftier side of the spectrum. They don’t get primaried from the left because there’s not much ground to their left for a primary challenger to succeed in claiming. IOW, if you want your Democratic politicians to be leftier, make your Democrat voters leftier first. Mobilize the left and win some races. Uphill.
FlipYrWhig
And if the linked survey is anything to go by, the process of making more liberals _is already working_. Great! Bodes well. Let’s get some politicians to match.
Fair Economist
@Knowbody:
“Liberals are Reagan-era conservatives” was an exaggeration based on truth for a while, but it’s not really true anymore. Liberals are currently calling for serious moves to renewable energy, big raises in the minimum wage, increased taxes on the rich, campaign finance reform, and more regulation of big finance. There are all now not just “left-liberal” positions but mainstream Democratic positions.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes, I’d agree that public dissent on the left isn’t the big issue with turnout. I think it’s part of the issue, though, because leftist don’t feel quite as much “part of the team”. Part of the benefit in Presidential years is that we put our differences away and root for the guy at the top of the ticket. I think that total media reporting is most of the issue, though. Most Americans follow national media these days, so they get informed about Presidential contests. Houses races? Not so much – there’s just no time for the national media to report on every House race.
Roger Moore
@Fair Economist:
It was an exaggeration based on ignoring a big chunk of the liberal agenda. Those oh so squishy liberals somehow managed to pass health care reform, while Reagan personally opposed the creation of Medicare.
fuckwit
Yeah, I’m not buying this either. Self-defined == bullshit.
What has more likely happened is that the “social conservatives” have gone so batshit crazy that people are running away from that label and calling themselves liberal now. It’s entirely possible that people’s attitudes and opinions haven’t changed much, only the labels they’re using.
I still hold that the USA is far and away more right wing and conservative on average than say Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, etc. I think if you measured positions on actual issues, and did a comparision between various countries, you’d get more meaningful results.
I am told though that Europe is drifting rightward rapidly and may catch up with us soon. That’d be scary.
Valdivia
@Elizabelle:
:)
Yes, I am always screaming about the Village, specially that they are wired for the GOP, not just the media but
Washington itself. Ugh just thinking about it makes me angry. grrrrr.
FlipYrWhig
@Fair Economist: “Rockefeller Republicans” (Jeffords, Javitz, Weicker, etc.) are now Democrats. Democrats of the deeper South (Shelby, Hollings, Heflin) died out or switched parties. Who are the Reagan-era liberals who were so much further left than today’s supposedly diminished liberals? Who are we talking about?
Let’s not forget that JFK got elected by old-Cold-Warrior-ing Nixon. Even in the supposed heyday of liberalism, the Democratic Party was kept afloat by a marriage of convenience between Northern Catholic “ethnics” and Southern racists.
Valdivia
@Frankensteinbeck:
Amen.
FlipYrWhig
@fuckwit: Because it turns out that a lot of Europeans aren’t that enthusiastic about having people of color as neighbors. We just happened to be
50100400 years ahead of them in panicking about it.Tenar Darell
@dogwood: I was pointing out that there are “safe” districts. Technically there are also “safe” states. Even Lindsey Graham, if he’d had only one instead of multiple opponents, might no longer be a Senator. And the election undoubtedly changed him by pushing him right on more issues. I haven’t exactly noticed him bringing up immigration lately, or heard him strongly advocating for the Dreamers who enlist to get citizenship. And he’s a war, bomb, & boots on the ground guy.
I was really only trying to make the point that Schumer is “safe” from the only remaining influence against the money he gets from Wall Street. The potential of the left to make him work or even pay at the polls. I suppose I would have said exactly that, if I’d thought of it.
dogwood
@Betty Cracker:
This is very true. After everything that happened in Ferguson, I believe the majority of eligible African American voters did not vote in the subsequent city council elections. The number voting did go up, and that’s hopeful, but a lot of work still has to be done. There isn’t much Barack Obama or any democrat can do to reform the criminal justice system, protect voting rights or change the immigration system if the people demanding these changes are not willing to consistently vote. The myth of the President as the most powerful person in the world is unfortunately too well-accepted among Democrats, especially those who are way more opressed by state and local lawmakers than federal officials. Republicans don’t have this problem. They know how to get what they want at every level of government.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
Not just people of color, people who aren’t part of their ethnic group however defined. A lot of the panic in the UK is about Eastern Europeans rather than darker skinned people from the former colonies.
Botsplainer
@FlipYrWhig:
Much of the New Deal benefitted the South. Those that were comfortable became wealthy, those who werre of working class backgrounds fared somewhat better.
People of Color continued to get the shit end of the stick. It was only after it became apparent that society’s benefits weere about to become available to black populations did southerners decide that the New Deal was bad and created dependency.
Fair Economist
@FlipYrWhig:
I wasn’t saying that. The comment I replied to said today’s diminished liberals were similar to Reagan-era *conservatives*. I was disagreeing. And while liberals were notably less liberal around, say 1996-2002, that was always an exaggeration, and liberals have becomes substantially more liberal since. Most nobably, the silver lining of the 2010 trouncing is that the Blue Doggy types have been mostly expelled and so the Dem party no longer has much need to cater to them. So the official Dem positions are getting distinctly more liberal.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore: Good point.
FlipYrWhig
@Fair Economist: Sorry, I was piggybacking on your comment to pose a question to Knowbody, but forgot to edit it that way.
ETA I took Knowbody’s frame to be something like this: under Reagan there were still True Liberals, but now 25 years later everything has moved so far right that even the people calling themselves “liberals” now would have been considered conservatives then.
dogwood
@Tenar Darell:
I understood your point. The strategy works if it is applied pragmatically, and pragmatism is a harder sell to the people who want to primary squishy dems. The Lieberman/Lamont fiasco is a perfect example of that.
SFAW
@Botsplainer:
Interesting theory. Not disagreeing at all, but anything to cite? Perhaps it’s a case of “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc“?
I’m serious. I realize that, just because I never heard it put that way before doesn’t mean it’s wrong; that it could be that I just wasn’t paying enough attention.
Cervantes
@SFAW:
No, not an optical illusion.
In order to enact the New Deal, FDR needed support from Southern Democrats, and he got it by agreeing not to upset them with all that talk about civil rights. Especially as administered in the South, New Deal programs were as segregated and as unfairly discriminatory as you’d expect in the era of Jim Crow.
It was in ’48, in response to that Communist and nigger-lover Truman, that the so-called Dixiecrats finally broke away and came out on their own. And then when LBJ became president, voting-rights legislation twisted the knife even more, and, one can argue (as above), that’s why many of his Great Society programs were never fully funded.
Roger Moore
@dogwood:
How much of a fiasco was Lieberman/Lamont anyway? Yes, the liberals didn’t get their man elected, but they didn’t manage to mess things up badly enough to let the Republican win. And while Lieberman was obnoxious about the whole thing, he did keep caucusing with the Democrats and voted the right way on really important things like PPACA and Supreme Court nominations.
Matt McIrvin
@FlipYrWhig: There’s always some of the Will Rogers Effect, after his statement that when the Okies moved from Oklahoma to California it raised the average intelligence of both states. When relative centrists switch from one major party to the other, the party that they’re moving to tends to win, but both parties’ average ideological stances shift in the opposite direction.
Matt McIrvin
…though, on the other hand, when Blue Dog Democrats lost in 2010 and 2014, they were replaced by super-duper-right-wing Tea Party types, not by centrist Republicans.
Tenar Darell
@dogwood: Well, then we’re in relative agreement, that the tactic has utility if used strategically and in the right environment, (Perhaps where a politician can’t run in the general as an Independent). So, why do you think liberals and the left don’t use it more often? Because I’m honestly not sure that the reluctance to use it is pragmatic either.
@Roger Moore: I did not know this. I remember a lot of people saying he was responsible for some watering down because Hartford, but yeah, he had to have voted Yes for ACA to pass because no Republicans & 60 filibuster proof votes. ETA D’oh internet time!
SFAW
@Cervantes:
Thanks.
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: Here’s Coates on this, citing Ira Katznelson’s Fear Itself:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/a-history-of-liberal-white-racism/275113/
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/a-history-of-liberal-white-racism-cont/275129/
He stresses that Southern white supremacists weren’t just right-winger racists who cut a Faustian deal with liberals; they were, in many ways, progressives. Conservatives who use this as part of a “liberals are the real racists” line are being willfully blind to history, but the fact nevertheless shouldn’t be erased.
There are more details in Coates’ long “Case for Reparations” essay:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Betty Cracker:
I think you’re vastly underestimating the success of Republican voter suppression tactics. Half the point isn’t to remove people from the rolls, it’s to convince everyone else that there’s no point in showing up because they’ll have to stand in line for two hours only to be told they have to fill out a provisional ballot. It’s about making voting seem as difficult and painful as possible so only the people who are willing to crawl over broken glass to do it will show up.
opiejeanne
@bemused: I have no memory of that, but it may be that I was too disgusted to watch.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I’m aware of all that — painfully so, since I live in a state where a hairless, sociopathic reptile decreed that I had to personally stand in line for hours to vote for Obama. But that doesn’t that explain the 20-point drop in turnout on non-presidential election years. People don’t get off their asses and vote. It’s not the only problem, but it is a huge one.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
Are you saying there’s one primary factor that explains it? And that the one primary factor is the absence of “an American Idol-style drama between presidential contenders”?
What are some other factors, in your view?
I haven’t really been paying attention so if I’m missing something, feel free to point and laugh!
Southern Beale
@Knowbody:
And weed. And war. I’m convinced mainstream America is no longer pro-war. The recent Jeb Bush Iraq fail is proof of that. Of course, one terra attack might change that.
Sourmash
@bemused: Cons make all the noise. They call their reps, send email, WRITE LETTERS in great numbers (as much as Cons hate the post office, they put a huge amount of stock in what arrives at their door via snail mail). They may not give credence to a strongly worded letter from their colleagues, but if you’re going to write a letter, you’re probably going to vote. 1,000 votes can sway an election so if you get 2000 letters in favor of an issue you vote for that’s a margin of error you don’t have to worry about.. It’s a way of creating their own echo chamber for their representatives. So we need to call, write letters and send emails.
David Koch
Thanks Obama.
David Koch
I see there are some emoprogs/firebaggers in this thread who are upset over the good news. Of course they are – they’re only happy when bad news occurs.
Kick and scream all you want. Hold your breath till you turn blue, but Obama has extinguished the 17 pt gap he inherited in 2009 in only 6 years.
President Obama’s plaque on Mount Rushmore
☑ Landmark peace agreement with Iran
☑ Regulated CO2 – cut emissions by 30%
☑ Ended Bush’s war on Iraq
☑ Withdrawing all troops from Afghanistan
☑ Kept the US out of war in Syria, Iran, and Ukraine
☑ Repealed DADT
☑ Overturned DOMA
☑ Enacted Federal ENDA
☑ Endorsed Gay Marriage
☑ Set strong Net Neutrality regulations
☑ Raised car millage to 55 mpg
☑ Rescued the Auto Industry
☑ Prevented a 2nd Great Depression
☑ Ended Bush’s tax cuts for the rich
☑ Brought health insurance to 32,500,000 million people
☑ Normalized relations with Cuba after 54 years
☑ Stopped Keystone Pipeline
☑ Enacted Dodd-Frank financial reform
☑ Deferred to Colorado’s and Washington’s pot laws instead of using federal preemption
☑ Overturned the ban on stem cell research
☑ Saved millions of Latinos from deportation
☑ Enacted free contraceptives for women
☑ Enacted 6 weeks maternity leave for federal workers
☑ Extended Social Security benefits to gay couples.
☑ Eliminated color coded terror alerts
☑ Rebuilt FEMA
☑ Appointed first 11 openly gay judges on Federal bench
☑ Appointed first Latina to Supreme Court
☑ Appointed first female Solicitor General
☑ Appointed first female Federal Reserve Chairwoman
☑ Appointed 41% of female judges to Federal Bench
☑ Ended rescission, pre-existing conditions, lifetime caps
☑ Enacted Fair Sentencing Act
☑ Ended federal criminal asset forfeiture
☑ Ended gender discrimination in the Military
☑ Enacted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
☑ Enacted Lilly Ledbetter Act
☑ Enacted Mathew Sheppard Hate Crimes Act
☑ Enacted Credit Card Reform Act
☑ Enacted Food Safety Act
☑ Eliminated banks from federal student loans
☑ Found bin Laden
☑ Captured Whitey Bulger
☢ Reduced Nuclear arms with Russia by 66%
☑ Provided crucial financing for Telsa’s electric car
☑ Negotiated Co2 reduction accord with China
☑ Expanded SCHIP and Pell Grants
☑ Syria surrendered their WMDs
☑ Enacted world program to secure loose fissionable material
☑ Saved movie “The Interview” from being censored and buried by Sony Pictures
☑ Secured release of POW Bowe Bergdahl
☑ Saved Yazidis and Benghazi from genocide
Obama has accomplished all this in only six years, in the face unprecedented obstruction by the wingnuts and the corporate media.
Brandon
Do I need to be the first in this thread to point out that John was right! 2009 was Peak Wingnut after all. In the end John was only off by perhaps 6 months.
Peak Wingnut has now gone completely full circle.
Matt McIrvin
@Brandon: Ah, but the wingnuttiness of the general population is one thing; the fervent intensity of the wingnuts we have, quite another. To some extent I think they move in inverse.
Matt McIrvin
…And the trend on economics in the Gallup poll does seem mildly positive as well; it’s just that a tremendous amount of ground was lost around the time of the 2008 crash/Obama election, some combination of which seem to have driven a lot of people to identify as more economically conservative.
And even there, that bump was mostly among people who were Republican leaners to begin with; among Democrats, self-identified economic liberalism has actually been growing the whole time, it’s just that most of them are still “moderates”. It looks as if the days when more Democrats claimed to be “fiscally conservative” than liberal (which I sort of think of as the 1990s norm) ended around 2007.
john fremont
@Germy Shoemangler: This!