The new Pew Research Center report on political polarization has some interesting findings. Among them:
Young Outsiders lean Republican but do not have a strong allegiance to the Republican Party; in fact they tend to dislike both political parties. On many issues, from their support for environmental regulation to their liberal views on social issues, they diverge from traditional GOP orthodoxy. Yet in their support for limited government, Young Outsiders are firmly in the Republicans’ camp.
Also:
The Next Generation Left are young, relatively affluent and very liberal on social issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. But they have reservations about the cost of social programs. And while most of the Next Generation Left support affirmative action, they decisively reject the idea that racial discrimination is the main reason why many blacks are unable to get ahead.
These are groups not firmly in either the liberal/left or conservative/right camps, but likely to support equal government treated of LGBT people—if they’re not told doing so requires them to sign up for the full progressive government-expansion agenda and the identity politics of perpetual victimization. And let’s hope they don’t stumble across the gay press.
More. Pew charts partisan shifts over the past decade.
22 Comments for “Polarization, and Beyond”
posted by Houndentenor on
And YOU’d better hope they aren’t reading the anti-gay diatribes in the right-wing press.
posted by Mike in Houston on
They pretty much sound like centrist Democrats and moderate Republicans…
Willing to spend money, responsibly and paid for with taxes if required, regulate where needed for the good of all and also believing in the fundamental value of “equal means equal”.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
And let’s hope they don’t stumble across the gay press.
Uh, Stephen, I can understand why you feel that way, given your dislike of the Democratic Party, but I think that they will learn the respective parties’ positions on the issues, including marriage equality, whether or not they read the Washington Blade. A lot of them watch Colbert and the Daily Show, not to mention keep up with things though social media.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The two parties have both shifted toward opposite ends of the spectrum on many issues over the last forty years. When I was young, both parties had liberal and conservative wings, anchored by a healthy number of moderates. In the period 1950-1970, the liberal-moderate-conservative battles were fought internally, and with regional difference, the parties tended to cluster center-left and center-right, neither too far from the American center.
That’s changed. The parties now display stark differences on a lot of issues — social justice issues, equality issues, immigration issues, environmental issues, cultural issues, economic issues and so on. We have reached the point where the two parties have become more like political parties in Europe than like the political parties in our country of recent past, and if the Pew study is accurate, the parties are now clusters of like-minded people largely isolated from one another.
And that has changed our politics. As an observation in the Washington Post put it this morning, “Where voters once might have been content to stake out a spot in the middle, it is increasingly likely that one party will appeal to a voter more than the other on a regular basis. The distance between the two parties is irksome for voters, but they don’t have a choice but to support one or the other. In other words, the very thing that causes voters to have unfavorable opinions of the parties — their inability to agree or compromise on anything — is also the thing that has left nearly every voter leaning toward one or the other.
My own view is that the parties will again move toward the center over time (it seems to me that the Democrats have been doing that, rather successfully, since the Clinton years, and the Republicans seem to be starting to recognize that they must), but suppose that doesn’t happen?
The question Stephen poses is where the younger voters will align in time, assuming that party alignment toward the ideological poles doesn’t change over time. I don’t have an answer to that, although I suspect that the “Priebus Autopsy” and other internal Republican studies suggesting that younger voters will increasingly turn a cold shoulder to Republicans if they don’t change are correct. The Republican Party, in my view, has shifted farther away from the political center than the Democratic Party in the post-Clinton era, and I don’t see how the Republican Party can build a national coalition based almost entirely on minority positions. “God, Guns and Gays” generates a lot of energy amongst the base, but represents and shrinking minority, and that fact isn’t going to change.
I took a close look at the Pew study (I took the political typology quiz, by the way, and ended up “Next Generation Left”, just for disclosure purposes), and compared it with my experience in Democratic politics over the last decade.
I can see a growing shift among Democrats away from “Solid Liberals” toward “Next Generation Left”, largely along generational lines. The “Solid Liberals” I know tend to be older, veterans of the battles of the 1960’s to 1980’s, while the “Next Generation Left” tend to have been born from the 1970’s going forward. As is the case with the “angry old white men” who dominate Republican politics, the “Solid Liberal” wing of the Democratic Party will die off, replaced by younger activists who are less inclined toward government involvement. If I have to make a prediction, it is that the views of the “Next Generation Left” will dominate in Democratic politics over the next decade or two. To my mind, that’s a good thing.
But it also means that those (like Stephen) who think that the Democratic Party will remain stuck in “the full progressive government-expansion agenda and the identity politics of perpetual victimization” (assuming that it ever was, which I think that even casual observation would suggest is naive), are fighting a straw man.
Where the Republican Party will go is a question I can’t answer.
posted by Houndentenor on
Government expansion? Who was the last Republican to actually reduce the size of government? It would be someone before Hoover (if such a president ever existed). I am so sick of the lie that Republicans want smaller government. They don’t. They just want a big government with different spending agendas than Democrats.
posted by Jorge on
That Pew Research Center report stated that both “Business Conservatives” and “Steadfast Conservatives” agree with the Tea Party at about the same 55% rate. So while I would like to dismiss you, I think it is not yet time.
posted by Houndentenor on
Yes, everyone SAYS they want to cut spending and then when you read what they want to do it’s a lot of increases with very small cuts. It’s easy to say you want to do something. The devil is in the details, as they say. I look at what people do, not what they say. Talk is cheap, and nowhere is it cheaper than Washington, DC.
posted by Don on
As Tom pointed out, this is where the majority of Americans are on the issues, not just the young ones. But polarization and political gamesmanship makes it impossible to pass any legislation along these lines. While not unique, I believe we are in an uncommon period where no one in power will pass legislation that 70% of the American population supports – regardless of what the issue is.
When this logjam finally breaks, I expect government to move much more swiftly in whatever direction it takes.
posted by Jorge on
I am deeply disappointed in how discredited foreign policy appears to have become across the board.
The fact that Democrats have one core group and several peripheral groups in its base while Republicans have two separate core bases helps to further explain how Democratic presidential candidates tend to emerge stronger from their primaries, while the last two Republicans emerged weaker. Having a single dominant base that is consistently liberal across every issue is hugely helpful for the Democratic party’s electoral prospects and ability to appeal to multiple different groups who can be benefited on a particular issue. In short, it appears the Democratic party benefits from a clear ideological vision that serves the interests of its disparate base. I’ll be the first to deride the excesses of the far left’s demand for ideological purity, but those of the Democratic party who are consistently liberal on every issue and use their vision separately for the benefit of each group they agree with are among this country’s greatest leaders.
Now Tom’s last post starts giving me doubts about that.
These are groups not firmly in either the liberal/left or conservative/right camps, but likely to support equal government treated of LGBT people—if they’re not told doing so requires them to sign up for the full progressive government-expansion agenda and the identity politics of perpetual victimization.
Then they don’t support equal government treatment of LGBT people. That’s not the end of the world, they’re all becoming socially liberal anyway. But they need to come to the table to try to solve this country’s problems.
And let’s hope they don’t stumble across the gay press.
I don’t know about the gay press, but the black press is a big part of what turned me off on the left.
And again, that’s not the end of the world. What, the big racial issues we’re talking about today are affirmative action and whether government attention is a good thing? Those are important questions, but in the grand scheme of all things racial, are we looking at people being actively antagonistic toward the black community? Immigrants, yes, but blacks?
I came out as a Business Conservative. Oh, yuck. But at least they put in a good word for this group being more internationalist.
posted by Lori Heine on
“Yet in their support for limited government, Young Outsiders are firmly in the Republicans’ camp.”
That statement is absolutely bizarre. How can anybody even keep a straight face and write something like that?
The Republicans are not — and have very nearly never been — for limited government. They are for a huge, expensive and oppressive government that THEY control, for their own purposes.
Even the Tea Party is full of crap about this. Especially the Tea Party is full of crap about it.
Those people want Uncle Sugar to go on paying for all their geriatric goodies. They want to bomb the living crap out of everybody who even looks at us cross-eyed. They want to establish Orwellian surveillance on everybody they don’t like.
Republicans want limited government? There’s a real thigh-slapper.
posted by AG on
“They want to establish Orwellian surveillance on everybody they don’t like.”
On the contrary, it is Barack Obama’s NSA that has imposed the regime of total surveillance on the American people. And it is Barack Obama’s IRS that harasses the President’s political opponents. Deal with it, knee-jerk Democratic partisan.
posted by Aubrey Haltom on
AG – it’s funny you calling some other commenters here “partisan”. Funny as in ‘ironic’.
But to be clear – I have always been very critical of those areas where Obama tends to follow Bush’s lead to the ‘T’. Even expanding the NSA’s scope.
But, of course, it’s not “Obama’s NSA”. Have you heard the GOP leadership criticizing the NSA? No. Who signed the Patriot Act the first go-round? Yeah.
i.e., there’s so much blame to go around on this issue. I don’t see the distinction between Obama and his predecessor that you seem to find on this concern. What I see is an agency, and a mentality, that is running on its own – irrespective of party.
Which is a major reason the NSA should be curtailed (among so, so many others…).
Re: the IRS. I don’t think there’s been much evidence (unless you consider Issa making lots of hot air noise to be ‘evidence’) that the IRS was trying to “harass” the president’s opponents.
But that won’t stop the GOP from their never ending investigations into Benghazi, the IRS, birth certificates, etc…
And now Palin wants to impeach the president. Over something.
I’d take it all a little more seriously if these same people – you included, apparently – were just as critical of the Bush/Cheney administration for their lies to get us into Iraq. For the torturing that they justified through some twisted logic. For the Patriot Act. For any one of the numerous areas where both Bush and Obama drink from the same cup.
If you were to hold the GOP to the same standard as the Dems – then I’d think you were someone who could comment on ‘partisans’.
But you’re not. So I don’t.
posted by AG on
You’re right. I completely forgot to add Barack Obama’s Patriot Act to my list. Yep, he signed it on May 26, 2011. He owns it now.
Nowhere in my posts I defend the GOP, I’m just pointing out that the Dems in Barack Obama’s America are not better on civil rights than the GOP. In the slightest.
Also, you should have said “fake scandals.” It’s a true story that if you repeat the words “fake scandals” twenty times then everyone will forget about them.
posted by Doug on
“. . .I’m just pointing out that the Dems in Barack Obama’s America are not better on civil rights than the GOP.”
It was Obama who finally got rid of DADT and he has pushed marriage equality both of which the GOP has fought tooth and nail, so your statement is just factually wrong.
posted by Aubrey Haltom on
My thought, AG, was that it’s not “Obama’s NSA”. It is a political culture that has gripped both parties. Neither wants to be the one which experiences a terrorist attack during their administration. So they kowtow to these Agencies which run essentially independent from any oversight. (Given the fact that the controlling Court too often provides blanket consent.)
And in the process, any national discussion on security vs privacy is too easily co-opted by fear of losing political power. Both parties do this, yes.
As to whether there’s any distinction between Dems and Reps – I don’t think you’re quite right there. But I don’t think the Obama Admin is the star it’s made out to be, either. (You see, the matter is a little more complex than you make it out to be.)
I don’t have a problem believing that Obama has used his support for the lgbt community purely for his own political gain. I tend to think that of any politician who uses his faith – which they call the most important part of their life – in such a cavalier fashion.
One day (in 2008) Obama is against marriage equality because of Jesus. Another day (in 2012) he’s suddenly for equality, again because of Jesus. It always surprises me that God/Jesus/Zeus/Whoever changes their mind so frequently on these matters. 🙂
However – concurrently – I don’t see how you can doubt that the Dem Party is much more inclined at this point in time to support at least certain lgbt rights. True, the Dems didn’t put much effort into passing ENDA when they controlled Congress. Even with massive popular support per every poll I’ve ever read. And it took some financial pressure to get the Obama Admin to turn around on DOMA and DADT – recall Valerie Jarrett doing the media circuit telling everyone why the Obama admin HAD to defend these laws. Until, per the DNC Treasurer (an openly gay man) the gayTM started drying up. Coincidentally, or not, we then saw a sudden shift from defending these laws to the Admin’s opposition to them.
Even so – what party has virtually every major potential presidential candidate supporting equality at this time? The Dems.
What party vilifies us? What party had Tony Perkins write the ‘Social Issues Platform’ for their 2012 national platform? The same Tony Perkins who has been video’d applauding an evangelical minister demanding ‘death for all practicing homosexuals’, btw.
What party frames their opposition to lgbt rights as the essence of their social issues platform? (along with their opposition to a woman’s right to choose what happens in her own body.)
I think the Obama Admin should be criticized and held to the same standard that we would hold the Republican Party. I don’t ‘give the politician the benefit of the doubt’. It’s a little simpler to take them at their word, and then respond accordingly.
But when I follow that logic – taking them at their word – where do you find similarities in the civil rights platforms of the two parties?
One of the main issues I have with your comments is the black/white nature of them. The Dems are not better on civil rights than the GOP – why? Because both parties support NSA. Ok, but there’s more to civil rights than NSA.
There are many areas of similarities between the two parties. And Obama can be criticized for following, and expanding, several Bush policies that I heartily oppose – from NSA to Patriot Act to the Admin’s continued financial faucet filling the faith-based organizations’ program that Bush started.
(btw – talking about ironic. Did you know that the Obama Admin is funding several anti-gay organizations – such as the Family Research Council – along with numerous ‘abstinence only’ orgs, as well as funding AIDS orgs that are religiously based, preach Jesus Christ as the cure for AIDS, disapprove of using condoms. All of this through the ‘faith-based initiative’ Bush began. and which has been continued and expanded by Obama, with virtually no oversight as to how the money is being spent.)
That does not mean that there are ‘no differences’.
Much of what I love about this site are the site’s ‘commentariat’. The frequent commenters. Because they are able to deal with issues from more than a one-eyed perspective – while still holding on to their own viewpoint.
All I hear from you is the kind of simplistic venom without any substantial argument to support it.
But only throwing unsubstantiated snark is not the same as discussing an issue…
posted by Doug on
I think if you look back over the past 70 years, it’s the GOP presidents who have run up most of the national debt, except possibly for Obama and he was mostly cleaning up the collapsed economy complements of George Bush.
The only president to squander a national budget surplus was Republican George Bush.
posted by tom Jefferson 3rd on
Hmm.
It said I’m solidly liberal – although my foreign policy position were more ‘conservative’. The libertarian quiz says I’m centrist. Another quiz said I’m center-left.
More young people, separate from their political views, are likely to have openly gay people in their lives, seen openly gay characters on TV sitcoms shows and even video games. That’s made a huge difference in how gay rights are thought about and discussed.
Previous generations of Democrats worked with their own party to get the party behind equal rights. Republicans as well, but they still have lots of work to do,outside of blue or purple leaning districts.
Sex for heterosexuals need not be about procreation. The taboo against non-procreational sex (even among heterosexuals) has greatly evaporated. This has made an impact.
When Lawrence v. Texas came out, the taboo or bias simply couldn’t be seriously defended. Listening to the Texas lawyer attempt to do so, actually produced courtroom laughter.
America had largely come to look at it as a right to privacy issue. I suspect that this had happened largely in the 1980s, but Bowers still got handed down and was not overturned until 2003.
posted by Jorge on
The only president to squander a national budget surplus was Republican George Bush.
I think defeating al-Qaida and recovering from the September 11th attacks was a good reason to do so.
Whether defeating the Soviet Union and recovering from stagflation was another good reason to run up the national debt depends on whether there were other ways to do it. It often happens that it falls to Republicans to solve this country’s greatest problems. I’m not sure what you people expect.
I’m sure that if a Republican becomes president in 2016 we are going to see much the same thing. Obamacare will still not be repealed, but sequestration will. The Democrats are going to want those useless social services restored and the Republicans are going to want to purchase new ways of killing people.
posted by Doug on
Reality check, the Iraq war had nothing to do with al-Qaida. Neither is passing the UNFUNDED drug benefit for Social Security which had nothing to do with al-Qaida either. And finally Bush did NOT defeat al-Qaida, he couldn’t even catch Bin Laden.
posted by Jorge on
Reading comprehension check: I was not talking about the Iraq War or the drug benefit for social security (I think you have this one mixed up). Also, arguing that President Bush wasn’t successful at defeating al-Qaida doesn’t help your position.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
…. if they’re not told doing so requires them to sign up for the full progressive government-expansion agenda and the identity politics of perpetual victimization ….
I don’t think that anyone is telling young voters that they have to adopt any particular ideology to champion “equal means equal”. The problem is that one party supports “equal means equal” and the other supports continued discrimination against gays and lesbians.
It seems to me that the best way to avoid tying “equal means equal” to the “progressive left/liberal agenda” is to turn the Republican Party on “equal means equal”.
The sooner the better, too. The “Priebus Autopsy” and other internal Republican studies suggest strongly that the Republican Party is going to lose a generation of voters if it continues to fight for discrimination, just as the Republican Party lost the African-American vote for at least a generation by adopting the “Southern Strategy” and tying itself to the quasi-segregationist agenda of white, Southern conservative Christians.
The Republican Party is in a bind right now, as illustrated by two regional stories.
In Wisconsin, Governor Walker found himself trying to explain away a generational difference in his own family. The governor’s son, Alex, who is 19, was one of the two official witnesses to the same-sex marriage of Walker’s wife’s cousin during “freedom week”, the brief period when same-sex marriages were performed in Wisconsin after Judge Crabb’s ruling.
The Wisconsin State Journal reports this morning:
Walker, a long-time opponent of marriage equality who thinks of himself as presidential timber, has been running away from the marriage equality issue like a scalded cat in the last month, and it just won’t go away for him. Try as he might to deny that there is an elephant in the room, he can’t.
Similarly, Indiana Governor Pence is stuck between a rock and a hard place, according to news reports:
“Equal means equal” is going to bedevil the Republican Party during the next two election cycles, and that’s a fact. The issue will become particularly acute during the 2016 presidential election, because a Supreme Court decision is likely to land right smack in the middle of the election cycle, in June 2016. Because studies show that Americans tend to form their core political alignments based on events/issues that are current when they are in the 15-25 age range, how the Republican Party’s nominee responds to the ruling is going to influence younger voters for a generation.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
One of the Republican U.S. Senate candidates in Minnesota is doing all that he can to “avoid” talking about “social issues”. I would like it if the Republican party grew and matured, but I suspect that their a powerful temptation to simply not talk about their anti-equality views and hope that important swing voters will assume the party has grown, without having to really grow.