Many Democratic candidates “aim to match President Obama’s feat in 2012, when the incumbent used topics such as same-sex marriage and contraception as weapons to offset his vulnerability on the economy,” reports the New York Times, adding:
Democrats profit politically — among young voters, college graduates, single women, blacks and Latinos — from the sense that they welcome these cultural shifts while Republicans resist them.
“That’s why people are voting for us these days — not for our economic prowess,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster.
Indeed.
This, however, is encouraging:
The pro-gay marriage group Freedom to Marry will hold a series of meetings in Iowa this week aimed at encouraging young Republicans to run for slots as delegates to the national 2016 convention to try to impact the party platform. …
“We want for the presidential process in 2016 [that gay marriage will] be an issue nationally that Republicans are debating,” said Tyler Deaton, the campaign manager for the Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry effort. He added, “Our intention is to bring a record number of young delegates to the convention … and make some history.”
Good luck to them.
16 Comments for “Social Issues Play to Democrats’ Strength”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Of course “Social Issues Play to Democrats’ Strength“.
The Republican Party, in Wisconsin anyway, is far out of tune with the electorate on social issues, and seem to be getting worse rather than better. I think that’s true nationally, too. Have you followed what the Republican Party has been saying and doing for the last few years on “social issues”? Just about every time a Republican opens his or her mouth these days, it seems, the hole gets deeper, too.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The pro-gay marriage group Freedom to Marry will hold a series of meetings in Iowa this week aimed at encouraging young Republicans to run for slots as delegates to the national 2016 convention to try to impact the party platform.
I saw that article and wondered if you’d mention it. I’m Freedom to Marry is working to turn the Republican Party, even if that means that liberal/progressive organizations are having to step in and do what Republicans can’t or won’t do for themselves.
posted by Jorge on
Have you followed what the Republican Party has been saying and doing for the last few years on “social issues”?
Probably the most intelligent thing said by a Republican politician not named Orrin Hatch or Susan Collins on social issues was Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” comment.
Which was good enough enough to make the feminist Democrats want to smear him (and of course that is not why he lost). But for an endpoint on the bell curve, it is an extremely dissatisfying one. The columnists are much more intelligent.
Even Rush Limbaugh looks like a sage compared to some of these politicians and party platforms.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
… and of course that is not why he lost …
I agree. But watching Republicans in Wisconsin is like drip-drip water torture for me.
It isn’t just the “social issues”, although those are important — it does make a difference to me that Wisconsin’s Domestic Partnership case dragged on and on for four years with no prospects of success, and that our Republican government refused to defend the law, leaving it up to private individuals, and it does make a difference to me that the Republican government in Wisconsin effectively closed down Planned Parenthood offices in rural areas, leaving many women high and dry when it comes to birth control access.
Other things make a big difference — dismantling environmental protections by gutting the DNR’s enforcement capabilities, reducing funding to rural schools, reducing local control of government, enacting a concealed carry law with no effective training requirements, dumping high-speed rail, effectively limiting wind power, gutting Nelson-Knowles, and so on. The list goes on and on and on.
I agree with the Democratic Party’s agenda about half the time, maybe a bit more but not much more. I agree with the Republican Party’s agenda almost never, now that the Wisconsin Republican Party has been taken over by social conservatives and teanuts.
And I do mean taken over. Moderates, sensible business Republicans, used to form the backbone of Wisconsin’s Republican Party. No longer. The last moderate, State Senator Dale Schultz, was forced out.
I suppose that there would be a redeeming side to the equation if Republican economic policies were helping Wisconsin. But I see no sign of that — compared to our sister state, Minnesota, we are an economic mess. Since Republicans took over, we’ve dropped in job creation from 9th in the nation to 37th. We lag Minnesota and national averages on just about every economic indicator of recovery. Whatever the Republicans think that they are doing, it isn’t working.
It could be worse, I guess, but I would like to see a return to sanity in the Republican Party all across the board.
posted by Don on
Ditto here in Florida, Tom. My brother lives in the panhandle and is a small business owner and lifelong Republican. In attending a school board meeting, he called everyone out on the abstinence only education system they were all foaming at the mouth about. He refrained from advocating any particular course of action, they weren’t ready for that.
But he shocked the room by saying “what we’re doing is not working. we have one of the highest teen pregnancy/STD infection rates in the state. shouting ‘abstinence only’ even louder isn’t going to change anything. we’ve spent all our money begging them to ‘repent’ for more than a decade and they just aren’t listening to us. I think it’s time to come up with another strategy.”
I think the same could be said for tax cut/abolish government fervor. Yes, lower taxes and less govt is a good thing, until it isn’t. See Minnesota/Wisconsin as you point out. The law of diminishing returns has taken hold of your state. And it will likely get worse. Apparently “less govt” isn’t really what the business environment wants. I could be wrong, but Lockheed Martin should help any skeptics see the light.
posted by Houndentenor on
There are no bigger “welfare queens” in this country than corporate CEOs.
posted by Kosh III on
” lower taxes and less govt is a good thing, until it isn’t.”
Here the inheritance tax was abolished which cut the state income by about 150 million per year.
Lo and Behold! The budget this year was short by almost that amount.
What did they do? Scream to cut more taxes, cancelled planned COLA raises for employees, raised college tuition and gave Volkswagen a welfare check of $160 million.
Incidentally the governor’s family is one of the richest in the state so when his father dies he will get a few more million due to the abolition of the inheritance tax.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I think the same could be said for tax cut/abolish government fervor. Yes, lower taxes and less govt is a good thing, until it isn’t.
Wisconsin — which now has a built-in structural budget deficit that is eating away the “rainy day” fund built up before Governor Walker took office — looks like it is going the way of Kansas, another state with a conservative Republican governor and conservative Republican legislature.
The Walker slash and spend budgets work if (but only if) the state enjoys an annual 3.4% increase in tax revenues. The projected increase, in turn, requires a significant increase in job creation, something that isn’t happening.
Meanwhile our local newspaper reports this morning that our cash-strapped rural school district will receive 6% less state aid next year, and, as a result, the school district approved a budget, essentially flat, that will increase local taxes about $60 per year for a $150,000 house.
Good times all around here in Fitzwalkerstan.
posted by Jorge on
Other things make a big difference — dismantling environmental protections by gutting the DNR’s enforcement capabilities, reducing funding to rural schools, reducing local control of government, enacting a concealed carry law with no effective training requirements, dumping high-speed rail, effectively limiting wind power, gutting Nelson-Knowles, and so on. The list goes on and on and on.
Woooow! I wish New York was more like Wisconsin. Sounds like more than an even exchange to me.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Woooow! I wish New York was more like Wisconsin. Sounds like more than an even exchange to me.
Well, go for it. I realize that many of you chafe under New York’s firearms regulations, for example, and I can understand how you’d love to live in a state with concealed carry laws that are so slack that even Texas refuses reciprocity. As it is said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is an untrained, incompetent good guy with a gun.” The good guy might stop a bunch of other good guys, too, stop them stone cold dead, but what the hell?
posted by Doug on
So why don’t you put your money where your mouth is Jorge and just move.
posted by Kosh III on
“encouraging young Republicans ”
Not GAY young Republicans? Can’t they find any?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Not GAY young Republicans? Can’t they find any?
I think that it is a good thing to engage straight young Republicans.
It worked well in the Democratic Party. I was repeatedly surprised by the intensity with which young straight Democrats embraced “equal means equal” and were willing to go to the mat for it.
I’ll bet that young Republicans are no different.
posted by Houndentenor on
There is ample polling that younger people, including young people who identify as conservative or Republican are far less bigoted than any generation in history. I spent quite a bit of time around 20-somethings. Don’t let the doomsayers fool you. They are far more impressive than my generation was at that age. They are going to be the new greatest generation. They’re going to have to be. Things are seroiusly f****ed up and they have no choice but to face the myriad of problems that boomers and Gen Xers were too selfish or indifferent to take on.
posted by Kosh III on
One difference IMHO is that gay Democrats pushed straight D’s and worked hard inside the party.
Gay Republicans? Whine about the D’s, ignore the worst areas of the country(the South) and live in comfy blue enclaves like DC.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
When an issue — just about any issue — gets widespread support from both parties, it is probably a done deal. That is why — party politics and bumper sticker bickering aside — its a good think when members of both parties increasingly support ‘equal means equal’.
The flip side to that — in a two party system — is that if both parties generally do not want to deal with an issue or tend to have the hostile viewpoint, it is an issue that is not going to go anywhere any time soon.
Initially, gay rights was something that only third political parties had any interest in. I believe that the libertarian party and the socialist party were pretty supportive in the 1970s and in the late 1950s – 1960s some of the smaller parties had come out more generally against “victimless crime” laws.
It is difficult to find much said about gay rights at the national level, prior to the 1970s. Mostly bits and pieces and rumors.
Ike signed into law that treated gays as security risks — part of the Mcarthism of the era — but — reportedly — called off a gay witch hunt in the military when he learned that it would cost him two of his female staff members.
Kennedy had gay friends, but I cannot find much policy wise, except that someone once told me that he thought he remembered some sort of statement by the then UN representation about gay marriage buried in a report on family planning.
I believe that in the late 1960s the Johnson administration may have sponsored some sort of national committee on mental illness, which included Dr. Evelyn Hooker and, I heard, the committee made some statements for gay rights.
In the 1970s, both major parties started to shape positions on the “gay rights question”. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party was the most supportive, but gradually — over decades — the more third way and centrist wing also became supportive.