(no subject)

[eirias]

I have heard some say recently that what the Democratic party needs to do in the next four years is to reassert a coherent stance on progressive principles. Move back to the basics, these people say. We need to find our voice again, they say, so that candidates will have something to stand for other than "Anybody But Candidate Z."

The difficulty with this is that it is unsupported by data. Here is a long list of breakdowns of exit polling data along just about all conceivable lines. Each row lists a sector of people; the columns to the right indicate what percentage of that sector voted for each candidate. If you scroll down to "Vote by Ideology," you'll note that Kerry won the liberals over pretty well - and that he also took the majority of moderates. Bush, on the other hand, did predictably poorly with liberals, didn't do so hot with moderates - but swept the conservatives. The reason this gave him the election is that conservatives comprise an ever-increasing segment of the populace.

I have done a simplistic analysis of what would happen if Kerry had won over different percentages of liberals and conservatives, extrapolating the CNN data to a hypothetical population of 200,000,000 voters. It is posted here. There are some assumptions that go into this - like the already-discredited assumption that exit polls are an accurate way of gauging the voting trends of the population, and the dubious assumption that changes to party platform necessarily are met with predictable changes in voting habits of individuals. But as a thought exercise, I think it suggests that in the short term, becoming more progressive is not how the Democrats will succeed. Criticism welcome, if you think my math is wrong.

On the other hand, thinking about long-term goals, it may be the case that the Democrats will need to pursue a more progressive stance just to give their party some reason to exist beyond "we're not the Republicans" - and to decrease the market share of conservative ideology. The difficulty is that my gut says this will take a decade or two, maybe an entire generation, to have a real effect on the culture. That's a long time for people to feel powerless. Will the party even hold together that long?


EDIT: Fixed the formatting on the second link.

Comments

[darlox.livejournal.com]

Heh...

Well, just to point out, I don't surmise that tax policy is the issue, since 9 out of 10 people couldn't interpret tax policy with an assault rifle pointed at their heads. The broader umbrella of economic policy, however, is far more accessible. Whether they consciously classify it as a major issue or not, there is an undeniable comfort in the status quo... I see no data that indicates people are wholesale willing to risk their own lot in life to better their fellow man.

Taking last year's grocery strike in California as an example, the Unions were being asked to accept a premium increase to a figure LESS than what Clinton/Gore had proposed as a per-patient contribution in their single-payer health plan only a few years before! (Harvard study (google cache) (http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:Z-Tfu3dckuYJ:post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/dcutler/papers/cg_final_paper_7-05-01.pdf+single-payer+Gore+health+care+%22would+pay%22+%22per+month%22&hl=en)) As a nebulous idea, people SEEM to support such policies, but when push comes to shove, they fight the actual performance mercilessly.

I agree that people vote identity. However, that identity is largely defined by what people believe others think about them, and if you're a working-class person listening to the Democrats, you haven't heard anything for the last 20 years except "You're just not good enough to make it on your own, so we're going to step in and help you." or "Your company is raping you blind, and you need to stand up for your rights!" It's a fine argument when things are going well and you see your boss buying yachts, but when the company is bankrupt and folding around you, it's sort of hard to reconcile how they could be stealing you blind, and still dying at the same time! That wholesale disregard of people's self-worth and self-respect is the Democrats' Achilles heel. How often can you kick a dog before it finally bites back??