I keep seeing the same analysis.
Americans are unhappy with the status quo and hence the surprise showings of candidates such as Barack Obama, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul. They’re sick of detached, elitist, power-hungry candidates whose personal agenda is something other than genuine concern for people and clear and honest principles…
…The bad news for Republicans is that prevailing disillusionment is disproportionately toward and within their party.
According to Pew, 33 percent of Americans now identify as Democrats, up 2 points from 31 percent five years ago. Twenty five percent now identify as Republicans, down 5 points from five years ago.
In addition to this, 17 percent of independents now lean Democratic, up 6 points from five years ago and 11 percent of independents now lean Republican, down one point from five years ago.
This overall shift in sentiment toward the Democratic Party, however, reflects disillusionment with Republicans rather than enthusiasm for Democrats. The current favorability rating for the Democratic Party is at 54 percent, exactly where it was after President Bush’s victory in 2004. However, the current favorability rating for the Republican Party is 41 percent, down 11 points from 52 percent over the same period.
The point is that Americans have not suddenly fallen back in love with the liberals.
Notice the conclusion does not follow from the premises. Liberals are not synonymous with the Democratic Party. The public is far to the left of the Democratic Party on the war in Iraq and on health care, and the public is moving left on social issues and trade. A neutral analysis would focus on the mere 27% of the public that thinks the country is headed in the right direction and the polls that show the public trusts the Democrats more than the Republicans on every major issue polled. What this tells us is that the people think the country needs to move to the left.
That’s not all that surprising since the country has taken a sharp turn to the right over the last seven years and very few people are pleased with the results. But there are other factors in play. There’s disproportionate political corrution and sexual immorality in the GOP. There’s an economic downturn, soaring health, education, and energy prices. There are demographic changes (and some cultural) that are moving the country away from the Republicans. When I look at the polls I see the very high negative approval ratings for Congress and can only conclude that the nation is frustrated with the Democratic Party for not being liberal enough.
Washington Times editor and former aide to Newt Gingrich, Tony Blankley, hits on some of these points today. First, there’s the demographic challenge.
So what would a majority right-of-center coalition look like in the next decade or so? It would have to hold almost all of its Reagan coalition plus gain the support of at least 40 percent of the growing Hispanic vote. As the white percentage of the country moves from 75 percent of the country (in 2000) toward 50 percent by 2050, there won’t be enough white people to make the 1980s-era Reagan coalition a majority. Depending on birth, immigration and voting rate changes in the coming decades, the right-of-center coalition would need between 40-45 percent of the emerging Hispanic vote to supplement the shrinking white percentage.
Notice there is no word on how to accomplish this task of winning 40-45 percent of the Hispanic vote. Then Blankley tackles the economic insecurity issue.
It is pretty obvious that, in a time of prosperity (post-World War II America), the left-of-center economic and populist appeals to Northern Catholics and Southern Protestants were less compelling than the cultural fears being generated by society. But in hard times — or, equally importantly, if hard economic times are expected and dreaded — the historic appeal to those voters of populist and left-of-center economic arguments may regain their potency. If those blue-collar, rural, culturally and religiously conservative and (in part) lower-middle-class voters switch their electoral loyalty back to the left-of-center economic-argument-based coalition, that will be the end of a majority right-of-center coalition.
According to this thesis, the center-right coalition owes its rise and recent supremacy to relatively good economic times that allowed northern (heavily unionized) Catholics and Southern (formerly New Deal) protestants to put cultural anxiety over economic anxiety. They threw their lot in with northeastern banking interests in a kind of deal with the devil. That deal cannot survive difficult economic times.
Liberals are extremely dissatisfied with the Democratic Party, but so is everyone else. If we try to identify what the Democrats could do to improve their approval rating, we will find few areas where they need to move to the center and many where they need to move to the left. However, there is one difficulty that the Democrats cannot overcome.
The people do not have an appetite for more partisanship and bickering. They want the president to end the war, fund SCHIP for children and stem cell research, undo the NCLB education program, tackle global warming, expand health care, lower college costs, and respect the Constitution and the separation of powers. But the people do not want impeachment hearings or court cases or a government shutdown. They don’t want the war defunded unilaterally by Congress without a plan from the administration for how to extricate our troops. So far, the GOP has been able to frustrate the Democrats’ efforts by capitalizing on the publics’ distaste for a BIG FIGHT. Trouble is, the status quo isn’t working either. There is no solution that the public will fully like.
The Democrats’ mistake is to err on the side of caution. The public ultimately disagrees with the Republicans on almost everything (on the merits). And they agree with the liberals (or progressives) more and more each day. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party doesn’t have that many liberals and progressives in elected office. Too many Clintonite New Democrats are ruling the roost.
That leaves primaries as the most effective way for the country to talk to the Democratic Party.
