It appears to me that there's a drift to the right going on in this country

[cali]

What is it based in? I think there a few important factors: there is a general sense of discontent fueled by the economy which has not improved for most people. The democrats are perceived as being in charge so that dissatisfaction becomes a backlash against democrats more than republicans. Americans are fearful of threats from ebola to ISIS and republicans play to those fears. Racism, particularly in "purple" states is a real factor. Red states are getting redder and and so are the purple states.

The electorate is not a well informed or educated body. Too many people don't vote. The republicans have successfully disenfranchised poor and minority voters in key states. The media not only doesn't do its job but undermines democrats.

I am not feeling sanguine about the upcoming election. Worse than the Senate, which even if the republicans take, can be taken back by democrats in 2016, is the greater and greater possibility of republicans solidifying control of the House and locking the democrats into a minority that will last for years.

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. Fear. Right wing-controlled media. TV's domination over so many. Intellectual laziness.

Inability to look at root causes of issues, and to truly learn from past history. Forgot another one - preaching politics from the pulpit.

Not very optimistic, I know - but it is how I feel about things.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. There's always a drift to the right...

the right's answers are simplistic and easy to digest. They never ask for work or sacrifice.

The fundamental conservative question is "What's best for me?" The fundamental liberal question is "What's best for all of us?" Which of those do you think appeals to more people?

[cali]

5. I think you've summed it up pretty well.

alas.

[pampango]

19. Yep. Simple, selfish answers based on an 'us vs. them' mentality work well for the right.

The liberal, 'us AND them' mentality - "What's best for all of us" - is a harder sell, particularly in difficult times.

[lunasun]

3. The electorate is not a well informed or educated body. Too many people don't vote. True

[B Calm]

4. More people vote democratic than republican. The trick is

for them to vote in the midterm.

[Dawgs]

6. None of that. It's new media that's driving people to the right.

The Internet, even though it's been great for many things, allows people to choose their sources of media. And, many of those sources are hateful, ignorant, and full of lies.

People that are pro-gun, pro-religion, pro-life, and/or racists can find websites and new media that only make them more extreme.

[YoungDemCA]

17. Well said. Also, just seeing words on a screen-without any face-to-face communication-

makes it easier for arguments of any kind to become heated and bitter.

The (perceived) anonymity of the Internet and the lack of face-to-face communication conspire to bring out the worst in people, and make it easier for trolls (which is an Internet-specific term-says it all, doesn't it?) to manipulate people's emotions and undermine reasonable and rational conversation.

Tone and body language are moderating influences on people's communication styles. Take those away, take away the human element of it, and you are left with words on a screen. And if they agree with you, then your views are reinforced and made more extreme. If they disagree with you, however, then you just get angry and irrational. Because after all-it's the opposing side, but you can't see the person who typed those words. You don't even know that that person is real, let alone is sincere. All you know is that they are spouting off some inane bullshit about Obama's birth certificate. Easy to demonize someone like that.

In this age of the Internet, the more inflammatory the content and heated the arguments are, the more page views your thread or site gets. Similar to 24/7 cable TV-always looking for a fight, regardless of whether there is an actual gulf between the two sides (and there's always only two sides...).

[NightWatcher]

7. Turn off fox news and don't associate with fox news viewers....

it's funny how your view of how bad things are changes when you're not surrounded by fear and negativity.

If I listened to my family, I'd swear that we were all going to hell, but actually things look pretty good.

Stop watching news altogether and you'd be amazed how much better things seem when you're not being told how horrible they are.

[cali]

8. lol. I don't watch TV period- let alone Fux News.

I'm not surrounded by fear and negativity. I live in Vermont. I do, however, engage in critical thinking and analysis, and unlike you I don't make baseless assumptions. I can't help but marvel at people who do as you just did and make assumptions with exactly NOTHING to base those assumptions on. It's doesn't indicate, well, thought.

[NightWatcher]

16. Holy shit, calm down

I was not accusing you of watching tv and/or fox. I was suggesting that most of the negativity that I see comes from "news".

I don't think that things are leaning further right, I think that it seems that way if you (the royal "you" not you in particular) watch a lot of news. Kudos for ditching the news. I prefer life away from tv news scare tactics.

Maybe tone the nastiness down (re: people like you making assumptions blah blah blah). I'm not your enemy here. Who comes to a discussion board to rip on people who try to discuss things, oh well.

Have a nice day.

[cali]

20. well,

You told me to "turn off Fox News". That clearly makes the assumption that I watch it. there's no wriggle room there ergo, your protestations ring a bit hollow.

And you offer no evidence for your claim that there isn't a rightward drift.

[NightWatcher]

27. How Republicans rig the game (from Rolling Stone)

Georgia is looking purple, and I'm sure that more and more states that were red might be shifting purple and blue soon thereafter...dirty tricks aside.


http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-republicans-rig-the-game-20131111

How Republicans Rig the Game

Through gerrymandering, voter suppression and legislative tricks, the GOP has managed to hold on to power while more and more Americans reject their candidates and their ideas

Despite the fact that Republican Congressional candidates received nearly 1.4 million fewer votes than Democratic candidates last November, the Republicans lost only eight seats from their historic 2010 romp, allowing them to preserve a fat 33-seat edge in the House. Unscrupulous Republican gerrymandering following the 2010 census made the difference, according to a statistical analysis conducted by the Princeton Election Consortium. Under historically typical redistricting, House Republicans would now likely be clinging to a reedy five-seat majority.

<snip>

This tilting of the electoral playing field was the result of a sophisticated campaign coordinated at the highest levels of Republican politics through a group called the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – a Super-PAC-like entity chaired by Bush-era RNC chairman Ed Gillespie and backed by Karl Rove. Shortly after President Obama's first election, the RSLC launched the Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP) with an explicit strategy to "keep or win Republican control of state legislatures with the largest impact on congressional redistricting." The logic was simple. Every decade following the census, the task of redrawing federal congressional-district boundaries falls (with some exceptions) to the state legislatures. If Republicans could seize control of statehouses – and, where necessary, have GOP governors in place to rubber-stamp their redistricting maps – the party could lock in new districts that would favor Republican candidates for a decade. As Rove wrote in a Wall Street Journal column in early 2010: "He who controls redistricting can control Congress."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-republicans-rig-the-game-20131111#ixzz3GEW9Ctzb
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

[leftstreet]

9. Half the eligible people don't vote. Why assume they're stupid?

[cali]

12. I didn't say that.

But we do know that the majority of people, both those who vote and those who do not, are not well informed in this country. The media has a big role in that, but there are other factors.

[leftynyc]

10. Fear

It has always made populations turn to the right. It's really that simple.

[world wide wally]

11. Seems I remember how the Republican party was dead after the 2012 elections.

Autopsy and all.
So, how did we fuck this one up?

[cali]

13. they weren't dead and that kind of pronouncement is almost invariably foolish

I said that at the time- and of course got the predictable shit for saying it.

[Johonny]

14. democrats are perceived as being in charge so that dissatisfaction becomes a backlash against dem

That's what I hear a lot of. A lot of conservative voters think the country has passed massive liberal policies during Obama even though in many places Bush ear policies are still sailing along. In most cases mild moderate policies were in place by Obama. Conservatives are unhappy by the state of America but most refuse to understand (and the media doesn't help) that conservative policies are to blame for much of their problems. I'm not sure how you combat people living in Fox news fantasy land.

[Seeking Serenity]

15. Maybe, in part, because of stupid, illiberal crap like this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025668616

[Bigmack]

18. That ain't no drift... that's a full-fledged veer to the right. nt

[Zorra]

21. Democrats blew our chance for a Democratic party dynasty in 2009-2010.

If those large Democratic party majorities, and the President, had at least attempted to do what we elected them to do, we would have driven the republican party into extinction.

"I've seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the fair Deal, and says he really doesn't believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat." ~ Harry Truman

[leftstreet]

23. +1

Instead they spent all their time reviving the GOP

[hifiguy]

29. +2

[FSogol]

22. BS. Texas after decades of being bright red is turning Purple.

When Texas, NY, and California are all Blue, the term "swing State" will disappear.

The pendulum is swinging back to the left and all the Eeyores in the world won't change that. Why so much gloom right before the midterms?

[cali]

24. I didn't say it was long term. Texas is undoubtedly shifting demographically

but it's still firmly a red state. That is NOT bullshit. And the gloom is rooted firmly in reality. This election is not going to be good for democrats. It's a question of how bad it'll be. I don't get the denial of reality from people who insist that they're part of the "reality based community".

[FSogol]

25. You pulled this act right before the Virginia midterms too.

It gets old.

[KamaAina]

26. Drift? More like a rip tide.

[hifiguy]

28. Here's the way Joe Bageant explained it

This is a uniquely American form of ignorance. With about half of all Americans ranging from minimally literate to functionally illiterate, truth falls between the scythe of rumor and the lust for spectacle. These Americans have eyes, which is to say they camera to shot what is around the, but they have no intellectual software to edit or make sense of it all.

Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting with Jesus (2007, p. 184)

[HuckleB]

30. I think it goes along with the general drift to buy into every fear possible.

The Internet has done a good job helping to multiply the fear mongers of all stripes. And fear is an easy sell.

[ecstatic]

31. Although I'm not concerned about ISIS, I don't think someone who is

is necessarily leaning right. That's ridiculous.

Regarding the economy, it has improved. It improved long ago. It's actually excellent and unemployment is low. The media and republicans (and many on the left) just don't want to give Pres. Obama credit (for various reasons).

Regarding ebola--have you heard WHO's predictions about what the outbreak will look like in 2 months? 10,000 new cases a week by December, and over 1 million infected by January. If you're not at least a little concerned, you should probably wake up.

[Ampersand Unicode]

35. It's the end of the world as we know it

...and I feel -- well, OK, not fine, but I've resigned myself to the fact that I can't really do anything about it. I'm looking to give up the ghost at 30 because I've got no chance of improving my lot. I can't code or do the manual trades, and therefore suck at life. That gives me 12 years to kind of loll around and plan a cheap funeral.

Regarding the economy, though, people are getting plenty of "jobs," but wages are not going up and people are settling for part-time shit jobs (probably seasonal ones at this time of year), even though they want to work full-time jobs with good pay and benefits. Nobody wants to make burgers or wrap Christmas presents as a career, but that's where we are right now. Pure numbers don't tell the whole story. Working for peanuts at Target or Wally World is probably the new normal.*

*Unless, of course, you got a STEM degree from a top-tier institution and can pay off your student loans in a fortnight with an job at Apple or Lockheed. The rest of us book-lurnin' losers with arts/humanities/social-science degrees from Nobody State U have to settle for waiting tables and scraping up crumbs. But hey, it's not like the term "starving artist" was coined yesterday.

Ebola, frankly, is the least threatening boogeyman I have to look forward to. Actually, it might be a blessing in disguise. Swift, not exactly painless, but hey, Tom Duncan didn't exactly linger about for a decade before his passing. Might not be so bad compared to years upon years of grunt work with no improvement in living conditions before getting pink-slipped by planned obsolescence and roboclerks.

TL;DR: Life sucks, and now we die.

[Chathamization]

32. Things seem much better than 2002. We’ve made huge progress on marriage equality; the number of

approving of interracial marriages has increase by a large amount (I think levels of disapproval are 1/3 the amount they were ~2002). The US isn’t being primed to invade and overthrow the governments of multiple countries the way we were in ’02. Income inequality is actually being talked about, and socialism is polling better than it has been.

There are a lot of problems, sure. But compared to the early Bush years?

[Ampersand Unicode]

34. Socialism is polling?

I've never seen any polls about this. But then, I don't get out much and can only go online at work or school (I commute), so if I'm going to see anything news-related, it's going to be from the Big Three broadcast networks (we don't have cable, either). I haven't seen Brian Williams, Scott Pelley or Dave Muir mention anything about a socialism poll. But I would like to see where this is coming from.

[Chathamization]

39. Gallup: 36% of Americans view socialism favorably; Pew: Americans 18-29 have a more favorable view

of socialism than capitalism.

Gallup
Pew

Pew poll has the number of Americans who view it favorably at 31%, so it looks like the number is somewhere around 1/3 of the US. Not bad considering it's generally demonized in the mainstream media.

[Ampersand Unicode]

40. That's why I didn't see it. MSM won't report on opinions of millennials.

Some of the criticism is warranted (oversharing on social media and their godawful music and reality TV). But especially with numbers like that, no way MSM is going to report a "favorable view of socialism." It's just those silly millennials with their Internet and their idealistic dreams of utopia.

They said the same thing about the boomer hippies and it worked: the boomer hippies got dejected, gave up on social justice and built up their 401Ks. The would-be socialists of the '30s got left behind when the country went to war, beat the Fuhrer, and turned their attention to the Russkie reds. The last thing you wanted to be associated with in McCarthy's America was Marxism. The Stalin stigma is what keeps this country from associating "socialism" with beautiful, benevolent Denmark rather than the Siberian gulags and Mao's mass purges. But if you say to millennials, "hey, socialism is kind of like BitTorrent," of course they're going to give it the thumbs up. They came of age after the Cold War ended, after all. 29 years old would have been born in 1985, so the oldest of those Millennials in the survey would have been only four years old when the Berlin Wall fell, only six during the collapse of the USSR.

But I'm sure the same MSM tricks will work with the millennials too. They'll give up on the idea of an American social-contract society if TPTB successfully associates Kim Kardashian with capitalism -- and they just loooooooooooooooooooooooove Kim and her pirate booty. Then, like Pavlov's dogs to a bell, they'll salivate for the same trickle-down piss that the Gipper sold to the boomers like it was liquid gold.

Call me a pessimist, but you can't underestimate the power of the media to shape opinion. Millennials get their news from Jon Stewart and online outlets (TMZ notwithstanding), which is why they're somewhat inoculated from this stuff. Once Big Media gets its hooks into the content (i.e. sponsored postings, slick corporate YouTube videos, and general astroturfing), that idea will be dead in the water like a dissident in the Barents Sea.

[Ampersand Unicode]

33. Black president and rainbow marriages.

It's not just the economy. The U.S. has a deep-seated culture of ultraconservative, quasi-tribal, warrior-mentality Christianity that resents "the other" and has zero tolerance for breaches of ancient moral codes. It goes all the way back to the Age of Exploration when Columbus was given carte blanche to enslave the native peoples because they were not as "civilized" as he supposedly was.

It's not so much that there's a "shift" to the right, as we've always been a right-wing Eurofascist nation and the extent of it is just rearing its ugly head because of sudden "spikes" to the left, like a black president, gay marriages and the ongoing fight over abortion. Really, it has a lot to do with religion, which itself is based on ignorance and fear.

Sadly, it seems that the biggest reason EU countries like Belgium and Denmark (even though they're having their own bout with right-wing hate groups) became the poster children for progressivism all of a sudden is because they had to contend with the absolute depths of right-wing evil. The U.S. calls itself the victor over "fascism," which gives us a free pass to let it escalate over here. Ignorance of history abounds regarding the fact that we not only had similar policies (namely, racial eugenics) already in place during the time of the Reich, but actually exported those policies there in the hope of "purifying the human race."

2,000 years of genocidal Christianizing produces this as a result. It's not sudden. It's just that we're seeing it before our eyes as we speak, through a contemporary lens using Obama's election as the starting point. That and the sweep of marriage-equality rulings will probably be regarded as anomalies by the history books. We're going backwards because of people who can't let go of the past.

[DrDan]

36. agree with move toward the right - have thought that for several years based on who is getting

elected . . . . in both parties.

I don't think our electorate sees themselves as "not a well informed or educated body". They seem to find great satisfaction in resolving social/political/economic issues with bumper-sticker solutions. The GOP has been much better at reducing complex issues to a few chosen words. These simple, jingoistic "solutions" play well to talk radio.

The GOP has also been successful at convincing their voters that they are just on the verge of joining the 1%. I was always amazed at how many would call in to RW talk shows and express authentic concern that their "fortunes" were at risk from the "death" tax and that it should be repealed immediately. It was obvious from the conversation that this was highly unlikely.

[Savannahmann]

37. Do you want an honest answer, or one acceptable to the crowd here?

The honest answer is uncomfortable, and difficult to read. Because the truth is that the nation is slipping to the right, because we are not fighting to take it left. Pick an issue, any issue, and take a hard dispassionate look at it. We're losing because we're not taking the Republicans seriously.

Let's go back to the Texas abortion issue as an example of what I'm talking about. It's an issue you and I talked about many times when it was going on. We Liberals are a little egotistical. That in an of itself is not bad. We believe we are right, and we know our ideals are formulated in solid theory. So we're a little superior in our attitudes. That's normal, it happens whenever you talk to someone who is very very good at what they do. Race Car drivers have a little knowing smile when some regular person who doesn't race starts to tell them how to drive a car. That is what I'm talking about.

But we aren't competing in races, or anything else like that. We are competing in the world, and ideals and policy are our tools, and weapons. Intelligence and knowledge are superior on our side, but nobody knows it because we don't decimate the arguments that the Republicans make, we laugh and say they are idiots and fools and that they're doing something nefarious.

The Texas abortion law is a good example. They wrapped the effort in what appeared to be a fairly common sense argument. If something goes wrong, the Doctor should be able to do more than dial 911 and ask for an Ambulance to take the patient to a Hospital. Seems like common sense if you aren't thinking about it. We could have argued that into the ground. We could have done it with a small effort, and we didn't. Instead we did what we always do, screamed that they were anti-choice bigots and wanted back alley abortions conducted by drunken assholes who would jeopardize the womans life. We looked unreasonable, and we looked like we didn't have any rational arguments against it. Forgive the sexist image, by we looked like hysterical emotional idiots to the average moderate voter, the ones we desperately need to vote for us.

These voters will turn out for us if we make cogent arguments in favor of our ideals. They do not turn out for us if we merely rant and rave and dismiss anyone who disagrees with us as idiots. The average voter doesn't think the way he/she does because of race, or gender. He takes the argument that seems to make sense.

The next lesson that is long overdue for us on the Left is that we have to do the homework. We have to read the books that the RW points to every time any Gun issue is brought up. We have to show where the RW is misrepresenting the writings, we can't merely dismiss the arguments as arcane, of another time, because humans take great comfort in ideals that have worked in the past. We have to show they don't work now, and we have to know them inside and out before we can do that. We can't just dismiss anyone who argues using those old books and theories as an idiot. We sound like a petulant child in that instance.

In every issue, we're losing. We are losing because we dismiss the argument and don't bother defeating it Usain Bolt is the fastest sprinter alive. But he doesn't take any race for granted. He trains hard every day to make sure he's ready to prove that any time the official says On your marks. Usain busts his ass, working out every day, training hard. He never takes any race for granted, and he doesn't coast across the line. He pushes hard every day to defend his status, his title. We win one argument, and we lean back confident that we've won all the arguments to come. We don't wake up every day anxious to do the work, to do the hard work that our beliefs and ideology deserve.

We have to read the books, and we have to know the arguments inside and out. Because when we resort to name calling and demagoguery, we've lost. While most people haven't read the Federalist Papers, they know that these books exist. So when someone quotes, or quotes a part of the book out of context, the people believe them. We can't just throw our hands up and groan and say this guy is an idiot. We have to quote it properly, and put it into context, and show how the speaker is twisting the point that was originally made.

People who use the old Robert Frost quote as an argument for a wall on the Southern Border. Good fences make good neighbors. This totally misses the entire point of the poem. It perverts what Robert Frost was trying to say. But we never explain that to the people who haven't read Robert Frost. We never educate the people, we never explain why the Conservatives are wrong. We just roll our eyes and declare them as Racists. We lose the debate in the hearts of too many, in the minds of the vitally important moderates. They have history and a fairly well know, if misunderstood quote on their side. We have the assertion that they are racists. We lose, and we're furious about it, declaring those who have voted against us as idiots, fools, or racists. We never gave them a reason to vote for us. We never told them why this argument was wrong.

So the nation is shifting right. It's shifting right because we are lazy, we're taking the easy way out. We're being killed by history's misused quotations. How about Churchill. Everyone knows that Churchill said that if you weren't Liberal at the age of 20, you had no heart. If you weren't Conservative by the age of 40, you had no brain. The fact that nobody ever heard Churchill actually say that doesn't matter, it's one of his most well known quotes. It's one that the RW uses to make us look like fools. They are succeeding. They are winning. We're doing most of the work for them. We're losing because we are consistently giving them the win on every issue we dismiss with a platitude, or a oversimplified asinine slogan.

We're losing because we are taking the easy path, and assuming since someone once defeated these arguments, they were defeated for all time to come. They were not defeated for more than a few days. We have to defeat them time and time again, which means we have to fight for every issue, and we have to do more than shout GOTV to do it.

[Puzzledtraveller]

38. I think you are correct.

I think November will not be kind to us.