2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumAmericans reclaim the liberal label - Dana Milbank
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voters-reclaim-the-liberal-label/2015/06/19/feeca592-168e-11e5-89f3-61410da94eb1_story.html?hpid=z3...new polling shows a significant increase in the number of Americans who describe themselves as liberal and the number of Americans taking liberal positions on issues. Gallup has found the percentage of Americans calling themselves social liberals has equaled the percentage of social conservatives for the first time since pollsters began asking the question in 1999 (when 39 percent identified as conservative and 21 percent as liberal). Democrats are more likely to call themselves liberal and Republicans are less likely to embrace the conservative description, opting instead for moderate.
Likewise, Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducts the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll with Democrat Fred Yang, has identified a sudden and unexpected shift in ideology among registered voters; such views have traditionally been stable. In several polls over the past year, he has seen the proportion of registered voters identifying overall as conservative drop to 33 percent from 37 percent and the percentage identifying as liberal increase to 26 percent from 23 percent.
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Why? More research must be done to be sure but there are theories.
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A third theory, which I find compelling, is that the rise in liberalism is a backlash against the over-the-top conservatism displayed by the tea party movement. The Pew Research Center and others have documented a dramatic increase in ideological polarization within political parties over two decades. The Republican Party has long been dominated by conservatives, and the recent rise in liberalism among Democrats may be a mirror image of that the beginnings of a tea party of the left.
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Kalidurga
(14,177 posts)And I give credit to the Tea Party. People don't like hateful rhetoric at least not for long. It's very likely that their war on social spending has torn the hood off of the party. When people see their families suffering they know it's not just lazy people being takers that it's people who are disabled in some way, senior citizens, and children who are hurt by draconian measures to make sure not one person gets a dollar that they didn't earn.
Trajan
(19,089 posts)It used to be the core of the Democratic Party, but then Reagan began to demean and diminish the word, and the poor Democrats went scurrying for their hidey holes ...
THAT is when, I believe, the spine of the party crumbled, and the Dems got weak in the political knees ... They have been limping ever since ...
When righties would attack my Liberalism, I would go right after them, and not only defend Liberalism, but point out how superior the philosophy is for regular working families ...
So sad to watch the party collapse then ... Bernie is helping in a big way ...
We need to restore the label and the party ...
appalachiablue
(41,159 posts)LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)appalachiablue
(41,159 posts)Out of the wilderness, finally.