An article in Salon this morning about polling that shows how most Americans are to the left even of positions taken by the mainstream Democrats:
With such a profoundly self-contradictory practice, it should not surprise us that the poll was even more misleading than Pareene described. Polarization in some sense is real — and yet also partial, misleading and embedded in consensus as well. Tea Partyers ranting “Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare!” may seem comical — but they also show just how broad a true consensus can be. In fact, they reflect two central (but routinely ignored) facts of American public opinion that have remained remarkably stable since the 1960s, despite all that’s changed since then:
- It’s not just the center vs. the extremes; there is broad consensus across the boards on the basic contours of government spending priorities — the historically most important dimension of political opinion.
- It’s just that the center is not where it’s supposed to be: It’s not somewhere in between the two parties, it’s well to the left of the Democrats in D.C.
These two facts are both in full force with respect to the ongoing post-shutdown budget battle. In fact, a sophisticated poll covering 31 budget items as well as revenue sources conducted around the 2010 elections found that, even then, Republican, Democratic and independent voters all agreed on much higher taxes and much deeper defense cuts as the most striking elements of how the budget should be crafted. But before we examine that poll, we need to put these two key facts into long-term context.
The first clear picture of this situation came from two pioneers of public opinion research, Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril, in their 1967 book, “The Political Beliefs of Americans,”based on surveys conducted in 1964. Their most striking finding was profoundly paradoxical: While half the population qualified as ideological conservatives, based on questions about government interference and individual initiative, two-thirds of the population were operationally liberal, supporting an activist federal government when asked about specific programs or responsibilities — stable or increased federal government spending on education, housing and urban renewal, adoption of Johnson’s Medicare proposal, and government responsibility to fight poverty.
In short, the American people were in some sense schizoid — opposed to big government in principle, but even more supportive of it in practice. Most strikingly, almost one-quarter of the population — 23 percent — were both ideological conservatives and operational liberals, and this figure skyrocketed to 46 percent in the Deep South states that Goldwater carried in the 1964 election.
Three points: First, a public opinion consensus about any issue doesn't matter if it isn't organized into a party that actually elects majorities that represent it.
Second, the problem for economic progressives is that they don't have a party that represents them. The Neoliberals running the national Democratic Party are not economic progressives. They are cultural liberals, but otherwise in the pocket of the 1%.
Third, the "schizoid" thing comes from tribal/identity political allegiances, which are more primal than any thinking about particular policies. So some kind of coalition between cultural conservatives and cultural liberals around economic issues is unlikely even if they would discover, after actually talking to one another, that they agree on most economic issues. Liberals just don't like conservatives and vice versa, so they could never work together as long as media and neoliberal elites keep making abortion, gay rights, or whatever becomes the next cultural wedge issue, the litmus test of political allegiance. This is exactly how elites want Main Street–divided and conquered.
Until somebody figures out how to outplay the one percenters in the rigged game they have devised with the help of their bought friends, they keeping taking all the chips. I understand the temptation to stop playing, to flip the table and send all the chips flying. Isn't that what a default would have accomplished? I just think that what would replace our rigged game would be even worse.
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