From the early stages of the 2008 presidential campaign we have heard voices from various political analysts, conservative and liberal alike, warning the Democratic candidates not to be too liberal and urging Republicans to not stray from the party line. Many liberal pundits were horrified when Obama won the nomination of the party due to their morbidly pessimistic outlook on assessing their own country’s ability to select “one of the most liberal members of the chamber” as the next commander-in-chief. Jon Meacham of Newsweek, drawing from half-conclusive historic examples of the Reagan era and the “silent majority” of Nixon, warned the readers that,
Should Obama win, he will have to govern a nation that is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal—a perennial reality that past Democratic presidents have ignored at their peril.
My previous readers know that even I was swayed by that logic. Obama’s victory would not happen said even the most ardent supporters of Obama I know. And yet it did. I think this development of events requires further analysis, analysis not of historic patters, from which many historians falsely draw a clear correlation between the nation’s elected officials and the voters’ own convictions forgetting the other variables, but of clear demographic data and evidence. We all know that it is a paradox of the American party system that enables the election of Democratic majorities in Congress and the election of Republican presidents in the majority of our elections in the 20th century, but is there any other method we can find to look into “Joe the Plumber’s” psyche?
I recently came upon two very interesting reports. One, “Pulse of Equality” by Harris Interactive, was published on December 2, 2008. The other, a bit older, from June 2007, named “The Progressive Majority” made by Media Matters for America. I read both of them and they both point at the same fact: it is easier being blue in America than you might think. Below I present a handful of interesting statistics from the two reports.
Indeed, in the US more people identify themselves as conservatives than liberals. 32% call themselves conservative, 23% call themselves liberal, and 26% call themselves moderates. One of the grave errors of political analysts is putting these moderates in one group with the conservatives. Let’s examine the issues specifically to assess whether this common practice is correct.
60% of Americans favor big, strong, and active government, even if it means expanded spending. A staggering 84% of Americans support the raise of minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25, a trend that is strong and irrelevant of election year changes, etc. An interesting anecdote is that 53% of Americans think the Bush tax cuts were not worth it, while only 39% think they were.
Getting to the hottest issues, 62% of Americans wish to protect Roe vs. Wade, while only 29% want it overturned. An interesting observation is that the support or the lack of it for legal abortion does not change much since 1994, as opposed to views on homosexuality. There is a clear and straight (no pun intended) line of rising support for some sort of legal marriages and unions (38% support for each of these, and only 22% of the will to grant any sort of recognition for these contracts). 69% of Americans oppose any measures that would disable qualified same-sex couples from adopting children.
Americans generally favor tougher gun control laws with 58% supporting and 39% opposing. Since 1997, the percentage of Americans favoring the death penalty has gone down by 15% and now the issue splits the nation in half. 83% of Americans support stricter environmental regulations and laws. 75% of Americans would be willing to pay more for electricity if it were generated by solar or wind energy. Only 33% of Americans think illegal immigrants should be deported back to their respective countries, with the clear majority favoring legalizing their statuses. 69% of Americans think that providing healthcare to all Americans is the job of the government.
Both reports have much more statistics and percentages amassed from Gallup and Pew polls going back to the 1970s so they cannot be very mistaken. More Americans indeed call themselves conservatives than liberals, but the biggest group are the moderates. These two surveys show that moderates in the US lean toward liberal values, and that trend continues to grow – in no graph showing the changing opinion across the years of any issue does the number of conservative opinions increase.
“Joe the Plumber” seems to be favoring a strong government, he is pro-choice, pro-gun control and is tolerant of gay rights. That puts a few things in perspective.
The GOP should rethink it’s Palin, as well as the Jindal, card in the next elections if it wants to win. John McCain lost this election but he was most likely the best candidate the Republicans could put. Any other nominee and this election would resemble even more the 1964 LBJ showdown. If Republicans want to beat the Democrats in 2012 they need to take into account that their conservative nation is largely a myth perpetuated by themselves, a myth that just starts to show it does not work. If they want to win they need to put moderates in elections, forsaking the evangelicals. Democrats should also not attempt to buy evangelicals and concentrate on the moderates. I do not wish to purposefully alienate the evangelicals from politics, but just like the socialists and communists in the US they need to understand that a two-party system disables radical positions. They, not the Democrats, are the ones who can give the death blows to the party they cherished so much in the last 8 years.
The GOP needs to remember that many Republican presidents before Reagan were pro-choice (Ford), and that Nixon, should he had not been “Watergated”, would most likely bring universal health care to the US 40 years ago.
Both parties have to wake up.
