Posts Tagged ‘Republicans and Democrats’
A foreign view of U.S. political parties
November 11, 2020Could the GOP become the pro-worker party?
August 15, 2016My parents were New Deal Democrats, and I was brought up to revere the memory of Franklin Roosevelt and to believe that the Democrats were the party of working people.
But a strange thing happened in American politics during the past 20 years. Blue-collar workers and high school graduates have become the base of the Republican Party, while college-educated professionals are now the base of the Democratic Party.
As recently as 1992, when Bill Clinton ran against George H.W. Bush, he had a huge lead among workers earning less than $50,000 a year, and high school graduates and dropouts. The elder Bush won by a similarly large margin among workers earning $100,000 a year or more, and narrowly carried college graduates.
In contrast, a CNN poll conducted right after the 2016 conventions gives Hillary Clinton a 23 percent lead among college graduates and an 18 percent lead among voters earning more than $50,000 a year. Donald Trump is competitive among voters earning less than $50,000 a year and has a 26 percent lead among whites with high school educations or less.
This isn’t because Republicans actually represent the interests of working people. Leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan—and including Donald Trump—still believe that the key to prosperity is deregulation and tax cuts for rich people, policies which have been tried and failed for the past 25 years.
But Trump, in his saner moments, at least talks about the concerns of working people. Hillary Clinton at the moment seems more interested in reaching out to conservatives and anti-Trump Republicans.
My guess is that she will win in November, probably in a landslide, based on an alliance of racial and ethnic minorities, women and college-educated white professionals, plus the disgust of middle-road voters with Trump’s antics.
But if she governs in the interests of Wall Street, as her political record and donor list indicate she will, Republicans could reinvent themselves as champions of the working class.
Trump woos workers, Clinton woos Republicans
July 29, 2016Donald Trump is going after the vote of blue-collar workers who, rightly, feel abandoned by the Democratic leadership, while Hillary Clinton is trying to woo anti-Trump Republicans.
For struggling American workers, Clinton is like a physician who says your terminal illness is incurable, and also charges bills higher than you can pay. Trump is like a quack who offers you a treatment that probably won’t work, but you may be willing to try for lack of an alternative.
Thomas Frank, writing in The Guardian, summed up the situation well:
Thomas Frank
Donald Trump’s many overtures to supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders were just the beginning. He also deliberately echoed the language of Franklin Roosevelt, he denounced “big business” (not once but several times) and certain of his less bloodthirsty foreign policy proposals almost remind one of George McGovern’s campaign theme: “Come home, America.”
Ivanka Trump promised something that sounded like universal day care. Peter Thiel denounced the culture wars as a fraud and a distraction. The Republican platform was altered to include a plank calling for the breakup of big banks via the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall. I didn’t hear anyone talk about the need to bring “entitlements” under control. And most crucially, the party’s maximum leader has adopted the left critique of “free trade” almost in its entirety, a critique that I have spent much of my adult life making.
It boggles my simple liberal mind. The party of free trade and free markets now says it wants to break up Wall Street banks and toss NAFTA to the winds. The party of family values has nominated a thrice-married vulgarian who doesn’t seem threatened by gay people or concerned about the war over bathrooms. The party of empire wants to withdraw from foreign entanglements.
The seeds of America’s culture wars
April 29, 2016David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America is a ground-breaking 946-page book I never got around to reading, and probably won’t. But I think I got the gist of it by reading a review by Scott Alexander on his Slate Star Codex blog.
Fischer’s argument is that basic patterns of American culture were set by migrations of four very different groups of migrants from the British Isles:
Puritans to New England in the 1620s.
- Cavaliers to Virginia in the 1640s.
- Quakers to Pennsylvania in the 1670s.
- Borderers (aka Scots-Irish) to the Appalachians in the 1700s.
Those who came after, he said, had to adapt to social systems established by these four groups—the moralistic Puritans, the aristocratic Cavaliers, the tolerant Quakers and the warlike Borderers—even though the biological descendants of these groups ceased to be in the majority.
It’s interesting and, I think, at least partly true. Alexander’s review is long for a blog post, but much shorter than the book, and even those uninterested in his basic theme will enjoy reading his lists of fun facts about each group.
Clintonism, Trumpism: a win-win for the 1%
April 28, 2016In American politics today, there are three main factions and only two parties to represent them. One faction has to lose and, if Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are nominated, it will be the Bernie Sanders progressives.
Hillary Clinton represents the Washington and Wall Street elite, committed to perpetual war and crony capitalism. Wall Street bankers have made her and her husband rich, neoconservative war hawks praise her and
Charles Koch has said she may be preferable to either of the possible GOP nominees she may be preferable to either of the possible GOP nominees.
Donald Trump speaks to the concerns of working people—especially pro-corporate trade deals and deindustrialization—but he has no real solution.
His economic nationalism, while not a complete answer to U.S. economic problems, is preferable to the corporate trade deals of the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.
But by pitting white working men against Hispanics, blacks, immigrants and feminists, he prevents the working class as a whole from ever having enough clout to defend their interests.
Thomas Frank wrote an excellent book about how the Republicans may be the party of the wealthy elite, representing the upper 1 percent of American income earners, but the Democrats are the party of the educated professional elite, representing the rest of the upper 10 percent.
This year’s political realignment may change this, as he himself implicitly acknowledged in a new article in Vanity Fair. Under Hillary Clinton, Democrats are becoming the party of the upper 1 percent as well. Here is the meat of what Frank wrote.
Rich Americans still have it pretty good. I don’t mean everything’s perfect: business regulations can be burdensome; Manhattan zoning can prevent the addition of a town-house floor; estate taxes kick in at over $5 million. But life is acceptable. Barack Obama has not imposed much hardship, and neither will Hillary Clinton.
And what about Donald Trump? Will rich people suffer if he is elected president? Well, yes. Yes, they will. Because we all will. But that’s a pat answer, because Trump and Trumpism are different things. Trump is an erratic candidate who brings chaos to everything. Trumpism, on the other hand, is the doctrine of a different Republican Party, one that would cater not to the donor class, but rather to the white working class. Rich people do not like that idea.
Elites focus on what they themselves want
April 12, 2016…Elites of both parties focus on the things they want for themselves. Republicans offer tax cuts and deregulation, as if everyone in America were going to become an entrepreneur. Democrats offer free college tuition and paid maternity leave, as if these things were a great benefit to people who don’t have the ability, preparation or inclination to sit through four years of college, and … can’t find a decent job from which to take their leave.
Source: Megan McArdle – Bloomberg View
Hat tip to Mike the Mad Biologist
This is true, but it’s not enough to get my vote
February 29, 2016Hat tip to Bill Elwell
In 1991 election for Governor of Louisiana, the Democratic candidate was the corrupt Edwin Edwards and the Republican candidate was David Duke, a Nazi sympathizer and leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
I’m told that billboards read: VOTE FOR THE CROOK, NOT THE KOOK.
Now Democrats are making the same argument on a national level. Yes, they say, the Clinton-Obama faction of the Democratic Party is in bed with Wall Street, committed to perpetual war and unable to unable to advance the interests of working people, but at least we aren’t totally disconnected from reality, like the Republicans.
That’s not a good enough argument to get my vote. I probably would have voted for Edwards if I had been a Louisianan in 1991, but that was because this was a one-time situation. In the long run, I’m not going to support anyone without a positive reason.
Frederick Douglass said, “Find out just what any people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.” If all that’s needed to get people to vote Democratic is not being a Republican, that’s all the Clinton-Obama Democrats will offer.
The four main factions in U.S. politics
January 6, 2016Going into the 2016 elections, I think the differences between the populist and establishment factions of the two largest U.S. political parties are as big as the differences between the two parties. Here’s how I see the divisions:
REPUBLICANS
Right-Wing Populists. These consist largely of socially conservative white working people who think (with some justification) that government has turned their back on their moral values and abandoned them in favor of minority groups. They’re against government bailouts and subsidies of big corporations, but their animosity is against the government, not the corporations. They want to preserve Social Security, Medicare and other traditional New Deal programs, but they’re against governmental programs primarily aimed at helping minorities and the undeserving poor. They are against the Trans Pacific Partnership and other trade agreements that limit American sovereignty. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz purport to speak for this faction.
Right-Wing Establishmentarians. These consist of rich and powerful people, and their dupes, who embrace what Les Leopold calls the better business climate model of economic policy. They want lower taxes on upper bracket payers, fewer governmental programs for the poor and less government regulation. Ultimately they’d like to cut back on Social Security, Medicare and other New Deal programs. They favor the Trans Pacific Partnership and other pro-corporate trade agreements. Jeb Bush speaks for this faction.
DEMOCRATS
Left-Wing Establishmentarians. These consist of rich and power people, and their dupes, who are a kinder, gentler version of the right-wing establishmentarians. They want to govern basically in their own interest, but less harshly. They are open to affirmative action, gay marriage, abortion rights and any other rights (except gun rights) that do not threaten the existing structure of economic and political power. Hillary Clinton speaks for this faction.
Left-Wing Populists. These consist of blue-collar workers, and their advocates. Like the right-wing populists, they feel their government has abandoned them, but their animosity is directed against large corporations and Wall Street banks, whom they think (with some reason) have captured the government. While they favor equal rights and opportunities for women, gays and racial minorities, they think the main issues are economic. Bernie Sanders speaks for this faction.
Why is there no real party of the people?
October 12, 2015A conservative Christian writer and blogger named Rod Dreher is disgusted with how the Republican Party serves the interests of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex. But he won’t vote for the Democrats because he is opposed to gay marriage and abortion rights.
He wonders why there can’t be a party that represents the interests of the common people on economics and the views of the common people on social issues?
The reason why economic and social issues are aligned the way they are is the power of big money in politics.
Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and the other Democratic leaders are strongly pro-business. But they can never be as pro-business as George W. Bush, Mitt Romney or the other Republican leaders.
So in order to appeal to rich people, the Democratic leaders have to differentiate themselves on non-economic issues. A Wall Street banker or Silicon Valley CEO who was gay or female or an immigrant or a marijuana user, or had relatives or friends who were, would prefer Democrats to Republicans unless the Democrats were an actual threat to their wealth and power—which Democrats have not been for decades.
Social issues work the other way for Republicans. Abortion, gun rights, immigration and gay marriage are issues that enable the GOP to appeal to middle-income voters who might otherwise vote Democratic. And, in fact, many Democrats would prefer to campaign on these issues than press for raising the minimum wage, breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks or preserving Social Security and Medicare.
Why presidential candidates ignore most voters
August 3, 2015The Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns will ignore most voters in 2016. They will focus on a few voters in a few swing states.
Frank Bruni in the New York Times wrote about how a Republican insider thinks the Republicans can win by nominating Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, for President and Frank Kasich, the current governor of Ohio for Vice-President, and thereby carrying those two states.
And a Democratic insider thinks the key to winning Ohio and thereby the presidential election is racking up a huge majority Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland.
Neither party’s strategists bother with California, Texas or New York, states in which they think the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Only a few states – Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina and maybe one or two others – are in play.
This is something new, and in part a self-fufilling prophecy. In the 1976 election, as Bruni noted, there were 20 states, including California, Texas and New York, where the margin of victory was less than 5 percentage points.
Polarization between red states and blue states has grown since then, and one of the reasons has to be that Democrats cede Texas and the Deep South to the Republicans, and Republicans cede California, New York and New England to the Democrats.
When I tell my Democratic friends I am disgusted with both parties and plan to vote for the Green Party candidate, they bring up the vote for Ralph Nader in Florida in 2000 and ask me whether I want Donald Trump to be President. I would vote my conscience in any case, but why even think about this question if it is a foregone conclusion that New York will go Democratic in any case?
LINK
The Millions of Marginalized Americans by Frank Bruni in the New York Times. (Hat tip to Steve Badrich)
How job choices correlate with political choices
June 3, 2015Hat tip to zero hedge.
This chart was created by Verdant Labs. If you click on that link, you can find the original chart, plus an additional interactive chart with information about more occupations. For example, it shows that, in my own former job of journalist, there are 88 Democrats for every 12 Republicans.
This by the way does support the claim of conservatives that reporters tend to be liberals, but I’m not sure what, if anything, could be done to change this. An affirmative action program for journalists who claim to be conservatives? I don’t think that would work.
I often hear that Americans prefer political centrists, but Americans classified by occupation are strongly polarized. Interestingly, though, if you go to the original Verdant Labs article, you will find that some of the top corporate and business positions are more evenly divided between the two parties than many of the middle-class and working-class jobs.
I can understand while environmental protection workers would tend to be Democrats while oil field workers would tend to be Republicans. But some of the other political polarizations seem to based on people deciding to fit stereotypes than the actual positions of the two parties.
Politics and the 1 percent of the 1 percent
June 3, 2015Hat tip to occasional links and commentary.
The top 1 percent of the top 1 percent of the U.S. population—fewer than 32,000 people—are increasingly the gatekeepers of American politics. As elections grow more costly, super-rich campaign contributors grow more powerful.
Last year, according to a report by the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics, this small group of people accounted for 29 percent of all campaign donations.
Within this group, there were 135 who gave $500,000 or more, 63 who gave $1 million or more, and three who gave $10 million or more. The top giver was Tom F. Streyer, a liberal San Francisco hedge fund manager and environmentalist, who put more than $73 million into anti-Republican PACs.
While most individuals gave mainly to one political party or the other, the elite donors are fairly bipartisan as a group, as the chart above shows.
Wealthy lawyers, environmentalists and executives of non-profit institutions give mainly to Democrats, while oil and gas industry employees give mainly to Republicans. Wall Street gave more than any other industry, with substantial amounts to both parties but more to the Republicans..
LINK
The Political One Percent of the One Percent in 2014: Mega Donors Fuel Rising Cost of Elections by the Center for Responsive Politics and the Sunlight Foundation.
Americans are sick to death of both parties
December 23, 2014Americans are increasingly disillusioned with both Democrats and Republicans. That’s why only 36 percent of registered voters cast ballots this year—a drop of 22 percentage points from 2012.
The national turnout was the lowest in 70 years in spite of the fact that more money was spent in the campaign than in any off-year election in American history.
Political scientists Walter Dean Burnham and Thomas Ferguson said Americans have good reason for their disillusionment.
They explained in an article on Alternet how neither Democrats nor Republicans can represent the interests of working Americans because they are financed a tiny elite of wealth, and Americans are starting to catch on to this.
The Democrats rely instead on appeals to cultural liberalism, the grievances of women and minorities and memories of the New Deal. The Republicans rely on appeals to cultural conservatism and prejudice, a big turnout of upper-income voters and hindrances to voting by lower-income voters.
But neither party has a convincing program for dealing with globalization, financialization, de-industrialization and the erosion of good jobs.
Average Americans may not understand the subtleties of economic policy, but they understand what is happening to them. As John Dewey once wrote, you don’t have to be a shoemaker to know your shoes are a bad fit.
Burnham and Ferguson didn’t speculate as to what will happen if this goes on indefinitely. My own opinion is that the USA will experience an upheaval worse than the labor violence of the 1890s and 1930s.
The militarization of American police and NSA surveillance of ordinary Americans then will be used by government in league with corporations to protect the social order from the masses.
Radical change would not necessarily be change for the better. If there is a public uprising, it is likely to be led by someone like Huey Long or Joe McCarthy as by a great statesman. But I don’t see how things can go on as they are.
∞∞∞
Here are key paragraphs of Burnham’s and Ferguson’s article.
The naming of Democrats and Republicans
November 22, 2014Here’s an interesting chart showing the most common American first names, and the likelihood someone of that name will be a Democrat or a Republican.
People named Jasmine, Caitlin or Abigail are almost certain to be Democrats, and people named Duane, Brent or Troy are very likely to be Republicans.
Yes, there is a gender gap, with more women’s names on the Democratic side and men’s names on the Republican side.
Men named Dylan are the ones most likely to be Democrats, and women named Tammy most likely to be Republicans.
Vickie (with an “ie”) is on the Republican side of the chart, but Vicky (with a “y”) and Victoria are on the Democratic side.
Men named Philip (who spell their names with one “l”, like me) are near the middle, but slightly on the Republican side, but less so than people named Phillip (with two “ll”s).
I’m not sure of the significance of this—if any.
Something to ponder
November 22, 2014Twenty-five years ago, Rick Perry was a Democrat and Elizabeth Warren was a Republican.
via GOPLifer.
The people have spoken: What did they say?
November 5, 2014I think the Democrats (with some exceptions) deserved to lose the last election, but I don’t think the Republicans (with some exceptions) deserved to win.
Rather than bringing about change we can believe in, the Obama administration and its supporters in Congress committed to perpetual warfare, Big Brother surveillance, bailouts for the banks and austerity for everybody else.
But the Republicans did not win by proposing a constructive alternative. Rather they won by stoking fears of Ebola, ISIS, immigrants and gun confiscation, by attack dads financed by dark money, and by suppressing and discouraging the votes of minorities, poor people and young people.
I don’t think the American people are committed to the Republican Party, but I think they are willing to give the Republicans a chance to show what they can do, just as they were willing to give the Democrats a chance in 2006 and 2008.
If the Republicans can put the USA on the path to peace and prosperity, they will deservedly make their majority permanent. If they fail or make things worse, which I think is highly probable, their sweep will be as ephemeral as the Democrats’ victories of six or eight years ago.
Voter suppression will decide control of Senate
October 13, 2014Source: Candorville
If the Republicans gain control of the U.S. Senate, it will be because of the success of Republican state governments in discouraging voting by minority groups and by young people. They hardly bother any more to disguise the real purpose of the new voting laws.
If the Democrats retain control, it will be because of the struggles of members of minority groups and young people to overcome these barriers. It is too bad that President Obama and the national Democratic leaders do so little to repay that loyalty.
LINKS
Republicans Are Trying to Make Sure Minorities and Young People Don’t Vote This November by Stephanie Meneimer for Mother Jones.
Voter ID laws in Kansas and Tennessee dropped 2012 turnout by over 100,000 votes by Philip Bump for the Washington Post.
Fun facts about David Brat
June 14, 2014David Brat, the Randolph-Macon College professor who defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican congressional primary, spent less in his whole campaign than Cantor spent in three steakhouses.
His Democratic opponent in Virginia’s general election will be Jack Trammell, a fellow professor at Brat’s own college. I expect Randolph-Macon’s fall semester will be interesting.
Click on 12 things to know about Dave Brat, the man who took down Eric Cantor for more by Andrew Prokop of Vox.
What’s the matter with the Republicans?
June 26, 2012Two of the smartest people I know are conservative Republican political science professors, but the following poll doesn’t say much for the average level of thought in the Republican Party.
Above are the results of a poll conducted by Benjamin Valentino, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, in late April and early May.
He found that an overwhelming majority of Republicans polled think it is important that the United States be the dominant power in the world, but they don’t want to increase taxes or cut social programs to pay for it.
In fact, a majority of Republicans say “none of the above” when given the choice of raising taxes on rich people, cutting military spending or cutting Social Security and Medicare in order to reduce the federal government’s annual budget deficit. Somehow I don’t think that means they are reconciled to deficit spending.
A majority also believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded in 2003, and that Barack Obama was born in another country. Where does this misinformation come from? Karl Rove? The Koch brothers? Glenn Beck? Fox News? Talk radio? Tea Party rallies? E-mail chain letters?
But I’ll say one thing for the Republicans, and that is that they know where they stand.
Nearly 85 percent of Republicans call themselves “conservative” or “very conservative” while fewer than 50 percent of Democrats call themselves “liberal” or “very liberal.” That’s why the Republican leaders are conservative, but the Democratic leaders, with a few exceptions, aren’t very liberal.
Click on YouGov for the complete poll results. There are many more interesting nuggets.
Click on A most unusual foreign policy poll for comment by Daniel Drezner, a political scientist at Tufts University.
Hat tip to Hullabaloo.