In Chris's early October diary "Wall Street Bailout Thwarting Democratic Realignment" , a couple of commentators talked themselves into a fact-free Versailles kool-aide fest, confusing Versailles Dems with the Democratic base.
Texas Dem began with a comment that I might argue with, but that held a modicum of truth:
Labor atrophied, and the Democrats went from being a party of labor
to being a party of labor AND of business AND of half of the rich.
That is the real source of the "Democrats divided" meme. The true left base is not large enough in this country to rest a party on, so we have a party built on labor AND on business, which can barely function.
Democrats don't propose restoring the Reagan Brackets because a significant fraction of their donor base would revolt. Until we get a party built only on unions and working people without any rich people required (they can join out of conviction, but not to defend their interests), then even the obvious cannot be done.
I don't remember the details of when Obama waffled on rolling back the Bush tax cuts vs letting them expire (after the primary, or did Hillary do it too?), but that was the tell.
Actually, the Democratic Party was never a party of labor, labor didn't simply atrophy, the left was purged from it during the McCarthy Era and the business-friendly labor leadership that remained misrepresented labor even when it was still strong, and even today the Democratic Party is not the party of "half the rich." But ever since the early 80s, the party has gone out of its way to court Wall Street, and Obama has done the same to a ridiculous extent:
Given Obama' vast small donor base, he could have kept his distance from Wall Street. Instead, he's turned the other way around. But the comment thread quickly diverged further and further from reality:
This donor base that would revolt...
...why are they Democrats to begin with?
"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- oward Zinn
by: Master Jack @ Mon Oct 05, 2009 at 20:08
Social issues
by: DTOzone @ Mon Oct 05, 2009 at 20:30
So the Dems have been reduced to...
...being the Abortion Party.
Lovely.
"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn
by: Master Jack @ Mon Oct 05, 2009 at 20:34
yes...sorta
that's how they rose from the 1980's doldrums...by winning over socially liberal fiscal conservatives in the Northeast.
and similarly, the GOP is the Christian party.
by: DTOzone @ Mon Oct 05, 2009 at 23:02
In fact, the Democratic electorate has not changed significantly since the 1980s in the ways alleged, and the gap between Democratic and Republican voters on a state-by-state basis is quite distinct on economic issues compared to social ones. Details on the flip.
One of the simplest ways to examine the tension between social and economic liberalism is by combining attitudes on social spending and abortion. While not as robust as a broader index of positions, it does provide a useful rule-of-thumb picture. And that picture directly contradicts the claims made above. As can be seen in the General Social Survey data below, from the 1980s to the 2000s, Democratic support has increased 6.7% for abortion in all 4 cases on the AbAutonomy Scale--for any reason, not married, married but wants no more children, and low-income and can't afford more children. At the same time, there was an 8.5% increasing in those those saying we're spending too little on 4-7 social spending items--Social Security, welfare, improving & protecting the environment, improving & protecting the nation's health, improving & the nation's education system, solving problems of big cities, and improving the conditions of blacks.
Furthermore, in this decade, Dems saying we're spending too little outnumber those who support abortion in all cases, 61.8% to 41.4%. This is a picture of a party whose base has grown more liberal, it's not a picture of a party that's grown more fiscally conservative.
Indeed, if one looks at those who might be called socially liberal, but fiscally conservative--those who don't want to spend more on such programs--the numbers are so small as to be insignificant: 3.7% in the 1980s and 1.7% in the 2000s. Assuming a much more generous definition, and including those who "only" want to increase spending in 1-3 programs, net, we still see a net decline from the 1980s to the 2000s, from 15.5% to 13.2%.
the big thing we see from the graph immediately above is that Democrats are much more liberal than Republicans on the economic dimension: Democrats in the most conservative states are still much more liberal than Republicans in even the most liberal states. On social issues there is more overlap (although in any given state, the average Republican is more conservative than the average Democrat). [empahsis added]
Note particularly that Northeast states Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Massachusetts are four of the five most economically liberal states among Democratic voters, but only Massachusetts stands out as remarkably socially liberal--directly contrary to what DTOzone claimed.
[UPDATE]: As the new notes in comments, the above is wrong, as I switched the axes in my mind. Trying to do too much at once, I suppose. I actually had another line of argument, which I cut out in favor of this--one that goes to the issue of changing party attitudes. It shows relatively little change in the ideological makeup of Northeast Democrats--some drop-off of conservatives, but not much change in liberals--while showing a substantial growth in conservative Republicans. I dropped this line because there are some differences between GSS and NES data, and I didn't want to wade through all that. But the gist of both is that the GOP has gotten much more conservative.
It does remain true, however, that there's more overlap on the social scale, while there's a significant gap on the economic one [see below]. And, of course, the DW-Nominate scale that measures ideological ranking in Congress is essentially an economic measure.
Some people asked what exactly was in our scales. From page 195 of our red-state, blue-state book:
We construct estimates for individual states using a multilevel linear model fit separately to each of the four sets of correlations, with economic and social issues scales that we constructed from the following questions in the 2000 Annenberg survey.
Economic: are tax rates a problem, favor cutting taxes or strengthening Social Security, federal government should reduce the top tax rate, federal government should adopt flat tax, federal government should spend more on Social Security, favor investing Social Security in stock market, is poverty a problem, federal government should reduce income differences, federal government should spend more on aid to mothers with young children, federal government should expend effort to eliminate many business regulations.
Social: federal government should give school vouchers, federal government should restrict abortion, federal government should ban abortion, favor death penalty, favor handgun licenses, federal government should expend effort to restrict gun purchases, are underpunished criminals a problem, is immigration a problem, favor gays in military, federal government should expend effort to stop job discrimination against gays, federal government should expend effort to stop job discrimination against blacks, federal government should expend effort to stop job discrimination against women, federal government should allow school prayer.
We should make no mistake, the Democratic Party has been changed from above, while the party base has actually moved the other way overall. Those who finger-point at others in the Democratic base are largely just doing the dirty work of Versailles elites, nothing more.
