what happened to hegemony? (0.00 / 0)

The term centre or centre-right always begs the question - compared to what?

using partisan results to measure what the range of discourse is is not that useful.  if both the democrats and the republicans want to "end welfare as we know it" or increase cost of living allowances for social security, how do you account for that in a chart like this?

What I think is a more relevant factor is that the political process is geared to produce more conservative results than what the most of the electorate thinks, which is bad on  economic issues and influences what the electorate thinks as well (it's probably why people think the government can't do anything - because it's set up not to do anything).

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by: dr anonymous @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 16:21:36 PM CST

I'm Trying To Avoid 10k Word Essays Here, Dude! (4.00 / 1)

No single set of statistics is ever going to be determinative.  So you have to look at a lot of them, and piece them all together.

What these charts clearly show is just one piece of the puzzle, but it's an important one, given all the blather about how the Democrats can't get too carried away, or else they'll all be killed.  Survey says, "Not so much.  It's the GOP that regularly gets killed at the ballot box."

And, of course, it's precisely my point that the political system, steered by political elites, is well to the right of the American people.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 16:35:34 PM CST

[ Parent ]

your argument in this post (0.00 / 0)

as i understand it - is that voting Democratic means not being centre right.  i think this is false (but it depends on what method you use to define "centre right").  That was my main point.

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by: dr anonymous @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 17:08:05 PM CST

[ Parent ]

This Is NOT A Platonic Argument (0.00 / 0)

There is no ideal form of "center right" that I'm appealing to in making this argument.

For electoral purposes, voting Republican is voting right/center-right, while votintg Democratic is voting center-left.

This is entirely appropriate for me to argue, since the "center-right nation" narrative is anchored in the electoral framework: "If Dems don't act center-right, they can't get elected."

Meaning, they have to act more like Republicans.

But Republicans are worse at getting elected than Dems, so this argument is false.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 17:31:19 PM CST

[ Parent ]

i think the argument you're combating is false for different reasons (0.00 / 0)

namely that one party/social movement has been moving the spectrum to the right, and the other party has been  moving along the spectrum in order to get elected (at least on economic issues).  

in that vein, i think your argument is tacitcally appropriate and timely given its purposes because that's all about to change (har har), but i still think it's not true - if "center right" doesn't have an absolute political meaning, neither does "Democrat" or "Republican."  They all are defined with respect to each other - and other things.

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by: dr anonymous @ Sun Nov 23, 2008 at 03:02:49 AM CST

[ Parent ]

No Need For Absolute Meanings (0.00 / 0)

It's fine that "Democrat" and "Repubican" don't have absolute meanings.  Political parties, of necessity combine some degree of commitment to principles with a large degree of positioning with respect to issues of the day.  All that is required for my argument to fly is that the aggregate position of the parties remain Dems on the left, Reps on the right.  And that condition is met in the aggregte.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Nov 23, 2008 at 10:33:20 AM CST

[ Parent ]

okay hypothetically (0.00 / 0)

if your argument is that the Democrats are slight to the left of center in the aggregate, and Democrats are better at winning elections over time, and this shows that the electorate is center-left:

What is the reason we have had three decades of increasingly horrible policies (which is only now starting to reverse)?  Why did Bush get elected in 2004, even after the war was started despite mass opposition?  Why does Obama say nice things about Reagan and why did Bill Clinton substantially sell out three quarters of the disempowered people in the country at various points?

These are the questions that are left unanswered for me by your analysis, before we even get into the question of whether you can add up the different interests in the country into something that can be meaningfully called "the center" or "center left" or "center right."

I understand the argument when it's made for the purpose of redefining what's acceptable - i.e. center-left = good, center-right/right = bad--and that's a big step up from Demcorat = good, Republican = bad -- but I still see a lot of holes in it if we actually start acting on this basis rather than working to convince people who may NOT be "center-left" on many issues by other rich country standards but who are currently voting democratic.  What does it even mean to have a "Center-left" country?  If it's the whole country, doesn't that make it "Center" if we're going to use this terminology?

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by: dr anonymous @ Sun Nov 23, 2008 at 21:20:36 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Center right clobbered (0.00 / 0)

The very definition of center right are moderate Republicans.  They fared particularly badly in the last election.

The Republican Senators who lost are: Gordon Smith, Liddy Dole,Ted Stevens, John Sunnunu and possibly Norm Coleman.  Retirees whose seats were lost are John Warner, Pete Domenici, and Wayne Allard.  Only Dole and Allard are pretty straigh down the line conservatives.  The others range from moderate to semi-moderate.

Of course, moderate Republican House members like Chris Shays, Jim Walsh, Jim Saxton, Wayne Gilchrest, Tom Davis, Heather Wilson, Rick Renzi and Jon Porter are also gone and Mike Ferguson's replacement may be a lot more conservative than he is.

Overall, 8 of the 20 most moderate GOP House members are gone this year and a similar number were gone last year.

The GOP House and Senate are not only smaller in number bit a lot more conservative than 4 years ago.

Of course the loss of 4 conservative Democrats and the election of liberal/moderate Democrats rather than the overly conserevative House Democratic class of 2006 will make Democrats more liberal and Republicans more conservative.

Center right?  In your dreams pundits not in reality.    

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by: David Kowalski @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 17:44:41 PM CST

Even The So-Called "Conservative" Dems (0.00 / 0)

elected in 2006 were running more on economic populism than anything else.

And, of course, the Reps who voted against the bailout were posturing as economic populists, too-- i.e. "center leftists".

Everyone was refreshingly honest for about two miliseconds in saying it was politically very risky to be anything but center-left.

Then, just like that, McCain was attacking himself for being a socialist, and everything was back to "normal" again.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 18:05:32 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Still Center-Right (0.00 / 0)

Just because Dems have won more elections or popular vote, it doesn't mean we're a center-left nation. Our Dems are, in the global political scale, centrist at best, and our Republicans are far right. Add it all up, and we're at best a centrist nation. Our Dems just don't make the "left" grade.  

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by: edgeplot @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 18:16:27 PM CST

True, And I've Made This Point Myself On Numerous Occassions. But... (0.00 / 0)

That's not what this political narrative is about.

Our political elites never talk realistically about the US in comparison to other nations, and no one in the Democratic Party is talking about the sorts of political platforms that have come from true labor-based parties.  This is a purely US-centric discourse, and that is why I am writing about US electoral politics.  Because that's precisely what this narrative is all about.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 19:13:32 PM CST

[ Parent ]

The problem: (0.00 / 0)

I think I may have said this before (but it's worth repeating) -- a problem with this type of analysis is that it uses party affiliation across long historical periods as a stable measure of ideology.  WWII Republicans are not the GOP of Bush and Reagan.  Today's Democrats are different as well.  The Republicans did not become arch conservatives until after the Democrats lost the South following 1964.  Democrats became more and more liberal during the 70s and late-80s.  Clinton was definitely a moderate, and while uncritical progressives accept the narrative that Obama is a leftist, well, I'll just hold that thought (Summers will be senior economic advisor!).

Furthermore, there are internal divisions within parties.  A Democrat in the South will probably have a more conservative voting record - perhaps even more conservative than some northern, midwestern or purple-state Republicans.  Things are far more nuanced than a simple party descriptor acknowledges.  

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by: damitajo1 @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 19:23:46 PM CST

So??? (0.00 / 0)

The points you raise are good ones... for arguing against some other argument.  But not the one that I'm making here.

First off, I'm not arguing anything across time.  Nothing I'm saying depends upon or implies anything about 1970s Dems or Reps vs. 1950s Dems or Reps.  There's certainly a good deal that can be said about the subject, but all that really matters is that, in the aggregate, Dems are to the left of Reps.  How much to the left is not part of this argument.

Second--to highlihgt something I just said--I'm also not arguing anything about individual races.  I am simply arguing about aggregate results on an election-cycle by election-cycle basis.  

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 20:04:42 PM CST

[ Parent ]

What? (0.00 / 0)

If dems were a majority in some year, but only because a significant portion of the caucus was racist, union-busting dixiecrats, that doesn't support the idea that there was a leftist majority.  

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by: yoyoyo @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 20:34:31 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Not What I'm Saying (0.00 / 0)

I'm saying it was more leftist than the alternative.

The problem was the range of alternatives, and that's reflected on the level of international comparisons, where it's perfectly appropriate--even necessary--to point out that America is a center-right nation compared to most of Europe (but not necessarily compared to other settler herrenvolk democracies, such as South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, for example, all of which have had spells as bad or worse than us, even though they had labor-based parties, too.)


"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 21:16:30 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Interesting... (0.00 / 0)

It's weird to say that you are not making an argument "across time," when you crunch data from WWII to the present. You are indeed making an argument about the ideology of the country since WWII, and you are making it  based solely on one factor -- party affiliation.

 Your argument does not work because the ideology of the parties "in the aggregate" have not been consistent over time (even starting with WWII).  As a whole, Republicans were not broadly conservative, relative to the Democrats, in the 40s, 50s, and mid-60s.  They only really became conservative in the 70s, when white southerners abandoned the Democratic party, and the South became Red for the first time in history.  

And my argument did not isolate "individual races" as a cause for  ideological variation.  Instead, geography matters (even today), as midwestern, new englad and pacific repubublicans are often more liberal than those in the south and southwest; this was certainly the case during the late 60s to early 80s.  By and large, Republicans voted for the Civil Rights legislation in the 60s; the biggest opponents were Southern Democrats.  Assuming that we could agree on a set of variables that define "liberal" versus "conserative," you would encounter difficulty applying them to one party or the other during the time period you study without producing very erratic results.

To sum up: your argument makes the mistake of simplifying current "realities" (Democrats = liberal; Republicans = conservative) and projecting them upon the past, without accounting for historical variation. Political scientists have written about the ideological history of both parties and the nation that provide more nuanced accounts.  Often, their research goes much more deeply into measuring public attitudes by looking at opinion polls concerning policy and social issues and how people self-identify politically.  Pary affiliation just does not tell us much.

[sorry for typos....or other errors. I'm sleepy!]

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by: damitajo1 @ Sun Nov 23, 2008 at 00:37:05 AM CST

[ Parent ]

It Always Helps To Understand An Argument (0.00 / 0)

And mine is not that complicated, really.

It's weird to say that you are not making an argument "across time," when you crunch data from WWII to the present. You are indeed making an argument about the ideology of the country since WWII, and you are making it  based solely on one factor -- party affiliation.

(1) What I meant, simply, is that I'm not arguing 1950s Reps or Dems vs. 1970s Reps or Dems.  That would be an argument across time.  I am simply comparing the two at each point in time.  This should be absolutely obvious.  That's what elections are.  Events at a point in time.

(2) One factor is sufficient to refute a thesis--that this is a "center-right nation".  It is also sufficient to advance (not prove) a counter-thesis.

Your argument does not work because the ideology of the parties "in the aggregate" have not been consistent over time (even starting with WWII).  As a whole, Republicans were not broadly conservative, relative to the Democrats, in the 40s, 50s, and mid-60s.  They only really became conservative in the 70s, when white southerners abandoned the Democratic party, and the South became Red for the first time in history.  

This is simply empirically false.  The Democrats have always been more economically populist than their oppositon, whether Federalists, Whigs or Republicans.  This can clearlty be seen in the congressional role-call data as measured by DW-Nominate.  And this dimension has dominated Congressional voting since the earliest days of party organization in the 1790s, with only the briefest period of interrruption.  What has happened since the 1960s and 70s is a sharp increase in the degree of polarization between the parties, but not the creation of that fundamental difference.  There has also been a second dimension explaining voting patterns in Congress, one primarily involving race, which has largely vanished in the last two decades.

There was a time, in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, when Southern Republicans were aggressively pro-civil rights and that stance clearly did mark them as the progressive party.  There were strains of this that lasted and/or re-emerged in various forms throughout the Progressive Era, and fed into the likes of figures like the La Folletts and Fiorello La Guardia.  But from 1932 on, the New Deal was the defining dividing line, and most important vote that any Senator or Representative ever cast was the vote for majority leader or speaker.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sun Nov 23, 2008 at 10:28:42 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Well, (0.00 / 0)

It is not empirically false that "the ideology of the parties in the aggregate has not been consistent over time (even starting with WWII)."  Even on the question of civil rights, Democrats and Republicans had to be pushed by black voters and other liberals.  And international affairs often made them much more likely to support equality norms.  Southern Democrats were largely racist, but not exclusively so.  And Northern Republicans were not too distinguishable from Democrats on the question of civil rights, when the issue became politicized (which is what made both parties act).

In order to hold your theory together, you dismiss the significance of race and Southern Democrats(which is a really huge step) and focus on populism.  But populism is not an inherently progressive theory.  Ronald Reagan ran successfully on populism and patriotism as did George Wallace!  And during Reconstruction (outside of your post-WWII window), many of the arguments of anti-Reconstructionists in Congress appealed to the "common man" in the South not receiving the "handouts" that Republicans wanted to give slaves (sound familiar?).  Of course, this gets into a major assumption I referenced earlier -- the we could identify and agree upon variables that define liberal and conservative in the first place.

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by: damitajo1 @ Sun Nov 23, 2008 at 17:45:46 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I'm surprised (0.00 / 0)

How strongly the GOP rebounded in 2008 compared to 2006 in the senate.

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by: yoyoyo @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 19:25:19 PM CST

Compare Them To Elections 6 Years Earlier (0.00 / 0)

The electorate is not the same in every Senate election cycle.  Most of the "resurgence" is simply a result of a more conservative Senate electorate.

Note that the rolling 3-cycle average improved for Democrats in 2008 over 2006.

"Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition"

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 19:54:02 PM CST

[ Parent ]

hm (0.00 / 0)

it would be interesting to see the graph of each senate class as a separate line.

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by: yoyoyo @ Sat Nov 22, 2008 at 20:38:37 PM CST

[ Parent ]

PHOTOS Prop 8 Protest St. Louis, MO (11-15-08) (0.00 / 0)

PHOTOS Prop 8 Protest St. Louis, MO (11-15-08)  

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by: AaronBBrown @ Sun Nov 23, 2008 at 02:47:34 AM CST