There is a finding in the new Pew poll that shows little ideological dissatisfaction with Obama's cabinet choices, especially on the left (PDF, page 23 of report, page 24 of PDF):
Most Americans also are satisfied with the ideological tenor of Obama's appointments: 68% say they are "about right," while 15% say they are too liberal and just 3% say they are too conservative. In particular, just 1% of liberal Democrats say Obama's choices are too conservative, despite grumbling among some activists on the left.
Talking Points Memo linked to this part of the Pew poll as their top headline for some of the day. In their write-up of the poll, they note:
The "angry left" notion is largely a media fiction, and in reality liberals who have raised questions about this or that appointment also are optimistic about other Obama decisions and are capable of holding more than one opinion about the entire Obama presidency.
With numbers like these, that is pretty hard to argue with. So, rather than arguing with it, I would actually like to take their conclusion a step further. The Pew numbers show not only that the "angry left" is largely a media fiction, but also that the country as a whole is not very invested in abstract ideological positioning.
Overall, only 18% of the country express ideological dissatisfaction with Obama's current cabinet appointments, according to the Pew poll. Eight years ago, according to the same Pew poll, only 28% of the country expressed ideological dissatisfaction with Bush's cabinet choice. Back then, 7% of the country thought Bush's cabinet picks were too liberal, while 21% though his picks were too conservative. The remaining 72% of the country either though that Bush's cabinet choices were "about right," or had not opinion on the ideological leanings of his picks.
If, eight years ago, 72% of the country registered no ideological dissatisfaction with Bush's cabinet picks, and if right now 82% of the country registers no ideological dissatisfaction with Obama's cabinet picks, either the last eight years have resulted in the largest ideological swing in the history of any nation, or the country simply is not very invested in broad ideological discussions of cabinet appointments.
I'm going with the latter. More in the extended entry.
While solid, long-term measurements of ideological outlook among Americans have shown a shift to the left, those shifts are comparatively tiny in order to account for 72% of the country registering no ideological opposition to Bush's picks and 82% of the country registering no ideological opposition of Obama's picks. This leads to an important conclusion: any discussion of abstract ideology among prominent politicians is automatically speaking to a small minority of the country. The vast majority of Americans just don't view politics from a point within a coherent left-right ideological spectrum. As such, whenever pundits often say things like "X would be too liberal to be elected" or "X would be too conservative to be elected," clearly all of those statements are false because a super-majority of voters do not vote for or against candidates based on their abstract ideological positioning.
No one is too conservative to be elected, and no one is too liberal to be elected, because the country does not disqualify candidates based on their abstract ideological positioning. The vast majority of the country is seeking different sorts of connections with politicians--partisan, cultural, issue-based, personality-based, intuitive, etc--in order to make their decisions. Abstract ideological positioning is only one factor, and clearly a rather small one.
So yes, while the Pew poll shows that the "angry left" is largely a media created fiction, it also shows that the "angry right" is a similar fiction. And, for that matter, it also shows that the notion of voters picking candidates based on abstract ideology is a further fiction. While it is impossible to escape ideology, most Americans are not particularly coherent in, and / or self-aware of, their ideological positioning. That is a far larger and more important finding than opinions on Obama's cabinet choices.
This should have already been obvious, given that 68% of voters view Obama as liberal, but still give him high approval ratings anyway. From Rasmussen Reports, on November 28th:
Sixty-eight percent (68%) of American voters see Barack Obama as politically liberal, including 41% who say he is very liberal. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 24% say the President-elect is politically moderate while 4% see him as conservative.
Given that the ideological label "liberal" has a negative 10% favorable rating according to Rasmussen, one would think that being seen as a liberal would be a negative for Obama. And yet, Obama retains a 66% approval rating with Rasmussen, despite 68% of the country viewing him as a liberal. The obvious conclusion is that while the country does not like "liberalism" in the abstract, too few people care about such abstract ideological labels enough for it to impact the national opinion of even the most prominent of politicians.
Elections are not won and lost based on abstract ideological positioning. This means that progressive Democratic candidates are not "too liberal" to be elected as much as it means that the "angry ideological left" is a relatively small part of the population. It is a finding that cuts both ways for participants in ideological movements, whether progressive, conservative or otherwise. Because the country is not very self-aware or internally coherent on ideological matters, you can still win elections and pass legislation of an ideologically determinative bent. However, don't ever expect large percentages of the population to support your abstract calls for "more conservative" or "more progressive" government. Such movements are always small avant-gardes, but they can influence politics to degrees far outstripping their numbers.
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