Is the division in American politics the result mostly from movement to the left by the left?

[Moonbeam]

In the link below to an Investor's Business Daily Editorial this claim is made, that, It's official, the Democrats are the extremists today", and cite evidence from the respected Pew Research Center as evidence. Check out the link and along with other info, some of the claims that are made I will list after providing the link:

https://www.investors.com/politics/...t-democrats-have-shifted-to-the-extreme-left/

Pew asks, for example, whether poor people have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return. In 1994, 63% of Republicans agreed with this sentiment, as did 44% of Democrats.

This year, 65% of Republicans agreed — a 2-point increase — while just 18% of Democrats did — a 26-point drop.

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Democrats used to believe that most people who want to get ahead can do so if they work hard. Today, just 45% of Democrats believe this. Among Republicans, the change was negligible — it went from 73% in 1994 to 77% today.

How about the question of whether racial discrimination is the "main reason many black people can't get ahead these days"?

In 1994, just 39% of Democrats and 26% of Republicans felt this way. That was 14 years before the U.S. elected a black president.

Now, after eight years of Obama in the White House, 64% of Democrats say racism is the main reason blacks can't get ahead, while 14% of Republicans do.

National defense?

Back in 1994, 44% of Republicans said the best way to secure peace was through military strength. Today, that figure is 53% — an increase of 9 points.

But on the Democratic side, the share who agreed with "peace through strength" dropped from 28% to 13% — a 15-point drop.

Pew also asked whether "corporations make too much profit." In 1994, the gap between Democrats and Republicans on this issue was 18 percentage points. Today, it's 30 points.

In this case, the entire increase in the gap came from Democrats. While 61% of them said in 1994 that corporations make too much money, 73% now feel that way. There's been no change on the Republicans side — it's remained at 43%.

One issue where Republicans shifted further out to the edge than Democrats was on whether environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy.

But on one big social issue, Republicans have become far more moderate over the years.

The Pew survey asks whether homosexuality should be discouraged by society. In 1994, 58% of Republicans and 42% of Democrats said it should. By 2017, the share of Republicans who felt that way dropped 21 points, in tandem with the decline among Democrats.

Of course, if you want to see how extreme Democrats have become, all you need to do is look at who is now considered the soul of the party — far-left liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren — or the fact that a substantial number of Democratic lawmakers have signed onto Bernie Sanders' radical "Medicare for all" plan. Meanwhile, conservatives couldn't even muster a majority of Republicans in the Senate to repeal ObamaCare.

Personally, I find the data to be rather unconvincing because I see other reasons for the changes in opinions from past to present. For example on too much corporate profit in 1994, that problem has steadily worsened since then. A number of other of the points presented are affected in the same way, in my opinion. I think the logic presented here, while sounding quite pursuasive, is quite unsound. How about you?

 

[frozentundra123456]

I would say it is a combination of both. The Dems seem to be hung up on the latest liberal cause of the moment, while the Republicans have basically become the extremist party of Trump. Even the more moderate Reps are afraid to stand up to him for fear of alienating his base. IMO, neither party really understands or represents the middle class.

 

[sandorski]

No.

 

[fskimospy]

I for one am shocked that an editorial from an ultra right news source thinks the real cause of polarization is the left.

Here’s the easiest way to know that the writer is a dishonest shitbag. He lists ‘Medicare for all’ as a sign that the Democratic Party has become radicalized and has moved far from the mainstream. This radical proposal is so far out of the mainstream that it only has support of...seventy percent of Americans.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...percent-of-americans-support-medicare-for-all

Contrast that with the Republican health plan that was one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation in history.

 

[fskimospy]

I would say it is a combination of both. The Dems seem to be hung up on the latest liberal cause of the moment, while the Republicans have basically become the extremist party of Trump. Even the more moderate Reps are afraid to stand up to him for fear of alienating his base. IMO, neither party really understands or represents the middle class.

What policy areas do you think show the Democrats don’t represent the middle class, specifically?

 

[Moonbeam]

I for one am shocked that an editorial from an ultra right news source thinks the real cause of polarization is the left.

Here’s the easiest way to know that the writer is a dishonest shitbag. He lists ‘Medicare for all’ as a sign that the Democratic Party has become radicalized and has moved far from the mainstream. This radical proposal is so far out of the mainstream that it only has support of...seventy percent of Americans.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...percent-of-americans-support-medicare-for-all

Contrast that with the Republican health plan that was one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation in history.

I think his ideas are stuck in the past. I think universal health care used to be radical in American politics, but not so much today as your numbers indicate. I think It's not so much moving to the radical left but growing in consciousness. The radical right is being abandoned for common sense.

 

[senseamp]

What was the top marginal tax rate during American Capitalism's glory days in the 50s when a Republican was president? It would make even a Socialist like AOC blush.

 

[sandorski]

It is becoming increasingly clear: Republican - Party of the Oligarchs; Democrat - Party of the People

Up to 2016, the Democrats were also a Party of the Oligarchs, just somewhat more mildly. The Republican Party began to polarize decades ago.

 

[fskimospy]

I think his ideas are stuck in the past. I think universal health care used to be radical in American politics, but not so much today as your numbers indicate. I think It's not so much moving to the radical left but growing in consciousness. The radical right is being abandoned for common sense.

Yes, the Democratic platform has majority popular support for basically every aspect of it. It’s an exceedingly mainstream party.

 

[GettyRoad]

Both parties are growing extreme. A party that boos God at a political convention can't be called mainstream.

 

[fskimospy]

Both parties are growing extreme. A party that boos God at a political convention can't be called mainstream.

What policies of the Democratic Party do you find extreme, specifically?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I think his ideas are stuck in the past. I think universal health care used to be radical in American politics, but not so much today as your numbers indicate. I think It's not so much moving to the radical left but growing in consciousness. The radical right is being abandoned for common sense.

At one time, I was a "Republican" in dead center. Like Colin Powell, I figured that the "public goods that Americans wanted to be funded publicly should be funded publicly." I adopted that mindset in naive reaction to President "Cornpone" Johnson, who had fallen under the spell of hawks on the JCS in his expansion of the Vietnam War. In addition, during the '70s I had this "perception" that affirmative action was "holding me up" because I was dirt poor when I finished college. I have yet to jump on a liberal cause bandwagon.

But then, a family member, who had chosen a not-at-all lucrative vocation in the culinary trade, was diagnosed with problems that ended his days with a kitchen cleaver. He had other problems as well. In 2017, it looked as though he could lose a limb because of a circulatory and heart problem. The ACA was suddenly a lifesaver for my little brother (62 years old -- "little" brother).

When I went to college in California, high-school grades were the currency, and even after Reagan's tuition requirement, it was essentially as free as it was in the time when Robert McNamara went to UC Berkeley. In the last 15 years, I've met students attending my UC campus who are living out of their cars, extending their BA degree pursuit to six and seven years, and really struggling. When I was in college, rent was cheap. I could say I was a "poor" college student, but I got through with $9,000 outstanding in student loans. Life improved, but not at the pace I expected it would.

And when I graduated, I could stand on the edge of campus and I couldn't read the time on the University bell-tower because the smog from LA blew in and got trapped in our basin with an inversion layer. The smog was so bad you could literally taste it -- something like sour milk. Today, the place in the SW US with some of the worst air for lack of rain is a place with relatively clean air since those times.

So I turned my RNC "membership card" into a serrated shoe-scraper. First, I registered as independent, but I came to see the futility of that as an affiliation, and changed to Democrat. I got involved in a local PAC, and served as treasurer. I had been indifferent to the gay marriage problem; indifferent to gay military service.

I've drifted leftward enough that I could call myself "progressive." What most revolts me is the Right's cavalier attitude to the Truth, their affiliation with concentrated industries like Big Oil and Defense, and their inner core of two-percenters and people I don't really want running the country. I'm 71 years old, which makes me part of a demographic more likely to be reactionary, Republican, and averse to change.

I mostly worry that the new progressives see the weakness, corruption and failure of the Trump presidency as an opportunity to advance agendas too quickly. Even Hillary's candidacy(ies) seemed ambitious. But I wasn't going to be a racial coward to be reticent about Obama in 2007. I was on the bandwagon very quickly.

I think it's time to change direction. After what I've seen of Trump's Core Base, I don't give a damn about their fantasy conniption fits. They should spend more time in a public library. But you can lead a horse to water, yet you can't make it drink.

What was the top marginal tax rate during American Capitalism's glory days in the 50s when a Republican was president? It would make even a Socialist like AOC blush.

It was about 90%. Corporate executives earned about 20 times average employee wages. The Gini Index of income and wealth inequality indicated a burgeoning middle class with growing expectations, a decent standard of living, and a vast improvement over pre-war levels. We had gone forward from the New Deal to the Mixed Economy.

But after the 1970s, wages stagnated, corporate executives came to earn 400 times the average employee wage, and you know the rest of it.

Embrace Class Struggle!

 

[Victorian Gray]

The US has a 'party of the center' with a relatively influential right wing and a not particularly strong or influential left wing (although it's had a bit of an uptake more recently) and a party that's morphing into the American fascist party.

Good luck guys.

 

[Indus]

Both parties are growing extreme. A party that boos God at a political convention can't be called mainstream.

As long as there has been One True God, there has been killing in His name - self evident truth.

 

[Indus]

Millenials are working every bit as hard as baby boomers but they still have the wage equivalent of baby boomers, while prices of rent, food, gas have gone up up and up.

 

[Jhhnn]

It's a nifty right wing hit piece, Moonbeam. The characterization that Dems have moved to the extreme Left is fearmongering of the Cold War variety. Dems aren't calling for the dictatorship of the proletariat. We're not mouthing mindless slogans like the Trumpster Chumpsters, either.

We are trying to find a way to restore the share of prosperity that middle class people enjoyed back before all this Reaganomic nonsense started. We won't get it by enabling greed at the top the way we have been, bet on that.

It's like feeding the bears. They're insatiable.

 

[trenchfoot]

I for one am shocked that an editorial from an ultra right news source thinks the real cause of polarization is the left.

Here’s the easiest way to know that the writer is a dishonest shitbag. He lists ‘Medicare for all’ as a sign that the Democratic Party has become radicalized and has moved far from the mainstream. This radical proposal is so far out of the mainstream that it only has support of...seventy percent of Americans.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...percent-of-americans-support-medicare-for-all

Contrast that with the Republican health plan that was one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation in history.

The bottom line is as I've oft repeated that the proof of the pudding is in the legislation the Repubs have pushed hard on and those they have passed into law the moment they seize power as compared with the legislation being supported by the Dems.

The difference as we already know is stark and humiliatingly revealing for the Repubs.

The Repubs have relied on duplicity and that infamous hate and fear campaign of theirs in order to keep their working class constituents from bolting, or at the least from demanding that the party give them more of what they've been giving the wealthy of whom have long ago bought and paid for most every Repub legislator in the nation at every level of gov't.

 

[Ajay]

na

As long as there has been One True God, there has been killing in His name - self evident truth.

Human beings have been murdering each other forever. The only thing that changes is what cause we claim justifies our murderous tenancies.

 

[UberNeuman]

Times change, people change and the "right wing" is going to say, do and wreck everything it can to try to stop change.

They are mindless and hopeless - and nothing can be done to reach or reason with them. So fuck them.

 

[GettyRoad]

I am an Independent, I'm looking for a good party to vote for, and I don't see it. I voted Democratic in the 2018 midterms because I wanted to see them have a check and a balance on Trump and talk about small business growth, education, national security, etc, but I have not seen them do so yet. I am a disillusioned Independent, and yes, I see extremes in both parties.

 

[GettyRoad]

It's a nifty right wing hit piece, Moonbeam. The characterization that Dems have moved to the extreme Left is fearmongering of the Cold War variety. Dems aren't calling for the dictatorship of the proletariat. We're not mouthing mindless slogans like the Trumpster Chumpsters, either.

We are trying to find a way to restore the share of prosperity that middle class people enjoyed back before all this Reaganomic nonsense started. We won't get it by enabling greed at the top the way we have been, bet on that.

It's like feeding the bears. They're insatiable.

Yes, Reaganomics was a bit too extreme economically, but you can't deny that he was respected as Commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces compared to Carter, Clinton, and Obama. The first job of any American president is to be respected by the U.S. armed forces. Reagan was liked by them.

 

[UberNeuman]

ah, the Russian playbook is still in effect. lol.

 

[Victorian Gray]

I am an Independent, I'm looking for a good party to vote for, and I don't see it. I voted Democratic in the 2018 midterms because I wanted to see them have a check and a balance on Trump and talk about small business growth, education, national security, etc, but I have not seen them do so yet. I am a disillusioned Independent, and yes, I see extremes in both parties.

Ease back just a wee bit. Right now you're just a bit too obvious.

 

[GettyRoad]

ah, the Russian playbook is still in effect. lol.

Ah, I see, anyone who is not a Democrat or a liberal or a progressive is a Russian.

Trying to silence dissent, hmm? That is the same thing you are doing. Projection.

I'm a Hillary voter, but I moved on after the election. You can't. You didn't see Bush/McCain/Romney voters still rattling about the 2008 and 2012 elections 2 years later like this.

I'm glad to be an Independent. Not beholden to anyone.

Get out of the echo chamber, the country doesn't represent Democrats alone. Your party has a LOT of flaws before they make their case to why they should win in 2020. You don't have 2020 in the bag, remember that. It's February 2019, anything can happen.

 

[ivwshane]

I am an Independent, I'm looking for a good party to vote for, and I don't see it. I voted Democratic in the 2018 midterms because I wanted to see them have a check and a balance on Trump and talk about small business growth, education, national security, etc, but I have not seen them do so yet. I am a disillusioned Independent, and yes, I see extremes in both parties.

Lol, so one month into taking back control of the house you expect them to already being doing the things you expect them to be doing?

I don't know if you are naïve or just your typical "both sides" idiot but I suggest you lower your expectations as legislation requires both houses and senate to work together and that's not going to happen with Republicans in charge of the senate.