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"Why America is Moving Left" - The Atlantic

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I believe that in general Dems do everything within their power to try to up turnout. Repubs of course try to make it more difficult to vote which is shameful. But I don't believe that Dems aren't trying hard enough or aren't trying to come up with fresh ideas, it's just that you can't force people to do stuff they don't want to do ( or is very inconvenient for them to do).

Indeed, which is why it is up to the politicians to make them want to do it.

But no, they aren't doing everything in their power. If they were, we wouldn't have had the lowest voter turnout in 72 years in 2014. Given that republicans made huge gains in that year, it is evident that this caused mostly unilateral harm.
 

gabbo

Member
This was my professor's specialty

Mood9172013.jpg
That graph doesnt specify what it means by "Liberal" though.
Edit - now it says "Liberalism". Originally it said "Percent Liberal"
 

Makai

Member
That graph doesnt specify what it means by "Liberal" though.
If you want to learn more, it's known as Policy Mood. Six policy questions are asked - should we increase spending on ______. I don't remember all of them, but they include environment, education, welfare, etc. One of them has to do with race. They all strongly trend together and form a single indicator, Liberalism. Public Mood trends conservative during Democratic administrations and liberal during Republican administrations.

There's an interactive version which lets you pick your own indicators

http://www.policyagendas.org/moodapp
 

ZealousD

Makes world leading predictions like "The sun will rise tomorrow"
Anecdotally a lot of people I know who say "I'm a libertarian!" only really use it to distance themselves from the two parties. Just because a lot of them seem to support Bernie Sanders.

The young libertarians I know hate Sanders.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
They can be, but democratic socialist is a much more vague term than social democrat. A social democrat is basically a liberal who supports the welfare state and wants to reform capitalism, maaaaaybe try to get rid of private control of the means of production through reformism but most likely not. A "democratic socialist" can be anything from anarchism to market socialism to parecon depending on who's using the term. It really just means "not Marxist-Leninist/Maoist/Stalinist/Hoxhaist/state socialist!"

Yeah...but what he really means as you say is a social democrat of the European kind. AKA what FDR represented.
 
Progressiveism is the natural state of a society. If you don't establish some kind of dictatorship or totalitarian regime, slowly but surely the society will continue to move left (emphasis on slow). Conservatism is just the equivalent of building a thin wall to keep out the building water pressure
 

Imm0rt4l

Member
I can't remember who said it, but when they were talking about Bernie Sander's 'Revolution' they mentioned that there was a polar opposite revolution going on in congress.

It seems as though both Left and Right are going further in their respective directions, and taking their 40-45% (each) base with them. I can only see violent partisanship increasing in the future until an awful climax that resets it.
I can't see the GOP moving further right. Is the tea party still a thing? Trump espouses some of the most far right bullshit and the GOP can't pull away from his rhetoric fast enough. I feel like their would be a divide on the right if anything.
 

EmSeta

Member
The Atlantic is quickly becoming one of my favorite sources for long form content online. They've really been on their A game lately with some great articles.
 

tomtom94

Member
Yep. With a big heap of thanks as well to George W Bush. Poisoned an entire generation to Conservatism; a generation that is already the largest in the country.

Poisoned a generation to a very specific kind of religious conservatism, yes. I fear that conservatism is beginning to re-assert itself in new forms, however. The uprising of support for Trump online is one sign of this.
 
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