Liberals Can Win Again if They Stop Being so Annoying
Jul 18, 2017 13:19:13 GMT
freecharlie likes this
Post by Merge on Jul 18, 2017 13:19:13 GMT
The NYT on Tuesday does a roundup of opinion from across the web - left, right and center. I make a point of reading these. This particular article from the conservative side (from Business Insider) caught my eye today, and while I don't agree with everything the author says, I did find in it an interesting explanation of why we liberals are not able to get some moderates to vote with their self-interest on policy issues. We're annoying! LOL
From the article:
It's important to read the whole article because he makes some valid points about the seeming overload of "liberal" requirements - some of which are not specifically liberal per se, but probably get lumped in as such by the beleaguered moderate/conservative voter.
What really jumps out at me, though, is his point that many moderate/conservative voters place almost no importance on policy positions when they vote. They're really just voting for the party they think most likely to leave them alone and let them live their lives - whether this is true in reality or not.
This is, in a funny way, borne out in my own house. My husband has a long-standing hatred for what he terms "Obama bulbs" - compact fluorescent or LED, or the dimmer "redesigned" incandescents that are pretty much the only kind you can buy these days - and curses them at every opportunity. This hatred is not based in any actual objection to the bulbs themselves. He just hates being told what kind of lightbulbs he can have and directly blames "the liberals" for this imposition. Since he is 6'5" and I am not, lightbulb-changing is his responsibility, so I get to hear him wax eloquent on "Obama bulbs" all the dang time.
The author also mentions "liberal nagging" on issues such as cultural appropriation, driving fuel-efficient cars, eating less meat, etc. as turning off moderates and conservatives, though there's no push for legislation to prevent people from doing what they want in those areas. Yes, cars are supposed to be more efficient with each passing year, but nobody's going to keep you from continuing to drive your gas-guzzling SUV if that's what you want, and nobody's going to force you to buy a Prius. Just the fact that people think they're being made to feel guilty about these things is intrusion enough.
IDK - in trying to puzzle out how we go forward from here, I think it's unfortunate that progressive policies that would actually help many of the people voting against it is somehow being masked by what people perceive as social intrusion by liberals. What do the peas think? Is the author of the article way off base? Is this an impasse we can resolve?
From the article:
I've been haunted by a claim my KCRW colleague Rich Lowry made on our radio show a few weeks ago: Democrats keep coming up short in elections because they won't give any ground on "cultural issues" to win back the working-class voters they've alienated over the past decades.
On one hand, it's obviously true that Democrats suffer from a cultural disconnect from non-college-educated voters who have abandoned the party in droves. Democrats believe their economic agenda should appeal to people with lower incomes, yet income has become a poor predictor of partisan alignment; Democrats' substantial inroads with upscale suburban voters have been more than offset by the loss of voters down the income spectrum, most of whom did not finish college.
Most of the discussion of this trend has focused on non-college-educated white voters, who have swung heavily toward Republicans; but Democrats should also be worried about their disconnect with non-college-educated nonwhite voters, whose turnout declined precipitously in 2016.
On the other hand, when you look at the polling on specific "cultural issues," Democrats usually have the edge.
This combination of facts has me thinking a lot about what I call "the hamburger problem." As I see it, Democrats' problem isn't that they're on the wrong side of policy issues. It's that they're too ready to bother too many ordinary people about too many of their personal choices, all the way down to the hamburgers they eat.
They don't always want to prohibit those choices. But they have become smug and condescending toward anyone who does not match the personal lifestyle choices of liberal elites. Why would the voters on the receiving end of that smug condescension trust such a movement to operate the government in their best interest?
The nice thing about the hamburger problem is that Democrats can fix it without moving substantially on policy. They just have to become less annoying.
On one hand, it's obviously true that Democrats suffer from a cultural disconnect from non-college-educated voters who have abandoned the party in droves. Democrats believe their economic agenda should appeal to people with lower incomes, yet income has become a poor predictor of partisan alignment; Democrats' substantial inroads with upscale suburban voters have been more than offset by the loss of voters down the income spectrum, most of whom did not finish college.
Most of the discussion of this trend has focused on non-college-educated white voters, who have swung heavily toward Republicans; but Democrats should also be worried about their disconnect with non-college-educated nonwhite voters, whose turnout declined precipitously in 2016.
On the other hand, when you look at the polling on specific "cultural issues," Democrats usually have the edge.
This combination of facts has me thinking a lot about what I call "the hamburger problem." As I see it, Democrats' problem isn't that they're on the wrong side of policy issues. It's that they're too ready to bother too many ordinary people about too many of their personal choices, all the way down to the hamburgers they eat.
They don't always want to prohibit those choices. But they have become smug and condescending toward anyone who does not match the personal lifestyle choices of liberal elites. Why would the voters on the receiving end of that smug condescension trust such a movement to operate the government in their best interest?
The nice thing about the hamburger problem is that Democrats can fix it without moving substantially on policy. They just have to become less annoying.
What really jumps out at me, though, is his point that many moderate/conservative voters place almost no importance on policy positions when they vote. They're really just voting for the party they think most likely to leave them alone and let them live their lives - whether this is true in reality or not.
This is, in a funny way, borne out in my own house. My husband has a long-standing hatred for what he terms "Obama bulbs" - compact fluorescent or LED, or the dimmer "redesigned" incandescents that are pretty much the only kind you can buy these days - and curses them at every opportunity. This hatred is not based in any actual objection to the bulbs themselves. He just hates being told what kind of lightbulbs he can have and directly blames "the liberals" for this imposition. Since he is 6'5" and I am not, lightbulb-changing is his responsibility, so I get to hear him wax eloquent on "Obama bulbs" all the dang time.
The author also mentions "liberal nagging" on issues such as cultural appropriation, driving fuel-efficient cars, eating less meat, etc. as turning off moderates and conservatives, though there's no push for legislation to prevent people from doing what they want in those areas. Yes, cars are supposed to be more efficient with each passing year, but nobody's going to keep you from continuing to drive your gas-guzzling SUV if that's what you want, and nobody's going to force you to buy a Prius. Just the fact that people think they're being made to feel guilty about these things is intrusion enough.
IDK - in trying to puzzle out how we go forward from here, I think it's unfortunate that progressive policies that would actually help many of the people voting against it is somehow being masked by what people perceive as social intrusion by liberals. What do the peas think? Is the author of the article way off base? Is this an impasse we can resolve?
