U.S. Shifted Party, Not Ideology

[CalHunter]

This is a very interesting article in the WSJ and gives me a lot more hope for our country.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...64177746.html#

U.S. Shifted Party, Not Ideology


By GERALD F. SEIB

The Democratic party's problems, crystallized in the last-ditch scramble to save Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat in a special election Tuesday, can be traced to a simple mistake: Many in the party misread voters' desire to switch parties in recent years as an ideological shift to the left.


In fact, there is little sign that Americans' ideological tendencies changed much at all, even as voters gave control of Congress to Democrats in 2006 and handed President Barack Obama and the rest of his party a massive victory in 2008. Ideologically, the country remained throughout this period what it was at the outset: a center to center-right nation.

Throughout this period of Democratic rise, America was instead a centrist nation that simply had become fed up with Republican rule, largely because of concerns about the GOP's competence and its tone deafness. Voters' response was to shift parties more than ideologies.


In retrospect, the problem for Democrats was that some in the party—particularly in the liberal wing that is dominant in the House of Representatives—seemed to read this shift away from Republicans as a shift to the left. That became apparent first in the early-2009 construct of an economic stimulus package, written initially in the House. It went heavy on the kinds of public-spending programs liberals favor, and light on the tax cuts and small-business incentives that even more moderate Democrats like.


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[Alsatian]

Good article and largely on point.

There is a factor missing from the analysis of the large Democratic gains: the role of the media in slanting news and particularly political news. I'm not going to invest a lot of time in elucidating this, but give some thought to how many percentage points the media shifted the election results with their shrill "the sky is falling" message and "it is all Bush's fault!" message as well as their "Obama is the Messiah!"

[CalHunter]

Amen brother. The media certainly has not helped the situation.

[burniegoeasily]

I agree. The Demo party misread their victory. They pushed way to far left. I also atrbute a lot of this to Obama's lack of leadership. He simply gave the liberals controle. That was a big mistake on his part. But what do we expect, he was not qualified for the job in the first place. It is all understandable, especially when Obama's only qualification was not being Bush