Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
> I don't believe the stuff about the "right turn" in the electorate. I have
> been persuaded by the poll data ana analysis presented by Rogers and
> Ferguson, which attacks the idea that the electorate has become more
> conservative. On balance, this isn't so. The electorate we have is more
> liberal on race, gender, and even gay and lesbian issues that the
> electorates that put Kennedy and Johnson in office; and when asked questions
> about concrete policy options, it supports a broadly liberal New Deal/Great
> Society set of policies. That has become more conservative, or more
> aggressively conservative, is the ruling class, which is of course what
> matters, as it puts up the dough. There's a saying in Chicago: votes count,
> but dollars decide.
>
Is there a way out of the glass half empty/full bind? I agree with Wojtek. The reassertion of a salt-of-the earth commonsense blending conservative stuff about national pride, respect for authority, anchoring values and behavior in Christian religiosity, fears about racial and gender change, sex negativity, etc. is real and consequential. There IS broad public support for repressive policies and a curious preference for divisive politics.
How much of the electorate feels the pull, how deep goes a conservative worldview, and what are the underlying causes of it all are open questions. Yet the norm has shifted toward leftward, insofar that people are unwilling to undue so much of the social legislation of the past forty years. And clearly a lot positively relish things involving sex, drugs and rock n roll.
Maybe what we're talking about here is some kind of swing group which lend its numbers to either a persistent liberalism or a consolidating conservatism, depending on the context. That people can be equally supportive of public assistance while expressing hostility to welfare has to do with more than question wording. And elites seem no less divided - moral entrepreneurs desiring for greater social control and business elites that views social divisions as counterproductive.
Here then is the puzzle: how is it a gradually more liberal electorate prefers to elect increasingly conservative candidates? There's got to be some additional dimension here that slice and dice the meanings and causes of liberalism and conservativism into contradictory fragments.
If the electorate now is more liberal than the ones electing Johnson or Kennedy, which helps explain how or why Nixon expanded the social welfare state, how is it that a Democratic President feels compelled to latch onto something like welfare reform because it's seen consistent with the mood of the people?
Dennis Breslin