election demographics

[Justin Schwartz]

I still haven't provided the figures, but there is an obvious hypothesis to 
explain your puzzle. It's not that people have preferred more conservative 
candidates. It's that they haven't been offered more liberal ones. Why 
Reagan over Carter, Bush Sr over Dukakis, you ask? The thing is, these 
liberals were fleeing liberalism instead of trumpeting it--they treated it 
as something to be ashamed of, and in fact, bought into and reinforced ana 
ggressively conservative rhetoric. There is an old (1960s, I think) book on 
what Americans really think that I liked, can't remember the authors or 
title, have it around here somewhere, that argued that Americans go in for 
conservative global rhetoric and liberal concrete policies. --jks


>
>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

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