> In other words, a big chunk of
> Middle America went Dem because they thought the Reps had gone too
> far.
I cannot look at the exit poll data now, so I'll just type away my raw thoughts:
Krugman said recently that U.S. people, when asked what their views are on a bunch of economic and social issues, are significantly to the left of the mainstream media and political establishment. I haven't looked very carefully at the data, but this makes sense to me. Borat has a point, but I bet there is enough sentiment out there to propel a progressive agenda.
Perhaps by definition (these are numbers between 0 and 1), the share of the public that holds view A (vs. non-A) on a fundamental public issue tends to move rather gradually, even in the face of catastrophic events. In part it's the generational shift and in part the way large crowds change their minds about these issues. I'm not talking about the difference between the share of A vs. non-A. As Doug just wrote, people overreact to news (mostly noise). The media and day-to-day politics focus on the difference, which is much more volatile, because on election day all the complexity is flattened or funneled into a binary choice -- incumbent or challenger, Dems or Reps.
I don't mean to downplay the importance of that small difference, since it has such large consequences and generates momentum in political life. But, in terms of the kind of social change that can be effected over the long run, the focus should be on the *shares* themselves. Or, if you prefer, the percent change in the percentage. IMHO, there is now an opportunity to advance in building structures at the grassroots that can help expand the share of the U.S. people pushing for the progressive agenda.
There is grounds to uniting the constituencies that defeated the Republicans. Each of them has its own goals and dynamics, but there must be ways for them to communicate and crystallize into some political formation(s) *at the mass level*. And I mean -- for now -- at the mass level. Not at the level of a political party ready for electoral combat, which is the first instinct of radicals. I think the reason for this is obvious.
In a sense, there's nothing that precludes these groups from intersecting almost the entire political spectrum. But, historically, they have the natural or effective (fragmented) constituency of the Democratic Party. Or at least, they overlap with it much more than with the Reps. The Dem party's bureaucracy would want them to think of themselves as fragments that make no sense together without the political engineering of the Schumers and Emmanuels. But to be a real force with potential for independent political action and social change, they need to coalesce at the grassroots and set out to advance mutual goals. Personally, I think of this as the actually-existing working class, even if their political awareness as such is rather thin and their agendas don't seem to connect directly with what we'd deem workers' demands.
But they have to view themselves as the *agents* or protagonists, responsible for progressive change in this country. This, which should be obvious, must be said because people in the left tend to argue about the merits of voting on the basis of whether or not the elected politician in question (or her/his party) has it in its DNA to deliver progressive change. And I think that's totally backwards.
But back to the idea of the coalition of these constituencies at the grassroots: There are lessons to be learned from the way things are going in the Republican Party, the limits to the unity of plutocrats, social conservatives, libertarians, evangelicals, and "Reagan Dems." Some of the lessons are pretty obvious: One, unity has to be built from below. Two, *process* (the way the communication across constituencies is to take place) is key. And a corollary of two, don't enable the bureaucracy of the Democratic Party to intermediate. (This monopoly of political intermediation between different groups was the key to the prolonged control exercised by the PRI in Mexico. What the PRI feared the most were grassroots initiatives intended for those groups to communicate and coordinate actions without the party's intermediation.)
That this approach will create -- as a byproduct -- pressure on the bureaucratic apparatus of the Democratic Party to either align and provide a more reliable political/electoral vehicle to these forces or lose market share to credible third party alternatives is a secondary matter.
Again, much depends on what we do next.
> While this is a lot better than nothing, and something activists
> on the left can work with, I would't get carried away with the "sea-
> change" rhetoric that some liberals are spouting.
Right.