> Doug wrote:
>
>> If you mean people with something
>> like social democratic and antiwar
>> politics, then you're probably
>> talking about 10-15% of the U.S.
>> pop. That number most certainly
>> is large enough to affect primary
>> elections, given their low turnout.
>
> How do you back up this estimate of 10-15%, Doug?
=============================
The problem is how do you define what is "left". Most Americans actually now
hold many of the same views as those of us who would be broadly described as
being on the "left", but they would not likely describe themselves that way,
and not a few in fact would recoil from being indentified as such.
For example, The Economist - if that miserable bourgeois scumbag rag can be believed - recently reported the findings of a Pew survey showing the proportion of Americans who believe that "the government should help the needy even if it means greater debt" has gone from minority to majority opinion. The poll confirmed also what we already know, that the US public is strongly opposed to the war in Iraq, generally thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction, is against cutting social programs, supports Roe versus Wade, etc. Most of these are DP supporters. But are they part of the "left"? Everything is relative, and the political characterization of the DP ranks in itself would generate much controversy on this list.
More surprising is how many Republicans, who we would have no difficulty situating on the "right" of the US political spectrum, share some opinions commonly thought to belong on the left. Pew reports an remarkable 72% of them opposed the Bush administration's efforts to keep Terri Schiavo on life support. An equally remarkable 13% support the impeachment of Bush. Overall, near-majority of Americans polled (45%) favour impeachment, a sentiment which extends far beyond what Doug, Julio, and the rest of us would consider to be the self-conscious US left.
In relation to the other issue raised by Angelus and Carrol on this thread, there is also no easy answer as to how social reforms have come about under capitalism - whether through mass pressure from below, as they both emphatically assert, or the systemic need for political stability and the raising of working class standards in a modern economy or, obviously, some combination of both. If there is no convergence between the demands of the masses and the willingness and capacity of the ruling class to grant reforms, there is no reform; the result necessarily is bloody repression from above or revolution from below. The New Deal and Civil Rights reform movements resulted in neither because both these conditions were met. Protest alone is not a sufficient explanation.