MG wrote:
There's plenty of polling evidence to suggest that, while most Americans
reflexively define themselves as conservative, they favour policies typically identified with the left which the Obama administration has been unwilling to introduce because of its ties to Wall Street and because of the nature of the US political system which disproportionately favours smaller rural states. These include support for tighter regulation of the financial and energy industries, public healthcare, and withdrawal from Afghanistan.
JG writes:
To pick up from a message I composed earlier, here's the problem (or one of them) as I see it. That portion of the electorate which is most likely to favor public healthcare and withdrawal from Afghanistan -- as well as gov't investment in green energy, the extension of GLBT rights, and so on -- is also the segment of the electorate most likely to equate activism (what you might otherwise call "pressure from below") with clicking "like" on a relevant facebook page, with posting a supportive message to a Youtube video of their favorite liberal celebrity, with volunteering for an "appealing" community service organization, or with (in 2008 at least) voting for Barack Obama. It's what Adolph Reed correctly bemoaned as "politics without politics" and left analysts ignore such cultural developments (or degeneration) at their peril. Culture matters, a lot.