Here's an interesting take...


POLITICS:
U.S. Public Most Liberal in Decades

Ali Gharib

WASHINGTON, May 28 (IPS) - Despite the overwhelming electoral approval
of now-U.S. President Barack Obama’s progressive campaign platform, many
in the media continue to portray the U.S. as a "centre-right" country,
says a new report from a media watchdog and left-wing political
organisation.
In fact, say the groups, Media Matters for America and the Campaign for
America’s Future (CAF), the U.S. appears to have a centre-left bent when
one considers the positions of U.S. citizens on specific issues.

For three decades, right-wing and centrist politics have dominated the
power structure in Washington. But evidence such as polling on specific
issues and overwhelming recent electoral victories for the U.S.’s
liberal Democratic Party demonstrates that U.S. citizens - in what the
report’s authors are calling a "sea change" - have shifted their general
attitudes and the independent and moderate constituencies are siding
with liberals.

"[O]n issue after issue, and in growing percentages over time, nominal
independents or moderates increasingly mirror the opinion of nominal
Democrats of liberals," said the report, titled "America: A Centre-Left
Nation".

The crucial swing of independents – the largest self-identifying group
of U.S. voters – determines the shift, says the report. "The majority is
centre-left; it is the right that is isolated."

"Self-described moderates and independents have tracked over time closer
to the views of liberals and Democrats," said Robert Borosage, the
co-director of CAF, "The lynchpin of this is, of course, attitudes about
government."

"What the report shows is that the public - particularly in a crisis,
but even before - has grown increasingly supportive of government and
the role that government plays in our lives," he added on a phone
conference about the report and ahead of CAF’s annual convention in
Washington.

The joint study of both the media’s claims of a centre-right country and
the analysis debunking that proclamation rests on polling mostly from
three reputable bipartisan sources.

On the attitudes of U.S. citizens towards the role of government, Media
Matters and CAF point to a National Election Study (NES) poll which
found that 62 percent of respondents view the growing role of government
as an answer to the growing problems facing the nation. 37 percent of
the population viewed it as the government usurping responsibilities
that individuals should be taking.

In addition to that number, which would be staggering for a
"centre-right" country that is ideologically opposed to government
growth, two thirds of respondents to the NES poll said the government
should do more.

In what the authors of the report pose as another broad indicator of
left-wing sentiment, they say, "Americans maintain a good deal of
scepticism toward big business."

According to Pew studies cited by the report, more than half of U.S.
citizens think corporations make too much profit and nearly four in five
respondents thought corporations wielded too much power.

But some critics would be quick to point out that while Obama’s campaign
was undoubtedly run with a progressive agenda, there have been some
departures from that programme since he’s taken office.

"What's striking about Obama to me is not the places where he's diverted
from his campaign agenda," said Borosage. "What's striking to me is
where Obama's followed through on [his campaign] platform" – such as
laying the foundations for broad education and healthcare reforms."

"On big structural changes that we need [to make], he's defied the
conventional wisdom that you're supposed to do little in the first two
years," he said.

Borosage does acknowledge, however, that Obama will risk losing his
progressive backing if he continues to buck the movement with some of
his most glaring betrayals, like the military escalation in Afghanistan
and the back and forth on what to do about the controversial U.S.
detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But progressives appear to remain, like the wider population, firmly
behind Obama at the moment – in fact, especially at this moment.

The politics of crisis – with the U.S. notably mixed up in a concurrent
series of two foreign wars and the economic meltdown – are known to push
public opinion towards government intervention. But the authors of the
report maintain that the progressive majority is here to stay for some time.

They point to the growing demographic presence of groups that are
overwhelmingly supportive of those ideals – what was, after the
election, hailed as Obama’s new coalition: Hispanic voters,
African-Americans, and young people.

"On election day 2008, over 23 million young people voted," said Heather
Smith, the executive director of Rock the Vote, an organisation
dedicated to youth political power, who said it was the most young
voters ever. "They're growing in numbers. They're the baby boom’s
children, and they'll continue to turn 18" – voting age in the U.S. –
"every day."

"It's just the beginning because they've voted now in the 2004, 2006,
and 2008 elections in increasing numbers, and its becoming a habit now,"
she said of young voters, who had, in the past, been considered
apathetic and apolitical and typically had low voter turnout.

Page Garner, the president of Women’s Voices, Women’s Votes, says that
another group that needs to be added to the Obama coalition is unmarried
women, a growing segment of the population that voted overwhelmingly for
Obama.

However, all of the talk of the majority behind Obama and his
progressive policies may allude to another reality which has, in turn,
also been widely discussed. The Republican Party, where most
conservative and right-wing U.S. politics reside, is a crumbling minority.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll at the end of April found that only
one-fifth of voters identify themselves at Republicans, while about 30
percent of U.S. voters identify as Democrats.

The party is widely regarded as taking a sharp tack to the right as it
has lost moderate elected officials in vulnerable districts to
Democrats, clung to an anti-immigrant plank that alienated Latino
voters, and played up wedge issues like gay marriage that pander to the
religious right base but not broader constituencies.

On a Sunday television talk show, George W. Bush's one-time secretary of
state Gen. Colin Powell said he feared that the Republican Party, of
which, despite far-right former Vice President Dick Cheney’s scepticism,
he is still a member, is becoming "very, very narrow."

"I have always felt that the Republican Party should be more inclusive
than it generally has been over the years," he said on CBS’s Face the
Nation.

(END/2009)

On Thu, 28 May 2009 10:02:48 -0400, HK wrote:

Here's an interesting take...


POLITICS:
U.S. Public Most Liberal in Decades

It's pretty obvious we're trending towards social responsiblity and a
society that looks after all of its citizens, not just the powerful
and business.

The R's continue to sow seeds in barren soil, thinking the tried and
true tactics will serve them again. Like watching a junkie who
hasn't hit bottom yet. Eventually they do and hopefully we'll get a
better crop of R's instead of a dead party.

Either would be better than what we have now.