Thanks for presenting what we all know and feel so clearly. The change on race is particularly well demonstrated and shocking in how radical it truly is. From a party consistently committed to equality since the aftermath of WWII, to a party wishing to import to the States an India/South Africa style cast-based system where public resources are *officially* allotted to groups based on racial hierarchies. Chilling. I do hope the fever breaks soon.
The policy changes have their pros and cons but you could debate how much of it is really a move left versus evolving with society. I think the absolute biggest changes have been rhetorical. Fewer Democrats speak like normal people and pepper their language with university buzz words that, frankly, can be really loaded and alienating for anyone not on the far end of the progressive spectrum. I think that change is much more important to perceptions than any shift left in policy preferences, not that those don't exist.
Nothing says "If you vote for us, we will improve your family's life in immediate, specific, identifiable, concrete ways" like "land acknowledgement", a concept I would wager 90% of American voters have not heard of.
The number of comments saying "Republicans are worse" is concerning. Two wrongs don't make a right! If your opponent becomes extreme, you should take the opportunity to hoover up swing voters and win, not abandon the centre yourself.
This goes double in the US system with all its veto points, and triple for Dems given US malapportionment works against them.
I think the fact that the white collar base of the party is busying itself making an organ of mass politics into an inaccessible, elitist morass tells us all we need to know.
I don't think anyone disagrees with the thesis, but it's worth pointing out that some of the movement by Democrats is in response to conservative wins. For example, raising corporate taxes in 2020 vs. closing loopholes in 2012 is partially a result of the 2017 GOP tax cuts. The Dems moved left on the VRA and voter ID laws, but that follows the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and proliferation of state-level voting restrictions. Puerto Rico has held three statehood referenda since 2012, all of which statehood won; prior to 2012, the last referendum was in 1998, which statehood lost. Point being, some of the changes are obviously solely attributable to philosophical movement, but others are equally, or more, influenced by historical developments rendering past positions moot.
I haven’t seen many people arguing that the Ds haven’t shifted left. I have seen two main critiques of the meme. First, the meme should include a histogram-like distribution of people. As younger people have replaced older people, the absolute position of the Democratic Party has shifted more than its position relative to older people. A person opposed to same-sex marriage in 2022 would be out of step with society in a way they wouldn’t have been in 2002, despite not having moved themselves (ditto for someone opposing interracial marriage in 2022 versus 1962). Values change, but so do the best available evidence and analyses—so we should expect (and want!) to see changes. Second, believing that the Republican Party hasn’t changed in some meaningful way does indeed “imagining things” and ignoring other things. Sure, Republicans have courted anti-democratic racially conservative Whites since Goldwater went “hunting where the ducks [were],” but the anti-democratic, anti-empirical, anti-pluralist element of the coalition (which has long been there) has taken control of the party to a greater extent than ever before.
The share of Democrats who are conservative is declining, but 12% still far exceeds the share of Republicans who call themselves liberal (4%).
Among independent voters, conservatives outnumber liberals 30% to 20%. Nationwide, conservatives outnumber liberals 37% to 25%.
Assuming conservative Democrats are low-hanging fruit to be brought over to the Republican side, while liberal Republicans are low-hanging fruit to be brought over to the Democratic side, Democrats are in big trouble, because the former group far outnumbers the latter.
Looking at racial breakdowns in the 2021 Gallup poll, things get even more telling. Simply treating all conservatives as Republicans, all liberals as Democrats, and moderates split 50/50 between two parties, we can use the liberal/moderate/conservative stats to crudely estimate how each racial group splits between the two parties. For white voters, it produces a 59/41 split in favor of Republicans, almost exactly matching the results of recent elections. Among Hispanic voters, this calculation produces a 50/50 split, right down the middle. Among blacks voters, the calculation favors Democrats, but only by 55/45, not the 88/12 margins among them Democrats are used to.
In other words, Democrat's ability to have a majority at all lies on the backs, not of liberal voters, but of conservative nonwhite voters siding with Democrats because of their race, even if they disagree with their politics. Recent trends have started to show a shift of black and Hispanic voters towards the GOP. If these trends are the result of people voting their ideology, rather than their race (as election data show white voters have been doing all along), the long term future for Democrats is losing white voters 60/40, breaking even 50/50 among Hispanic voters, and winning black voters by just 55/45. Even if blacks and Hispanics make up an increasingly larger percentage of the electorate going forward, these numbers still point to a large Republican majority looming in the future.
Without either increasing the number of liberals in this country to match conservatives, or winning a large supermajority of the moderate votes, Democrats simply cannot win (long term) even the popular vote, let alone institutions such as the Senate or electorate college, which have further Republican biases due to population distribution.
And, all this should be scaring Democratic operatives stiff.
Wasn't one of the olive branches Biden extended to Sanders to let Bernie people have major roles in writing the platform? Might explain a lot of the tone and content of the document.
Sure, but I don't think the party platforms are the best evidence here. For one thing, ideological sorting means there are fewer conservative party delegates showing up to the conventions arguing for conservative language in the platform. So in theory you could end up with a further-left Democratic platform without the society-wide Overton window having shifted (even though I don't think that's what's happened). For another thing, even given a society-wide shift: as other people have pointed out, the Colin Wright meme kind of implies a moderate person standing around not changing their views over time as liberals zoom left, but Democrats' leftward motion doesn't itself prove they're further from the median voter than before. You could make a strong case they are, but the median voter has also moved left on a lot of issues – not just gay rights, but also whether the Iraq War was a good idea, whether it's the government's responsibility to ensure everyone has access to healthcare, whether police violence is a major problem.
I'm splitting hairs relative to the thesis of this essay, I guess, but not relative to the Colin Wright meme. The meme suggests a one-time epochal shift relative to the median voter, but the evolution in the party's platform is consistent with the thesis that the Democrats are just America's left-of-center major party, and the center has shifted. If the meme resonates with a lot of people in this moment, that may be because there are a lot of Republicans and midterm elections always go badly for the incumbent president's party.
You should add to your dot plot that use of the word "equity" and its variants went from a rate of 0.19 per 1000 words in 2012 to 1.0 per 1000 in 2020... Use of variants of the word "equal" went up too, but not as much: 0.87 to 1.26 per thousand words.
Great article, my only thought is that some of this has to do with the Dems misread of the 2020 electoral environment somewhat based on flawed polling. I think if you could of given the party the 2020 election results in advance that is certainly not the platform they would of run on.
"The fact that DW-NOMINATE scores don’t pick up on it is a limitation of that metric — not to say that it’s wrong, but just that analysis of roll call votes only tells you so much."
Sure, the votes don't tell you everything about where a party is.
But they tell you a hell of a lot more than the platform does.
The platform is just the talk. The votes are the walk. The votes are when you put your money where your mouth is -- or don't.
1) more moderate liberals were already primed to quickly become more radical on a lot of these issues, or...
2) more 'moderate' liberals weren't really moderate in the first place, but we're just pretending to be for political advantage.
Whichever the case, a lot of conservatives were lampooned for making (supposedly foolish) slippery-slope arguments on these issues over the last decade or so, and...in many cases, they were probably right.
Admittedly, this could be a 'broken clock right two times a day' situation, because we are always making slippery slope arguments.
oh Dear Lord, they really do start the 2020 platform with a land acknowledgement. It's a good thing no one reads or remembers these things, or they'd be doing that much more to alienate the median voter. <smh>
Thanks for presenting what we all know and feel so clearly. The change on race is particularly well demonstrated and shocking in how radical it truly is. From a party consistently committed to equality since the aftermath of WWII, to a party wishing to import to the States an India/South Africa style cast-based system where public resources are *officially* allotted to groups based on racial hierarchies. Chilling. I do hope the fever breaks soon.
The policy changes have their pros and cons but you could debate how much of it is really a move left versus evolving with society. I think the absolute biggest changes have been rhetorical. Fewer Democrats speak like normal people and pepper their language with university buzz words that, frankly, can be really loaded and alienating for anyone not on the far end of the progressive spectrum. I think that change is much more important to perceptions than any shift left in policy preferences, not that those don't exist.
Nothing says "If you vote for us, we will improve your family's life in immediate, specific, identifiable, concrete ways" like "land acknowledgement", a concept I would wager 90% of American voters have not heard of.
It probably just hasn't been "centered" enough.
The number of comments saying "Republicans are worse" is concerning. Two wrongs don't make a right! If your opponent becomes extreme, you should take the opportunity to hoover up swing voters and win, not abandon the centre yourself.
This goes double in the US system with all its veto points, and triple for Dems given US malapportionment works against them.
I think the fact that the white collar base of the party is busying itself making an organ of mass politics into an inaccessible, elitist morass tells us all we need to know.
I don't think anyone disagrees with the thesis, but it's worth pointing out that some of the movement by Democrats is in response to conservative wins. For example, raising corporate taxes in 2020 vs. closing loopholes in 2012 is partially a result of the 2017 GOP tax cuts. The Dems moved left on the VRA and voter ID laws, but that follows the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and proliferation of state-level voting restrictions. Puerto Rico has held three statehood referenda since 2012, all of which statehood won; prior to 2012, the last referendum was in 1998, which statehood lost. Point being, some of the changes are obviously solely attributable to philosophical movement, but others are equally, or more, influenced by historical developments rendering past positions moot.
I haven’t seen many people arguing that the Ds haven’t shifted left. I have seen two main critiques of the meme. First, the meme should include a histogram-like distribution of people. As younger people have replaced older people, the absolute position of the Democratic Party has shifted more than its position relative to older people. A person opposed to same-sex marriage in 2022 would be out of step with society in a way they wouldn’t have been in 2002, despite not having moved themselves (ditto for someone opposing interracial marriage in 2022 versus 1962). Values change, but so do the best available evidence and analyses—so we should expect (and want!) to see changes. Second, believing that the Republican Party hasn’t changed in some meaningful way does indeed “imagining things” and ignoring other things. Sure, Republicans have courted anti-democratic racially conservative Whites since Goldwater went “hunting where the ducks [were],” but the anti-democratic, anti-empirical, anti-pluralist element of the coalition (which has long been there) has taken control of the party to a greater extent than ever before.
I dug up the source of the conservative/moderate/liberal chart here: https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-steady-conservatives-moderates-tie.aspx
The share of Democrats who are conservative is declining, but 12% still far exceeds the share of Republicans who call themselves liberal (4%).
Among independent voters, conservatives outnumber liberals 30% to 20%. Nationwide, conservatives outnumber liberals 37% to 25%.
Assuming conservative Democrats are low-hanging fruit to be brought over to the Republican side, while liberal Republicans are low-hanging fruit to be brought over to the Democratic side, Democrats are in big trouble, because the former group far outnumbers the latter.
Looking at racial breakdowns in the 2021 Gallup poll, things get even more telling. Simply treating all conservatives as Republicans, all liberals as Democrats, and moderates split 50/50 between two parties, we can use the liberal/moderate/conservative stats to crudely estimate how each racial group splits between the two parties. For white voters, it produces a 59/41 split in favor of Republicans, almost exactly matching the results of recent elections. Among Hispanic voters, this calculation produces a 50/50 split, right down the middle. Among blacks voters, the calculation favors Democrats, but only by 55/45, not the 88/12 margins among them Democrats are used to.
In other words, Democrat's ability to have a majority at all lies on the backs, not of liberal voters, but of conservative nonwhite voters siding with Democrats because of their race, even if they disagree with their politics. Recent trends have started to show a shift of black and Hispanic voters towards the GOP. If these trends are the result of people voting their ideology, rather than their race (as election data show white voters have been doing all along), the long term future for Democrats is losing white voters 60/40, breaking even 50/50 among Hispanic voters, and winning black voters by just 55/45. Even if blacks and Hispanics make up an increasingly larger percentage of the electorate going forward, these numbers still point to a large Republican majority looming in the future.
Without either increasing the number of liberals in this country to match conservatives, or winning a large supermajority of the moderate votes, Democrats simply cannot win (long term) even the popular vote, let alone institutions such as the Senate or electorate college, which have further Republican biases due to population distribution.
And, all this should be scaring Democratic operatives stiff.
Wasn't one of the olive branches Biden extended to Sanders to let Bernie people have major roles in writing the platform? Might explain a lot of the tone and content of the document.
Sure, but I don't think the party platforms are the best evidence here. For one thing, ideological sorting means there are fewer conservative party delegates showing up to the conventions arguing for conservative language in the platform. So in theory you could end up with a further-left Democratic platform without the society-wide Overton window having shifted (even though I don't think that's what's happened). For another thing, even given a society-wide shift: as other people have pointed out, the Colin Wright meme kind of implies a moderate person standing around not changing their views over time as liberals zoom left, but Democrats' leftward motion doesn't itself prove they're further from the median voter than before. You could make a strong case they are, but the median voter has also moved left on a lot of issues – not just gay rights, but also whether the Iraq War was a good idea, whether it's the government's responsibility to ensure everyone has access to healthcare, whether police violence is a major problem.
I'm splitting hairs relative to the thesis of this essay, I guess, but not relative to the Colin Wright meme. The meme suggests a one-time epochal shift relative to the median voter, but the evolution in the party's platform is consistent with the thesis that the Democrats are just America's left-of-center major party, and the center has shifted. If the meme resonates with a lot of people in this moment, that may be because there are a lot of Republicans and midterm elections always go badly for the incumbent president's party.
You should add to your dot plot that use of the word "equity" and its variants went from a rate of 0.19 per 1000 words in 2012 to 1.0 per 1000 in 2020... Use of variants of the word "equal" went up too, but not as much: 0.87 to 1.26 per thousand words.
Today it says Matt and Milan. Did Milan do all the work and Matt put his name on it to take credit for it?
Great article, my only thought is that some of this has to do with the Dems misread of the 2020 electoral environment somewhat based on flawed polling. I think if you could of given the party the 2020 election results in advance that is certainly not the platform they would of run on.
"The fact that DW-NOMINATE scores don’t pick up on it is a limitation of that metric — not to say that it’s wrong, but just that analysis of roll call votes only tells you so much."
Sure, the votes don't tell you everything about where a party is.
But they tell you a hell of a lot more than the platform does.
The platform is just the talk. The votes are the walk. The votes are when you put your money where your mouth is -- or don't.
Either:
1) more moderate liberals were already primed to quickly become more radical on a lot of these issues, or...
2) more 'moderate' liberals weren't really moderate in the first place, but we're just pretending to be for political advantage.
Whichever the case, a lot of conservatives were lampooned for making (supposedly foolish) slippery-slope arguments on these issues over the last decade or so, and...in many cases, they were probably right.
Admittedly, this could be a 'broken clock right two times a day' situation, because we are always making slippery slope arguments.
oh Dear Lord, they really do start the 2020 platform with a land acknowledgement. It's a good thing no one reads or remembers these things, or they'd be doing that much more to alienate the median voter. <smh>