The irrelevance of the liberal 'brand'
Ezra Klein
WashPost
There is perhaps no surer signal that Democrats are about to suffer a terrific defeat than to see liberals begin discussing how to define, redefine, or otherwise burnish their "brand." So far as I'm concerned, this falls firmly in the "doesn't matter" category of American politics. In 2004, all liberals could talk about was the power of the conservative brand, and George Lakoff became an icon because of it. In 2006 and 2008, better branding didn't save Republicans from being devastated in the polls, leading Democrats to the first 60-vote Senate majority since the 1970s. So much for brands.
But it is an excuse to discuss an interesting political science paper (pdf) a reader sent in. In it, Christopher Ellis and James Stimson try to untangle an apparent paradox at the heart of our political affairs: "We wish to understand why the American public, in the aggregate, supports 'liberal' public policies of redistribution, intervention in the economy, and aggressive governmental action to solve social problems, while at the same time identifies with the symbols -- and ideological label -- that rejects these policies." In other words, how does a country that self-identifies as conservative keep moving its policy to the left?
To figure it out, they pull together new sources of data to estimate ideological self-identification in the decades before pollsters routinely asked whether we were liberals or conservatives. Here's what they find:
Conservatism, in other words, always outpolled liberalism, but liberalism really collapses in the '60s. Their explanation for this isn't entirely satisfying. In effect, they say that the Great Society created some popular universal programs like Medicare, but also, in its efforts to fight poverty and assure civil rights, created "a new clientele of liberalism, the poor -- and the nonwhite." After that, they say, politicians who were liberals gave up on the label, and so conservatives were able to define it.
(Continued here.)
WashPost
There is perhaps no surer signal that Democrats are about to suffer a terrific defeat than to see liberals begin discussing how to define, redefine, or otherwise burnish their "brand." So far as I'm concerned, this falls firmly in the "doesn't matter" category of American politics. In 2004, all liberals could talk about was the power of the conservative brand, and George Lakoff became an icon because of it. In 2006 and 2008, better branding didn't save Republicans from being devastated in the polls, leading Democrats to the first 60-vote Senate majority since the 1970s. So much for brands.
But it is an excuse to discuss an interesting political science paper (pdf) a reader sent in. In it, Christopher Ellis and James Stimson try to untangle an apparent paradox at the heart of our political affairs: "We wish to understand why the American public, in the aggregate, supports 'liberal' public policies of redistribution, intervention in the economy, and aggressive governmental action to solve social problems, while at the same time identifies with the symbols -- and ideological label -- that rejects these policies." In other words, how does a country that self-identifies as conservative keep moving its policy to the left?
To figure it out, they pull together new sources of data to estimate ideological self-identification in the decades before pollsters routinely asked whether we were liberals or conservatives. Here's what they find:
Conservatism, in other words, always outpolled liberalism, but liberalism really collapses in the '60s. Their explanation for this isn't entirely satisfying. In effect, they say that the Great Society created some popular universal programs like Medicare, but also, in its efforts to fight poverty and assure civil rights, created "a new clientele of liberalism, the poor -- and the nonwhite." After that, they say, politicians who were liberals gave up on the label, and so conservatives were able to define it.
(Continued here.)
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1 Comments:
Liberals didn't give up on the label, they ran from it as the mainstream media lost its grip over citizens. It's not a paradox, it is a classic example of rats leaving a ship.
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