America is becoming more liberal
By Steve Rosenthal, WashPost, Thursday, January 16, 12:48 PM
Steve Rosenthal, a longtime Democratic strategist and former political director of the AFL-CIO, is founder and president of the Atlas Project, which provides progressives with research and data. He is also president of the Organizing Group, which creates campaigns for progressive organizations.
Not too long ago, everyone was declaring American politics a lost cause for progressives. The religious right supposedly had a stranglehold on elections. Then it was the tea party that had the political establishment — initially Democrats and Republicans — quaking. The media and the general public took hold of a narrative parroted by conservative candidates and opinion leaders: The United States was a “center-right” nation.
But after two consecutive elections in which the Democratic candidate for president garnered more than 50 percent of the vote — a one-two punch last achieved by Franklin Roosevelt — it is worth questioning that assumption. The country is getting more diverse, and as the proportion of white voters shrinks, so, too, does the conservative base. As demographics shift, so do political preferences — in this case, toward the left. A close examination of U.S. attitudes in the past decade-plus reveals that the United States is steadily becoming more progressive.
It’s been well publicized how America has “evolved” on marriage equality. Washington Post/ABC News polling last year found that, by a margin of 58 percent to 36 percent , people believe their fellow Americans should be able to marry whomever they choose — something that would have been unthinkable less than a decade ago.
(More here.)
Steve Rosenthal, a longtime Democratic strategist and former political director of the AFL-CIO, is founder and president of the Atlas Project, which provides progressives with research and data. He is also president of the Organizing Group, which creates campaigns for progressive organizations.
Not too long ago, everyone was declaring American politics a lost cause for progressives. The religious right supposedly had a stranglehold on elections. Then it was the tea party that had the political establishment — initially Democrats and Republicans — quaking. The media and the general public took hold of a narrative parroted by conservative candidates and opinion leaders: The United States was a “center-right” nation.
But after two consecutive elections in which the Democratic candidate for president garnered more than 50 percent of the vote — a one-two punch last achieved by Franklin Roosevelt — it is worth questioning that assumption. The country is getting more diverse, and as the proportion of white voters shrinks, so, too, does the conservative base. As demographics shift, so do political preferences — in this case, toward the left. A close examination of U.S. attitudes in the past decade-plus reveals that the United States is steadily becoming more progressive.
It’s been well publicized how America has “evolved” on marriage equality. Washington Post/ABC News polling last year found that, by a margin of 58 percent to 36 percent , people believe their fellow Americans should be able to marry whomever they choose — something that would have been unthinkable less than a decade ago.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
America may or may not becoming more liberal, one thing that is most likely true is that Americans are becoming more and more hooked on the narcotic of entitlements, something I will lead to our ruin. Who will pay the bills when everyone is on the take?
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