In analyzing these polls in the United States, I see clearly that voters feel ever more estranged from government — and that they associate Democrats with government. If Democrats are going to be encumbered by that link, they need to change voters’ feelings about government. They can recite their good plans as a mantra and raise their voices as if they had not been heard, but voters will not listen to them if government is disreputable.
Oddly, many voters prefer the policies of Democrats to the policies of Republicans....
But in smaller, more probing focus groups, voters show they are fairly cynical about Democratic politicians’ stands. They tune out the politicians’ fine speeches and plans and express sentiments like these: “It’s just words.” “There’s just such a control of government by the wealthy that whatever happens, it’s not working for all the people; it’s working for a few of the people.” “We don’t have a representative government anymore.”...
This distrust of government and politicians is unfolding as a full-blown crisis of legitimacy sidelines Democrats and liberalism. Just a quarter of the country is optimistic about our system of government — the lowest since polls by ABC and others began asking this question in 1974. But a crisis of government legitimacy is a crisis of liberalism. It doesn’t hurt Republicans. If government is seen as useless, what is the point of electing Democrats who aim to use government to advance some public end?
Revealingly, after Greenberg insists that his polling suggests that voters prefer Dem policies in the abstract, the Dem pollster undermines this assertion by concluding his article to suggest that the Dem Party pull a Bill Clinton and compete with the Tea Party by adopting many of the Tea Party's ideas on tax, deficit and immigration reform.
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I think the strongest important opposition to "conservative" candidates is due to the social issues. Gay rights and abortion and the general feeling that all conservative candidates secretly or openly want to legislate social mores.
If we could disassociate from the social conservatives - which we can't in the short term - I think over time we'd pick up enough of the non-socialist Democrats to change the country.
The other overwhelming problem is the press coverage. If the press reported politics without bias, the Democrats would never win the White House or either legislative body again.
The average Democrat voter isn't a socialist, but he is economically illiterate, and doesn't have the beginnig of a clue as to the ramifications of the policies Democrat politicians advocate.
Those factors combined are why a country that in general is pretty libertarian-oriented votes for the party that is least libertarian in principle and policy.
Dan:
If we could disassociate from the social conservatives - which we can't in the short term - I think over time we'd pick up enough of the non-socialist Democrats to change the country.
That has always been the libertarian dream. The problem is that the only Dems who occasionally believe in limited government applied to economics are the white working class Reagan Dems. The Reagan Dems are generally socially conservative and there are not enough Reagan Dems and GOP libertarians to form an electoral plurality. In order to gain an electoral majority for economic libertarianism, you need the social conservatives.
Which is exactly why I vote Republican - it's the best way I can help move society even a little bit toward economic freedom. If I don't "sell out" as some of my libertarian friends characterize it, I help elect the party that is opposed to economic freedom.
I get the election factors and agree about the Reagan elections. I'm speaking more from personal observation - which of course is unreliable - which seems to tell me that there are a lot of libertarian-minded Democrats who don't really follow politics and who don't understand that their party no longer supports freedom in any area of life, except perhaps sexual freedom, though if you look at the places where left-wing governments have thrived, the oppression of sexual freedom is an eventual outgrowth of the socialist philosophy.
I have to explain to many of these people I know that I don't support the social agenda of the Republican platform, I just think they have little chance of actually implementing it, whereas the anti-freedom policies of the Democrats are thriving.
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