Culture Gap Could Keep Democrats From Gaining Seats in 2006

[WMS]

For Democrats, a Troubling Culture Gap

By Dan Balz
Wednesday, August 10, 2005; Page A08

Dissatisfaction over the war in Iraq, the economy and rising health care costs might spell trouble for Republicans, but a study by Democratic strategists warns that their party's failure to connect with voters on cultural issues could prevent Democratic candidates from reaping gains in upcoming national elections.

Democrats have expressed bewilderment over Republican gains among lower-income, less-educated voters, saying they are voting against their economic self-interest by supporting Republican candidates. But the new Democracy Corps study concludes that cultural issues trump economic issues by a wide margin for many of these voters -- giving the GOP a significant electoral advantage.

 The study is based on focus groups of rural voters in Wisconsin and Arkansas and disaffected supporters of President Bush in Colorado and Kentucky. The good news for Democrats: All the groups expressed dissatisfaction with the direction of the country and with the leadership of the president and the GOP-controlled Congress.

Then came the bad news: "As powerful as the concern over these issues is, the introduction of cultural themes -- specifically gay marriage, abortion, the importance of the traditional family unit and the role of religion in public life -- quickly renders them almost irrelevant in terms of electoral politics at the national level," the study said.

Many of these voters still favor Democrats on economic issues. But they see the Democrats as weak on national security, and on cultural and moral issues, they view Democrats as both inconsistent and hostile to traditional values. "Most referred to Democrats as 'liberal' on issues of morality, but some even go so far as to label them 'immoral,' 'morally bankrupt,' or even 'anti-religious,' " according to the Democracy Corps analysis.

Democrats Karl Agne and Stan Greenberg, who conducted the focus group, said Democrats need a reform-oriented, anti-Washington agenda to overcome the culture gap. At this point, Democrats are in no position to capitalize if there is a clear backlash against Republicans. "No matter how disaffected they are over Republican failures in Iraq and here at home," they said, "a large chunk of white, non-college voters, particularly in rural areas, will remain unreachable for Democrats at the national level."

source

And here's the study itself, in PDF format:

THE CULTURAL DIVIDE &
THE CHALLENGE OF WINNING BACK RURAL & RED STATE VOTERS

If you don't think Frodo's point is accurate, I invite y'all to re-read this thread.

[WMS]

As thing stands, the number of conservative Democrats from the South in the House sit at around 8. If the Democratic Party are to retake the House, then they are going to have to field moderate conservative, or at least, centrist candidates to even compete with the GOP. The great strength of the Democratic Party was its diversity but now its liberal, with moderates and populists seeming to be a diminishing number. 28 Democratic Senators are liberal, 12 are populists, 2 are centrists with Ben Nelson of  Nebraska been possibly the only one who could be described as conservative. That said the GOP senators are possibly even less diverse (49 of them being conservative). The liberal-conservative polarisation is always going to benefit the GOP

Dave

I would be very interested to see which Senators fit which of your categories.

OK, tag-teamed in for a moment by Al, so...

Ferny 'ol boy, you are, once again, missing the forest for the ferns.

Let's explain this with two separate models.

The simpler version: Liberal - Moderate - Conservative breakdown of the voting populace. There are significantly more conservatives than liberals - about a bit over one-third conservatives and about one-fifth liberals. Glaring fact: THE LIBERALS CANNOT WIN ELECTIONS BY THEMSELVES. Neither can the conservatives, but the conservatives need far fewer moderates to pull off a victory than the liberals do. The liberals, in fact, are in the weakest position of all. And yet you think keeping the Democrats as the liberal party will lead to victory. Ooooooookkkkkkkkaaaaaaayyyyyy, drop the crack pipe.

The more complex version: Liberal - Conservative - Libertarian - Communitarian breakdown of the voting populace. While a really good poll hasn't been done showing the population breakdown (come on, Rasmussen, get to it! ), the conservative and liberal numbers from the previous example likely hold - significantly more conservatives than liberals. Now, once again, THE LIBERALS CANNOT WIN ELECTIONS BY THEMSELVES. The conservatives can probably secure victory by gaining either the communitarians or the libertarians as a bloc, or by getting significant chunks, if not all, of both of those two groups (which they have in fact pulled off in the past decade or two). The liberals, because they are weaker than the conservatives, logically need more of the communitarian and/or libertarian vote to win than the conservatives do. In fact, they really, really, need to grab the entirety of one of those groups to pull off a victory. Now historically, the Democrats used to control both the liberal and communitarian vote, and even some of the conservative vote, whereas the Rockefeller Republicans controlled the libertarian vote (think bullmoose and Walter Mitty here ) and some of the conservative vote (and even some liberals I'd bet). However, around about, oh, say, 1972, the liberals seized control of the Democratic party and managed, through a truly remarkable set of atrocious policies, to alienate the communitarians and the conservatives and the libertarians. Consequently, the Republicans kicked the Democrats' butt in, by number of counties won, the worst defeat of the twentieth century.

A common conclusion of the two models: The Democrats cannot win just with the liberals, and therefore must gain votes from somewhere, either the communitarians or the libertarians {or in the first model the moderates}! The article Frodo posted - go read the PDF, why don't you, there's a lot of good information in it - is proposing to try for the communitarian/moderate bloc which is strongest in the rural areas of many states (although they can of course be found in other places as well) and which used to vote for Democrats. Now you can also argue instead that the Democrats should chase the libertarians - certain Dem posters have suggested just that - but claiming that the Democrats already have enough votes as-is and don't need to reach out to anyone is ignoring reality. Judging by The Almanac of American Politics 2006, the Democrats are in serious danger of becoming a permanent minority party for the next few decades at the rate they are going. Make an alliance or get used to losing.

[WMS]

Twenty-four pages in and thou art there; on minds they feast in this thread's lair.

Sorry, just making an extremely obscure reference displaying my amusement with where this originally salient topic has gone.