The premise is faulty. Liberals in America (certainly the elected democratic pols) are the possibly least protectionist and most economically right-wing of all of the OECD countries.
Protectionism is most popular among conservatives in America because there's a significant part of the coalition that is older and uneducated and therefore gets screwed the hardest by trade agreements. Contrast with the upper middle class educated professionals that are a significant part of the Democratic base.
News to me and exit polls everywhere!
A sizable majority of voters with graduate degrees vote Democratic these days.
That by no means exclusively indicates a high income (finance majors with bachelor's degrees are going to make a lot more than education majors with a PhD), and it ignores the fact that college graduates as a whole still voted substantially Republican in 2014. Let's not even get into the very, very clear evidence that Republican voting and a higher income are directly linked.
Affluent and educated people are AT LEAST as much of a part of the GOP's coalition as they are to the Democrats' coalition. That should be beyond debate, but I guess it's not?
Yeah, I don't dispute that Rs are more likely to hold college degrees and be a little wealthier (the fact that they are all white helps in both of these regards). But Democrats are more likely to hold postgraduate degrees, and that group of postgraduates in combination with the gigantic portion of the democratic party that is more identity-politics motivated than class-motivated has, I think, substantially if not totally neutered the class angle in the Democratic party in the past few decades.
Which is why in opinion polls Democratic voters (not really Democratic politicians) tend to favor protectionism less than the Republicans.
Why not, considering that it is just not true? Don't let RINO Tom fool you with his posturing - Obama won the college-educated vote both times. Everyone wants to pretend like their side is "smarter" - as in most issues (climate change, voter suppression, etc.), actual statistics back up our side.
To be fair to RINO Tom, a majority of college-educated voters going for Obama is a pretty poor measure of the overall partisan preferences (let alone, political views) of those voters. Let's be honest, Obama is
exactly the kind of Democratic nominee who can appeal to the kinds of college-educated Republican voters who live in major metropolitan areas (especially in more liberal parts of the country, e.g. the Northeast and the SF Bay Area - not coincidentally, the ancestral homeland of the so-called "Rockefeller Republicans"
) and who are at the very least, somewhat wary of contemporary American social conservatism (specifically the kind that is explicitly
political - i.e. the Religious Right), if they're not outright liberal on sociocultural issues (which many of them are, in fact). However, they are still quite Republican in downballot races, and are
certainly still more likely to vote GOP at the presidential level if the Republican ticket has a Romney or a Ryan on it instead of a Palin or (God Forbid) a Trump.
These are the kinds of people who have historically identified with the Republican Party because the Republicans are the party of the wealthier classes (which is still pretty true FTR, though the Democrats have in recent years gotten better at attracting wealthier voters, particularly in presidential elections - hence, Obama winning over a significant number of "Rockefeller Republican" voters
) and the related view that the Republican Party has been - for as long as they can remember - the "responsible" party. If you notice, this is very similar to the upper class belief in the UK that the Tories are the "natural party of government." In other words, these are the people who have always though that politics should be a matter of responsible governance by an enlightened class that is inspired by a paternalistic view of public service and stewardship of the US government. This class tends to shun the political "extremes" and populist grassroots movements of both Left and Right; hence, they have been deeply disturbed by the right-wing populist turn of the Republican Party in recent years, with the Trump campaign being their ultimate nightmare scenario for the party that they have historically identified with.
I think that it is harder to notice this demographic both because their influence within the GOP has been declining and they tend to be clustered in major metropolitan areas in districts and regions that have become more and more Democratic in recent decades. Furthermore, as I previously stated these voters are becoming ever more alienated from the modern Republican Party in presidential elections. Thus, these highly affluent and educated Republicans don't really have a political home anymore - at least, at the national level.
Finally, it is important to note that the college-educated population in the US has an increasing proportion of single women, young people, members of the LGBT community, and ethnic/racial minorities - all groups that are obviously considerably more liberal than average. Consequently, the Democratic Party's current advantage with college-educated voters is very much driven by these demographics. Unfortunately for Democrats, many of these voters tend to vote mainly in presidential elections and thus, are underrepresented in downballot races.
- which of course, drives up Republican margins in those races.
Anyway, this turned to out be quite an effortpost.
