Have the democrats shifted left?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Not much of anywhere.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Yep. Check out education spending and the number of teachers in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2008.


Each decade more and more and more of the private sector is bitten off and gifted to the unions to gift back to the Democratic party, because the Democratic party politicos spew nonsense about how we need student:teacher ratios to decline significantly from where they were 10 years prior.

Are you in fact aware that political issues other than this one and whatever populist claptrap du jour may catch your attention exist at all?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

According to Gallup, 29% of Democrats were Liberals in 2000, and 39% in 2011.

Also according to Gallup, 21% of Independents were Liberal in 2000, and 20% in 2011.

Republicans were 6% Liberals in 2000, and 4% in 2001.

So, yes, the Democrats have drifted to the left.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/152021/conservatives-remain-largest-ideological-group.aspx

Does it occur to you that self-identification based upon the vague and nonsensical terms used in American politics and media might not be the best metric for this, or that ten years might not be the timeframe most germane to the initial question?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's not so much either party shifted left or right, but rather less and less moderates are getting elected. So the actual office holders are getting either further left or further right than in the past.

Yeah. 'Liberal' (American sense) Democrats are probably less liberal than they used to be but there are also a lot fewer non-liberal Democrats than in previous decades.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I for one generally distrust articles whose titles treat the major right-wing Thai political party as if it were the major centrist-to-center-left American political party.

Here are some amazing facts:

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_068.asp


Student enrollment in 1970: 45,894,000
Student enrollment in 1995: 44,840,000


Teachers employed in 1970: 2,059,000
Teachers employed in 1995: 2,598,000



It's barely conceivable how 25 years of technological advancement can lead to such a massive, rampant decline in labor productivity. Of course in the private sector this would not be tolerated.

Teaching doesn't strike me as the sort of thing that should be treated in terms of 'labor productivity' the same way that, say, stamping out cheap plastic crap on an assembly line in Szechwan would be, but whatever.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

CARLHAYDEN, this is absolutely frivolous.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

CARLHAYDEN, this is absolutely frivolous.

To some people facts are "frivolous."

What's more important is that to some people exit polls about self-identification along nonsensical and ill-defined ideological lines are 'facts'.