Scatter much? The Democrats sure don’t, if you can read the fine print of this graph, appearing in a report, Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyond, prepared by the folks at “Voterstudygroup” and written by Lee Drutman, linked to by the not always to be ridiculed and scorned by me Ross Douthat. As Ross points out, Republican red is heavily concentrated north of the zero line when it comes to “Social/Identity”, tending from kinda conservative to way conservative, but spread all over the “Economic” left-right distribution, falling certainly on the conservative side but still to the left of the “awfully gosh-darn conservative” line (+0.5), with only one red dot (whatever than means) right on the super conservative +1 line.
But look at the Democrats! They’re all rammed n’ crammed into the lower-left “double liberal” quadrant, the -0.1 far-left line almost a solid strand of “Bernie Sanders blue”. Looks like the Democrats have done Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District winner Karen Handel’s job for her!
As Ross notes, the “official” Republican Party doesn’t seem to have much to do with the people it’s supposed to be representing. While surely a third of the red dots are left of the Economic “Zero” line, Republicans in Congress are all set up passing health care legislation for the 0.001% on the far right, to the extent of lining up in Mitch McConnell’s Senate to pass legislation that they know is terrible as far as actually providing health care goes but will save millions in taxes for billionaires.
The Democrats are in a different position. Elected Democrats represent “the Corner” pretty well. It’s just that 75% of those corner folks live in about 10 states. Democrats need to figure out how to appeal to folks who live more than a hundred miles inland. And so far, they’re struggling.
Afterwords
I think it’s obvious (and even thought it was obvious) that Trump’s monstrous and manifold screw-ups have had no impact on his popularity with his base. If the Republicans are actually so benighted, and so selfish, as to pass Paul Ryan’s hideous health care package, the resulting pain will, I think, work its way down to actual voters in time for the 2018 election. If the Republicans suffer a complete and utter train wreck increasing the debt limit, which is unlikely but possible, the economic ill effects might be felt sooner.
Trump’s Russian scandals could bear real fruit in time for 2020. I think it’s quite possible that Trump was once significantly involved in Russian “Mafia” activities, but proving that white-collar stuff isn’t easy. People like Flynn—Flynn in particular—may well end up in jail, but that probably won’t have much of an impact on Trump voters.
Clearly, I don’t think Bernie Sanders has the answer to Democrats’ problems. “Real Democrats” simply don’t want to believe how much white working-class voters (well, many of them) hate “Big Government”, because they see government programs helping “them” (blacks and immigrants) rather than them, no matter how much they cling to the wide variety of government programs that do help them. New England liberalism just isn’t going to fly in the fly-overs. It never has, and it never will.
