Michael Barone says that the American ideological landscape is actually little changed from 2004, despite “hope and change’ and the media’s worship of Obama. However, the Democratic congressional leadership might be inclined to believe that there has been a shift in ideological leanings:

In the 2008 exit poll, 34 percent of voters described themselves as conservatives and 32 percent as Republicans; 39 percent described themselves as Democrats but only 22 percent as liberals…The result is that the two parties have offsetting political advantages. Democrats tend to win on party identification. Republicans tend to win on ideology. Democrats don’t have to appeal to as many independents as Republicans do. Republicans don’t have to appeal to as many moderates as Democrats do…

the Democrats have a problem here. The party’s leadership currently tilts heavily to the liberal side…Of the 21 top leadership members and chairmen, five come from districts carried by John McCain, but the average vote in the other 16 districts was 71 percent to 27 percent for Obama…

Republican leaders tend to come from mostly suburban districts closer to the national political average. Of the 19 lawmakers who are in the GOP’s House leadership or who are ranking committee members, four come from districts carried by Obama. The average vote in the other 15 districts was a less-than-landslide 57 percent to 41 percent for McCain. Only three of those districts voted more than 60 percent for McCain.

In these circumstances, the Republicans have been winning the battle for public opinion and, more importantly, for public enthusiasm…though the Republican label had lost support since 2004, conservatives did not lose their edge over liberals. The health-care debate has shown that the economic distress caused by the financial crisis and recession has not, at least so far, moved significant numbers of Americans to change their views on the proper balance between markets and government.

It is interesting that those crafting the Democratic message on Obamacare have apparently decided on the absurd portrayal of its opponents as extremists of the most vile sort. Though we have been inclined to see this as cynical PR (designed perhaps to give cover to the anti-democratic legislative process), perhaps the party leadership actually believes this, given that most of the districts they hail from voted Obama more than 70% in 2008.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 3:43 am and is filed under Democrats, Polling, Republicans, business, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.