Editor’s note: Steve Frisch has posted a report titled “California’s Political Geography” on his Facebook page that draws some interesting conclusions, with maps, charts and analysis.
It brings to mind themes often raised here: how hard-right GOP ideologues — and their “my way or the highway” approach to politics — keeps the party from growing. This is an epidemic in our county. The local GOP Central Committee and its leaders ought to read it:
“California may tend to vote for Democratic presidential candidates, but many places around the state espouse views that fall to the right of the Democratic Party’s typical positions. In fact, only the Bay Area is home to extraordinarily large numbers of people who hold opinions associated with the Democratic Party,” according to a report from the Public Policy Institute of California.
“This could signal an opportunity for Republicans. Moderate Liberal and Conservative Liberal places contain half the state’s population and seem sympathetic to many conservative positions—yet they tend to support the Democratic Party. Still, altering this status quo could prove difficult. The small number of liberal Republicans in every part of the state implies that the party’s electoral coalition is ideologically solid—but that may also make the party resistant to expansion efforts. Only time will tell.”
The report is here.
Filed under: Uncategorized
This brings to mind a quote I’ve posted here before:
“I can’t stand either the far left or the far right. However, if I had no choice but to cast my lot with one or the other, I would definitely go with the environmentalists.”
I hear you, Jeff. I consider myself an environmentalist and yep, I look good in purple.
Great article Jeff.
Jeff, good commentary. We need a strong Republican party which uses its minority status to keep the Democrats in line. Democrats, no matter how virtuous, are subject to the same corrupting influence as any other human being. Good governance rarely comes out of having one party dominate all the levers of power.
Maybe the compromise struck between the Republicans in Sacramento and Governor Brown regarding pension reform is a sign of change.
There is no far left in American politics today and barely a moderate left, we have two conservative major political parties moderate conservative/ hard right conservative.
I forget the numbers but these are generally close.
If you add up total government spending in percent of GDP in the US federal, state, and local it is around 36%. I believe we are the lowest in the industrialized world on this number by a whole lot. Almost 20% of that number goes towards health care. Our neighbor to the north spends somewhere around 60% of their GDP and the Scandinavian nations are even higher. The US has one of the lowest effective tax rates for the wealthy and corporations in the OECD nations, thanks to the thousands of tax loop holes and shelters.
What does this mean? It means the wealthy and large corporations do not pay their fair share into the society that has benefited them so much and have actively campaigned against social safety nets. These safety nets creates more trust in others, lower crime, less violence, less drug addiction, lower teenage pregnancies, ect… Generally it means a safer, healthier, and happier society. I can dig up an old piece I wrote on this topic but I will save everybody the thousand word comment.
In today’s political world the democratic party would land smack dab in the middle of the republican party of the 30′s-80′s.
NICE, thanks Jeff!