The Wheel That Squeaks the Loudest

In his New York Times column Thomas Edsall repeats some of the things I’ve been saying around here for some time. Progressives represent a rather small proportion of the Democratic Party and an even smaller proportion of the whole electorate. Black voters are more likely to be moderates or conservatives than they are progressives. Democratic members of the Congress are farther to the left than the party rank and file and, importantly, whether it’s true that the squeaky wheel gets the grease may or may not be true but the media, even more left-leaning than the Democratic members of the Congress, give a lot of attention to the issues favored by the left wing of the party.

First, the numbers. Democrats can be divided into three groups, roughly equal in number:

The first two groups are made up of those who say they are “very liberal” and those who say they are “somewhat liberal.” Both groups are two thirds white and have substantial but for the Democratic Party below average minority representation. They are roughly a quarter African-American and Hispanic.

Those in the third group are Democratic primary voters who describe themselves as moderate to conservative. This group has the largest number of minorities; it is 26 percent black, 19 percent Hispanic, 7 percent other nonwhites, and it has the smallest percentage of whites, at 48 percent.

Overall, the Pew Research Center found in 2016 that Democratic voters were 57 percent white, 21 percent black, and 12 percent Hispanic. The remaining voters were Asian-American and other ethnicities.

A separate Brookings study found that 2018 Democratic primary voters were 54.6 percent white, 24.1 percent black, 9.0 percent Hispanic, with the rest Asian-American, American Indian and others.

The Brookings number feels right to me but that might be regional. Now the issues:

The three ideological groups favor different sets of policies. On the left, the very liberal voters stress “the environment, protecting immigrants, abortion, and race/gender,” Khanna emailed me, while the moderate to conservative Democrats are “more concerned with job creation and lowering taxes.”

You might find this interesting:

In addition, Khanna continued, there is a “real differentiation by reported ideology on the question about federal health care for undocumented immigrants.”

In this case, the very liberal group was in favor, 75-25, the somewhat liberal Democrats split, 52-48, and the moderate-conservative group distinctly opposed, 61-39.

or this:

Furthermore, Goldberg writes, black and Hispanic Democrats are more likely to part ways with white liberals “when it comes to contemporary social and gender-identity issues, including views of the #MeToo movement.”

Finally, Mr. Edsall adds support to what I’ve been saying about taking one set of positions for the primaries and another for the general election:

In March 2012, Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for Mitt Romney, was asked if the candidate’s conservative stands in the primaries “would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election?”

Fehrnstrom famously replied:

Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.

In practice, though, with virtually everything a candidate says now recorded for posterity, it has become increasingly difficult to evade past statements.

Read the whole thing.

He doesn’t even get into the other major bifurcation in the party—between technocrats and ordinary machine politicians.