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Bellingham Bill
2015 Oct 11, 8:30am
But there is no compromise between the single-issue voters . . .
I don't want the Christian majority to persecute the gay minority again, even in CA we needed the courts to intervene.
The courts via Heller etc. have also recently walled-off gun control from majoritarian policy mechanisms.
Redistribution from rich to poor via government? Not much compromise there unless we're talking military spending, basically getting at best net zero wealth accretion for the investment.
Abortion availability? Not much use talking there.
If the GOP could dial back their war on non-white immigrants that'd be great, but racism (at least via chauvinism and me-ism) is a foundational driver in our own worldviews.
Everyone believes they are "best" and "different" cannot be better than me and mine.
To some extent this is a class issue, middle-class whites are getting exposed to if not flooded with lower-class populations that have different -- "lower" IMV -- standards of considerate public behavior. Stupid shit like people walking around with their underwear exposed, renters playing their tuba music at all hours, parking cars on their lawn, etc.
Outsourcing so many millions of our lower-skill jobs to overseas labor and automation gains are putting the lower-class lower-skill population in greater economic pressure, too.
shows how mfg, construction, and info jobs have gone from 20% of the working age population to 10% . . .
this is a pretty nasty vise being applied on the lower, "non-professional" classes.
is why things are screwed up here.
If you’ve got single-issue voters, it’s pretty easy to cobble 40%+ of the population into a coalition.
Say 10% of the population doesn’t want to get hit with pre-80s high marginal tax rates.
The top 5% ($175k+) make 36.8% of the income and pay 58.9% of the taxes, so they can justify that pretty easily, and the 5-10% people ($125k ~ $175k) make 11% of the income and pay 11% of the taxes, and they can certainly say that’s fair and shouldn't be any higher.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-0
Anti-abortion people only have one party to turn to, the GOP. They’re 20%+ of the population:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/170249/split-abortion-pro-choice-pro-life.aspx
Gun rights, this is a 50-50 issue:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/17/despite-lower-crime-rates-support-for-gun-rights-increases/
and maybe half of the gun-rights column are hard-core “cold dead hands†absolutists.
Christian fundamentalist nut jobs, they’re 30% of the nation and split 4/5 to the GOP, another 25% of the population.
Keeping black people, mexicans, and muslims in their place, that’s a 30%+ contingent, too.
There’s a lot of overlap of course so it’s not 10% + 20% + 25% + 25% + 30%, but I can see how the GOP gets their 40% support rating.
Democracy can’t really work when we get so polarized like we are now. Things tend to get messy when neither side can talk to the other.
Also:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/09/backfire-effect