It is an interesting fact of political life in this country that Democrats tend to elect people who either more or less reflect their values or are more conservative than Democrats as a whole, while Republicans tend to elect people that are not just more conservative than Republicans as a whole, but far more conservative than Republicans as a whole. In fact, you often have to wonder where these people hide until they run for elective office.
Consider the newly elected Senator from Utah, who feels quite comfortable saying he is against Child Labor Laws. I don’t need a pollster to tell me that even most Republicans feel that the federal government can and should regulate child labor. There are numerous examples of Republican politicians who have been elected despite holding views greatly out of step with the views of the rank and file (although embraced by the truly crazy) but I’d be amazed if there were a handful of Democrats (certainly none in the Senate) who are similarly out of touch with the views of party members from their districts. I should amend that statement to say that there are only a handful who are so out of touch to the left of the Democrats in their district. It’s fairly common for Democrats to be out of touch to the right.
This is another of those asymmetries that pulls our discourse and our laws to the right, despite the fact that, when asked, people in this country are, if anything, more liberal than conservative. I’m not talking about the labels they apply to themselves; the term “liberal” has been demonized while the term “conservative” has, to say the least, not been so treated. I’m talking about views about issues when those issues are fairly presented to them.
I personally suspect that out of touch conservatives can get elected because the media that is not forthrightly right wing is afraid to scrutinize them for fear of being labeled “liberal” and because, while Democrats will quickly run away from anyone to the left of Harry Reid, Republicans will support anyone with an R after his or her name. No matter the candidate, they will close ranks and engage the slime machine against the Democrat in the race. Thus we are now in a situation in which consensus “liberal” views of decades past (such as, that child labor should be regulated by the federal government) are now under attack from all sides, not so much because the objective situation has changed, but because the right has quite skillfully moved the rhetorical “center” ineluctably rightward, a process that legiimizes extreme views that would have been considered extreme in days past, but, despite still being objectively extreme, are now considered worthy of consideration by the folks in the Beltway. And when I say the attacks are coming from all sides, I mean it. The push is on to blame the unions that represent state workers for the budget woes of the states, when there’s little objective evidence to support that. Andrew Cuomo, an alleged Democrat, made that demonization the centerpiece of his campaign. Where did a right thinking (in the sense of “correct thinking”) voter have to go, in light of the fact that his opponent was quite possibly clinically insane?
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