Last edited Wed Aug 21, 2013, 12:49 PM - Edit history (1)
That is the polls and studies I have run across keep saying, the country as a whole moved to the right starting in the 1960s, and accelerated in the 1980s (an internal Military study, indicated that the Military went even further to the right then the nation as a whole since the 1970s, that study hinted but did not say what a lot of people have said, the draft brought in a lot more people in the left into the Military who after serving their one term stayed. That pool of "recruits" disappeared with the draft and thus the Military went even further to the right. Please note the study was of the officer corp not the enlistee ranks).
Since 2000, the opposite has occurred, a move to the left. There is some indications it started in the 1990s with the defeat of Universal Health care in 1994. This move to the right from the 1960s through the 1990s was driven by several factors:
1. First is that income in real terms have dropped since the 1980s, but tuition in Collage has increased drastically, Thus a lot of young people are over they head in debt due to student loans with no real hope of paying them back.
2. Second is that the housing prices has increased so much, that these same young people can NOT afford to buy housing. The bubble that busted in 2008 was due to the fact that long before that date people who were buying housing were buying housing based in the house price going up, and paying for it when they sell it, NOT paying for it off their salary as they lived in the house. That was unsustainable, but the efforts since that date has been to keep the prices UP so the banks do not have to write most of the loans off (and show that they are bankrupt). That high price has prevented young people from buying housing and no one is really wanting to address that issue for it means either admitting we have to subsidize young people buying homes OR admit the banks have to go under with all their bad loans.
3. More and more families are made up of single parents. We have not only seen an increase in the number of men with children and not mother, but an even higher number of women with children and no father. While some people explain this as women becoming more "Equal" to men, the better explanation is that people are less able today to remain a couple, due to economics. A couple meets, have children, then one of them either lose their job (and both parents need to work to support the family) and has to move far away for another job, or is transferred to a job in another city, a city where the other parents has a hard time finding a job like that spouse had it their old city. Distance does NOT make the heart beat fonder for the lack of contact (including sex) finally reaches a limit that the couple just breaks up.
4. Women have always wanted more "protection" then men. What I mean by this is that they is someone to fall back on if things go bad. Thus women tend to support social programs at higher rates then men. When you have intact families, husband and wife living with children, the wife tends to view her husband the person she can fall back on. Thus a lot of married women vote the same way as there husbands. On the other hand, the same woman living alone, still want to be able to fall back on something, thus they look at Social Programs as that fall back and when women are living alone they support social programs at much higher levels then men and women living with a man (Church attendance also goes up with single women with children, again the women are looking for support, emotional, social and finance support to help them raise their children.
5. Several female commentators have said the break up of the family is more the result of men NOT maintaining their income, as oppose to women entering the work force. Most women, if given a real choice, prefer to be with their pre school age children then sending them off to day care while they work. If their husbands were earning enough to pay for the household bills, most women would forgo work to be with their children (their first choice would be to find work where they can take their children with them, like they great grandmothers did down on the farm, but most employers hire women as substitutes for men, not as mothers with children, thus a lot of at home work is popular with women world wide, for it is work they can do AND still be near their children). It is economics that drive women to continue to work while they have pre school age children, not a desire to be away from their children 8-10 hours a day. Many women would like options to be with their children, one option is that one parent (their husband) could make enough money to keep the family going on his own income. A second option would be being able to take their children with them to work (just like in olden days women took their children with them into the fields when the women had to work the fields). None of these options are even being discussed among employers today, for they see them as ways to increase their costs (Employers first choice of Employee is a man with a wife, for they look at the man being free to work independent of his children, for that is what the wife is suppose to do. I had one radical feminist complain that she wish she had a "Wife" to do all the little things the men she was working with had their wives do for them. These little things made it possible for the men stay on the job, things she had to do herself for she had no "Wife" to do them for her. By the way this was a non-sexual context, that women when it came to sex liked men).
Facing these economic situations, more and more people are rejecting what has been the economic call since the 1960s, that capitalism is good, communism is bad, but saying how much worse can communism be? With that realization the country has slowly turned around and started to move to the left, much like the country went to the right in the 1960s.
Yes we have the impression the country when to the left in the 1960s, but appearance was due to the left reaching its peak of strength in the post war era in the 1960s and the Right started to point out its extremes (and that the extremes were NOT doable). In many ways the anti-war demonstration was more anti-draft then anti-war, supported by people who wanted to be able to order others to fight, but did not want to fight themselves (the present day war-wimps). Once the draft was removed, these "Anti-Vietnam War" protesters proceeded to embrace the whole right wing program, for then it was not them or their family members being killed as enlistees, but someone who "Volunteer" for pay to do so (While the Officers were even more right wing, most officers are in combat less then enlistee ranks, due to the nature of the role in today's combat arms).
Nixon won in 1968 on a Conservative push for power (his "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam was to continue what Johnson had started in the Summer of 1968, the first time the majority of the American people opposed the war in Vietnam. Johnson's plan was to slowly pull out of Vietnam). Nixon slowly started to dismantle Johnson's Great Society Programs. The dismantling was slowed down by Watergate and held in check under Ford and Carter, but starting under Carter the right started to push hard for its agenda, thus we ended up with Reagan, then Bush and then the GOP control of Congress in the 1990s and the GOP complete control of the Federal Government under Bush II.
Thus the real turnaround for the Conservative movement was the 1960s, progressive politics peaked and instead of doing what was possible, liberals started to go into areas where most Americans did not want to go. At the same time, economic right wingers decided it was time to attack the economic improvements that the progressives have done since the 1930s. There first attack (and had been under attack since the 1940s) was the Labor Unions. Many opponents of the Vietnam war (Senator McGovern for example) refused to help labor repeal the Taft-Hartley act. This caused a split among liberal, with much of labor refusing to deal with the Anti-war movement for the latter's refusal to address the concerns of labor. With labor out of the Democratic Coalition, Nixon won election. The attacks on Labor continued all through the 1980s (including the refusal to introduced tariffs on Steel and Cars produced overseas from countries with no labor unions, or weak company run labor unions, the later was the norm in Japan). This continued with the PATCO strike and the collapse of the Steel Industry under Reagan. Labor was left high and dry, and without Labor progressive politics in the US is dead in the water.
This pattern has continued, with many Liberals refusing to deal with Labor for Labor has refused to embrace their concerns. The net result has been Liberals to stay aloof when Labor is attacked. Now, labor is not innocent in this regard, PATCO, for example endorsed Reagan for election in 1980. Many of the Craft Unions resented having to permit in minorities under the Civil Rights Act. The reason for this is simple, Unions are political organizations that must listen to their membership. Most union members tend to have decent well paying jobs and thus do not want to rock the boat to much. Unions have to listen to their membership.
At the same time, other progressives have to understand that without the support of labor they are dead in the water. It is the failure to provide a united front centered on labor that has lead to most of the problems we face today. You solve the economic problems, the other problems follow. This is what labor has been telling people for years, but to many people want to solve other problems first (race, sex, sexual orientation for example). The problem is these divide up labor's base and weakens the left as a whole. AS on woman told me, she wanted equal pay for women, but she wanted her pay to go up to a man's pay NOT THAT PAY OF MEN BE REDUCED TO HERS (which is what has happened since Reagan). The reason for the drop in the pay of men? Reduction in Union Jobs due to weakening of Unions.
Right now, Labor is back where it was at the start of the Great Depression, its back against the wall and needing government assistance to survive. The problem is, unlike after FDR's election, the Federal Government is NOT doing things to improve labor's position or to improve the ability of labor to organize. We have to do that, even if it means liberals having to ally themselves to people who are union members but oppose what they want to done in addition to improvements in Labor.
Labor is willing to work with the rest of the left, but is the rest of the left willing to support labor? The Country is going to the left at the present time, but without labor it does not have a center and will break up again. This may be our last chance to improve labor for the next 50 years, lets do it.
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It was such an insult to the American Public who had watched this man all through the repug Primaries. So if they dwindle into nothingness I could care less. its independents who should be upset. They are flocking to their party because they just can't bring themselves to be members of the Democratic Party. And its okay with me.
