It would be awesome if this could somehow incorporate relative positions of the parties over time, perhaps by 'waving' the center line left-right as well. For example it could be argued that republicans during Nixon's time were closer to middle of the road democrats of today in terms of overall platform.
During Nixon's time, an anti-Soviet Democrat could easily find a home in the Republican party.
Trying to assign modern labels to the political parties of the 60's and 70's is a bit silly. Two of the biggest issues of the time (the Cold war and segregation) no longer exist today. Neither party has a stated position on the Soviet Union and both parties are radical integrationists.
We could call that a huge leftward shift, except that integration was mostly a right wing issue up until Nixon's "Southern Strategy".
Both parties have "reinvented" themselves multiple times over the years. Arguments could be made on if a young LBJ, JFK, Nixon, Clinton, Lincoln, Bush Sr. would fit into the current version of the party they belonged too.
Plus, much is made of the "radicalism" (ultra conservative / ultra liberal) in each party, as if it hadn't existed before. That's not very true.
My only quibble with the graph is it skips the times that 3rd parties probably cost someone the election (1992/2000 are probables) which means the states were actually leaning the other way.
> it could be argued that republicans during Nixon's time were closer to middle road democrats of today in terms of overall platform.
That's because it's correct, depending on what you mean by 'middle road Democrat'. Nixon created the EPA, created OSHA, signed Title IX into existence, ended the Vietnam war, and endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment, which nevertheless failed to pass.
He couldn't have done a lot of those things without Congress, granted, but there wasn't a Tea Party back then, either.
Now don't get me wrong: Nixon was a petty, vindictive ass who used the office of the President to pursue personal vendettas and ultimately authored his own downfall in a display of raw hubris worthy of a Greek tragic hero. The irony here was that with Watergate, he attempted to cheat his way to victory in the 1972 election, which was the biggest landslide anyone alive then will live to see. He threw away his entire future in politics trying to rig something that was a sure thing for him to win anyway.
But enough on Nixon. Ronald Reagan was too liberal for most of the people who currently lionize him.
The Reagan claim is nuts. By the logic of those links, Bill Clinton was too conservative to be nominated by today's Democratic party because he was for free trade, signed DoMA, passed welfare reform and substantially cut the growth of discretionary spending... sorry: "investment".
At least two of the GOP's nominees since Reagan would have been happy to sign more immigration liberalization. Bush the Elder raised taxes. Bush the Younger failed to cut spending just like Reagan, and added a new prescription drug entitlement to Medicare. McCain was instrumental in passing campaign finance reform, and Romney passed an individual mandate and state run health exchanges.
Reagan "too liberal"? That's a fairy tale. Dead conservatives were always the moderate ones.
>By the logic of those links, Bill Clinton was too conservative to be nominated by today's Democratic party
No, only by the illogic of false equivalence. Obama is for "free" trade, directly said multiple times that he was against gay marriage until recently, is running on a platform to cut Social Security, and has cut a massive number of government jobs during a time of high unemployment. In other words, Bill Clinton is conservative enough to be nominated by today's Democratic party. Reagan was far too liberal to be nominated by today's Republican party.
"Government jobs". There are fewer total people employed in government, because the states have been put through the ringer and the stimulus contained no state aid (price of getting the Maine senators on board).
Anwyays, you're smart enough to know that flatlining is effectively a cut, relative to population and inflation. Certainly relative to every other recent president, Reagan and Bush very much included. And relative to Romney's plan to increase military spending (guess how many of those 2.8M are military or homeland security employees).
Actually no, there are fewer people employed in government because state and local governments chose to raise employee pay while cutting the number of workers.
Again, you're smart enough to know what 'normal' is. 'Normal' is cost of living raises, continued employer provided healthcare (which goes up in price every year), and ~~5% cost inflation for any organization that employs people. States have been cutting relative to that.
The crappy part is that a huge % of the rollover cost is healthcare, so it's not even going to their employees.
According to Keynesian theories of economics, recessions are the product of sticky nominal wages combined with an exogenous shock.
Real wages need to go down in order for the recession to end, which is why inflation is promoted as the cure. Wages are sticky downwards, there is no reason to raise them, particularly for monopsony employers.
Sure. But healthcare is most likely driving their comp costs more than pocket wages. Healthcare is what's driving state/local government costs because of the high head count of middle class professions. Salaries might go up by 2-4% depending on the collective bargaining agreement with the union, healthcare will go up by 15%.
Basically, states and local governments aren't operating with a macro worldview of the whole economy, they're trying to balance their own budget. They're going to eat it on healthcare, pay as small a COL raise as they can get the public employee unions to accept (pretty small actually), and lay off employees on the stupid last-in-first-out basis that the unions insist on. Decision makers at the state level are just trying to get through the year.
The funny thing is that a liberal can look at those ballooning healthcare costs (biggest $ item in the deltas year-over-year) and see it as a private sector screwup, while a conservative can look at the total costs going up and see it as public bloat.
* because he was for free trade, signed DoMA, passed welfare reform and substantially cut the growth of discretionary spending*
Obama's actually for all of those except for DoMa, and it took him until this year to finally come out in support of gay marriage. Obama has signed free trade agreements, cut the growth of discretionary spending, and hasn't attempted to touch Clinton's welfare reform (aside from granting states waivers that republican governors had been asking for).
That's my point. The two big political parties nominate candidates within the broad consensus of American politics, for the most part. Or at least the candidates that get elected have to govern largely along that consensus in order to get anything done. Remember, then-Senator Obama campaigned on "renegotiating NAFTA" and generally called it a bad deal for the American worker. He was also "not a big fan" of welfare reform. But as you say, he hasn't done much about either.
It's silly to claim that a modern Reagan wouldn't fit well enough within the Republican and American mainstreams to be nominated, and those links don't provide real evidence otherwise. Shocking: Reagan wasn't a hard and fast ideologue. But a hard and fast ideologue isn't going to be nominated by the Republican party today, either.
Did you spring into existence sometime after the last debate? Romney isn't a hard and fast ideologue because he isn't a hard and fast anything. But he certainly had to make those noises to be nominated.
Reagan's positions and what he did in office are completely incompatible with Republicans today. A budget deal with democrats that raises taxes? Tough love on Israel occasionally?
I'm not saying Reagan wouldn't have been able to be elected, but he'd have to be a different Reagan to get the nomination. A hard and fast ideologue or, in the worst case, someone who makes the appropriate noises and can beat Newt Gingrich.
I'll argue that the country is in many ways further to the right than it was then. I think today, even many Democrats are too brow-beaten to mention the EPA, OSHA, Title IX, ending wars, etc. Something like the ERA would be politically untouchable today for a Democrat much less a Republican. Not just among politicians, but among regular people.
Depends on what you mean by “further to the right”.
From WW2 to the early 1970s, there was a two-party consensus on government intervention in the economy, and that consensus moved “right” even before Reagan. (One of Carter’s legislative accomplishments, for example, was deregulating airline fares.)
On the other hand, the country has moved “left” on social issues. Can you imagine any politician in 1975, outside of the most extremely liberal districts, saying that same-sex couples should have legal protections equivalent to those of a married couple? And now that seems to be the “safe” position for right-wing Democrats and left-wing Republicans to take. The ERA hasn’t passed, but the courts have been more critical of laws that have a disparate impact on men and women (the technical term is “intermediate scrutiny”).
Regarding protracted military interventions in foreign countries, the parties seem to have moved “left” in the aftermath of Vietnam and “right” again with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
