This is something Michael Lind has been on since the 1990s, that the American public, the median American voter is basically fiscally liberal and socially conservative or moderate. There’s no party that represents that voter.
I think what we are seeing right now is a very, very slow moving but noticeable trajectory, where people are starting to figure out that the public is somewhat left on the economy. They are attracted to [things like] Medicare for All … but also they are pretty moderate on a range of issues, including immigration. This includes also minority working class folks who are moderate on immigration, et cetera.
I think there is a very, very slow arms race for moving toward, gradually, one of the parties embracing some kind of, whatever you want to call it, left conservatism, working class socialism… That’s where the public seems to be, roughly speaking.
I’ll be honest, I don’t see or feel that. At all. But I certainly hope he’s right and lament the lack of representation. (Also, what on earth is a “slow arms race?” And [high, drawn out inflection] who is racing for moderates?)
I’ve had dozens and dozens and dozens of conversations where people have described themselves as “fiscally conservative and socially liberal.” No one has ever said, as I often want to say and said just the other day, “I’m kinda fiscally liberal and socially conservative.” (Liberal with [non-essential] money, conservative in [essential] relations, charity in all things.)
I basically see two or three splits. There are those on the left who have, almost entirely, stopped referring to themselves as “liberal” and instead unabashedly use the term “progressive.” This is quite common.
The folks who don’t like the term or ideology “progressive” — of which I confess I am one — are either the all-American conservative type: fiscally and socially conservative, and usually quite serious, and conservative, about their Christianity; or they are basically the secular conservative type: self-described as “socially liberal, fiscally conservative,” (often, I note, said as though they just came up with that description on the spot) and usually not very serious about Christianity or faith of any kind — often more serious about libertarianism than about “organized religion.”
As a non-progressive, I don’t fit into either of these groups — closer in many ways to the first, but so utterly averse to the praxis when it comes to politics, science, history, market economy, and often technology as to make that closeness basically illegible if not unintelligible.
While I know lots of folks on the left, I really don’t know many religious Democrats, leftists, or progressives. I assume that it’s partly the circles I happen to walk in — I’m sure my continued discomfort with the Anglican church doesn’t exactly expand that friend group — and partly because I live in Maine, but I don’t know many of the folks who make up what David French has called the “God gap” in and around the Democratic Party. I thoroughly act with the assumption they are there in plenty, but I mostly only know of them.
I’m not officially OCIA, but I’m known to them, have met with them, and I’m on the list or whatever — I just can’t find time to attend the meetings or even to figure out how serious I am about Catholicism. My sense, though, is that this could put me around at least a few strongly religious lefties, but we’ll see.
In any case, I would love to believe the Lind thesis above, but I certainly don’t believe anyone got there by polling the demographic of Maine 🙂