The Presidential Election
I just heard an interesting point on Pacifica radio. The radio show hosts drew an analogy between that understanding gap between Americans and the rest of the world - how most Americans think that people in other countries share our core beliefs and political views. They compared it to liberal Americans, who believe that the majority of Americans think the same way they do.
The truth is that the majority of Americans are very culturally and morally conservative, and the Democratic party is going to need to become more conservative in order to be viable in future elections. We need someone who is just barely Democratic enough to be in the Democratic party. Basically, we need a party that is the soft Republicans, like McCain. The Centrist Party perhaps. I don't think the Republican party will be offering up any liberal Republicans anytime soon.
This of course means that I and other Dems will need to make some hard compromises. Would I prefer our foreign relations improve even though the tradeoff might be overturning Roe vs Wade? Would I be ok with not teaching evolution or contraception to students in order to have universal health care for all Americans? What about banning gay marriage in the constitution in order to end a pointless war?
These are tough questions and I hate to think that we can't have it all and that many people have beliefs so diametrically opposed to mine. But it looks like this country is growing more conservative and at some point the Dems are going to have to venture out of our safe liberal nests into these bible-thumping, non-evolution-believing towns in fly-over territory.
But really, this political gap is wide, and in order to get back into play, we're going to have to move right. i guess the question is how far right will we have to go?
suck.
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