A New Guide to the Democratic Herd - 7 views
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Anna Schutte on 04 Sep 12This NYTimes article uses data gathered by the Pew Research Center, and the Rothenberg Political report to chart the different factions of the Democratic Party according to their relative influence, motivating issues and standard bearers. It exposes important unifying issues like equity (fairness) and uncovers differences on other matters like immigration and the size of the federal government. It will be interesting to look at the motivating issues of each group and compare them to the issues Obama focuses on in his speeches and which he stays away from. According to this article, the southern democrats, formerly a large powerful group, are shrinking. Is that because they donít agree with other Democratís position on social issues like gay marriage and positions on immigration and the environment that they are concerned affect employment? Itís also interesting to imagine how this information is gathered and how accurate it is.
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John West on 07 Sep 12I was struck by the part about Southern Democrats too, because their role as a unit in the party is one I've rarely heard mentioned. This is cool to look at, especially in a class of mostly democrats/liberals, because it outlines important sections of the party that (I'm assuming) most Urban students don't fall into. I think its important to see what groups and specific interests the Obama campaign has to promote (or at least be sensitive to) that fall outside of the "Staunch Liberal" bubble. This sub-party, which defines the issues I immediately think of when I read "democrat," is not only just one side of a big set of interests, but also not that critical to the outcome of the election.
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mabel taylor on 09 Sep 12The parade of different donkeys efficiently demonstrated the core Democratic voters, ones I am more familiar with, and the offshoots of the party, like the Southern Democrats, who hold an interesting position in that their values only partly line up with Obama's and they are therefore hard to pin down. I thought the connection the video made between the historical impact of the Democrat party and the voters today was great and the size of the animated characters was an easy way to understand the breadth of a group. I also enjoyed that the identifiers for all the different voters, represented through stereotypical markings, like glasses and protest signs, actually did show the diversity of the party. While some voters may slowly be falling out of the Democratic range, the variety of Obama supporters is interesting when thinking about all of the different issues that matter to the voters themselves. It always amazes me that the Obama campaign seems to manage all of the sensitivities and passions of their mass of voters; though that balance definitely seems precarious, when it does work, it's very impressive.
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cody s on 10 Sep 12It's weird how many of the groups in this are classified as "social conservatives." I feel like living in San Francisco there are a lot of people who support Obama purely because of his positions on abortion and gay marriage. I see a lot of people to whom it seems social issues are pretty much all they think about politically, so its interesting for me to think about people who vote against their personally held social ideology to support their economic interests. Gives some perspective.
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Eli Melrod on 10 Sep 12The "standard bearers" section of this article really stood out to me. Almost all of those politicians described as "standard bearers" spoke at the convention. Because all of these different prominent politicians in different groups all spoke at the Democratic convention, I believe it shows a united party. If there was a similar analysis of the Republican party, I don't think all of their "standard bearers" would be featured in the convention. For example, the Republican party worked hard to keep folks like Ron Paul off the center stage at the convention, even though he has plenty of supper within the Republican party.