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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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.