Load of Crap

Also, not presented with any meaningful commentary of course. But part of a NY Times article on Obama courting liberals is this turd:

Third Way, an organization of centrist Democrats, produced a study showing that liberals are the smallest share of the electorate and not enough to keep Congress in Democratic hands. Citing Gallup polling data, the study said self-described conservatives made up 42 percent of the electorate, compared with moderates who make up 35 percent and liberals who make up 20 percent, a shift of several points to the right in the last two years.

That, of course, has no meaning. It would be one thing if how people self-identified actually lined up with how U.S. congresscritters legislated, but it doesn't. My mom self-identifies as a moderate. She is more liberal than probably 80% of the House and 90% of the Senate. She is, however, exactly as she describes, pretty much dead center of the nation.

This horseshit pushed by Third Way is largely responsible for the clusterfuck in DC. People are mostly moderate so they say so. The words "Conservative" and "Liberal" don't mean politically conservative or liberal. This is pretty easy to figure: a large majority wanted a public option, a large majority likes social security and medicare, a large majority believes the rich should be more heavily taxed than they are, a large majority believes we should pay workers honest wages and make sure their work environments are safe, a large majority believes that companies should not be allowed to pollute. Those are all "Liberal" political opinions held by people who statistically must describe themselves as liberal...and moderate and even conservative. (No, I'm not looking up all the polling data to link.)

That someone would describe themselves as conservative, while taking advantage of medicare and not wanting to see it cut should tell politicians that the political designations of conservative vs liberal are pretty fucking meaningless. Unfortunately it seems not to work that way.

People want what they want, but rather than find that out and see about giving it to them we obsess over designations that are almost completely disconnected from their meaning on another level. Probably 90% of my political beliefs fit with the majority in this country. The remaining 10% is probably 70:30 left:right, but if I were to position myself in the US Senate it would probably be about where Bernie Sanders is (way left of "center") and in the House probably between Nancy Pelosi and Dennis Kucinich (again, way left of "center"). In the U.S. as a whole, however, I'm probably at about the 65% point overall (I balance out some pretty hard left beliefs on tax policy with some pretty right ones on personal responsibility).