When the Democrats became the Republicans, Election results in 52 and 64:
I always wondered when the Democrats, who were traditionally a party with an extreme right, racist platform, became the party to the left.
What is amazing is how absolute the transformation was, the Democrats basically became the Republicans. Maps of the election results in 52 and 64, illustrate this perfectly, they are almost the inverse of each other.
Left and right, conservative and liberal, labels attached to parties are abstract; however conservative is the label that the Republicans want to own. The problem is that the current Republican Party may be socially conservative but fiscally it is careless.
But social conservatism is not really what America is about. What made the US special to my mind was that most people, both to the right and left rooted for being socially liberal with a small ‘l’ – they called it freedom. One the left this means gay marriage rights and on the right the option to carry a gun. These are socially liberal attitudes – the government doesn’t meddle – and these are enshrined in the US constitution from freedom of speech to the separation of church and state.
Fiscally conservative = low government spending, socially liberal = low government meddling. What these things equate to are sometimes called libertarianism, a political ethos that is particularly American and is centered around small government.
Four more years of a radical republicanism, big on spending, big on saying what you can and can’t do and the Democrats may have an opportunity to reinvent themselves. By seizing the small government platform, with enough protectionism and welfare to allow local economies to adjust to globalization related changes in employment and to mitigate against the growing disparity between rich and poor (after all these are cheaper than the size of military required by going it on your own all the time), they would have something which resonates well with people to the left and right in the US, compassionate, pragmatic liberalism.
Perhaps the Democrats could flip the US again and win a landslide next time round. If they win this time it may just be more of the same.