Are Democrats stuck in the Past?

So Democrats and liberals usually like to claim that they are advancing "progress" or that their ideas are the way of the future and their opponents are backwards, old farts with outdated ideas. But in an article on the Rasmussen website, Michael Barone begs to differ. Barone contrasts this idea with Democratic incumbents running for re-election, many of whom come from political families where their fathers where politicians. Some of them, are even featuring their father in their own re-election ads. Barone points out that both Cali gov Brown and NY gov Cuomo are both the sons of former governors of their states.

He then points to Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic front-runner, noted that her husband Bill was first elected in 1976 and that the song he used as his campaign theme in 1992 came out in 1977.

He then moves on from their politicians to focus on their policies, which he describes as being "industrial age" ideas that are out of touch with the "information age".

Quoth Barone:

"If Democratic officeholders are rooted in the past, so are some of their favorite policies. On Labor Day, Obama called for raising the minimum wage, first passed by Congress in 1938.

Left-wing Democrats are calling for increased benefits under Social Security, first passed in 1935. Equal pay for women is a staple of Democratic campaigns. It has been federal law since 1964.

Democrats have ingeniously recycled these oldies. The much-heralded Lilly Ledbetter Act extended the statute of limitations on sexual discrimination suits -- a gift to trial lawyers.

In 2012, with help from former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, Democrats raised the specter of Republicans banning contraception -- something the Supreme Court ruled out in 1965.

The recycling of past themes can block more effective alternatives. For example, more than half of minimum wage increases go to members of non-low-income households. One could give more to the working poor by expanding the earned income tax credit, but that doesn't poll as well.

Social Security is already on an unsustainable course; increasing benefits is a nonstarter. It might be better to imitate Canada's tax-free savings accounts if we want comfortable retirements for modest-income people."

So, are Democrats really the modern avant-garde party, or are they stuck reliving the glory days of the FDR through the 70s.

Of course this whole "party of the past, party of the future" nomenclature assumes that the future is different from the past and that it will be better than the past. But we really don't know if the "future" will be better than the "past", now do we?

91% of time, the candidate with more money wins.

Having a family member in a prominent government position will typically yield very fruitful connections to moneyed donors. This is tactic is the same regardless of political lines. You have members of the conservative base, like Senator Rubio using his father's ex-goverment positions and connections to do the same thing. The problem isn't so much hereditary lines of goverment, but that money is the only thing that matters in politics.

Its time to get money out of politics. Public financing should be the ONLY option for candidates.

I read that article too, where you could say this narrative about dems "being stuck in the past" is also reflected is in Senate races were dems are fielding legacy candidates to win/get reelected in red states like: Pryor, Landrieu, Nunn; plus Jimmy Carter's grandson run for Georgia's governorship.

And here are some polls, because politics:

Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight’s Senate Model Is Back And It Gives Republicans The Edge

Perception of Obama as strong leader drops

"The poll also found 52 percent believe Obama's presidency, on balance, has been a failure; 42 percent believe it has been a success."

Support for ObamaCare continues to fall

Interesting, I didn't realize that the candidate with more money won that often. The problem with public financing is that tax-payers would have their tax money funding candidates that they don't like. That aside even if Public financing was the only legal option for candidates to finance their campaigns, there would always be some who would accept financing from other sources and not get caught, plus there are the outside "independent expenditure groups" which don't donate to candidates but do do things to help them (such as run attack ads against opponents). I remember reading from one article that the only way to "get money out of politics" is to get politics out of money, in other words so long as the gov't is involved in the economy, there will be lobbyists and other groups trying to influence government policy.

I see way more GOP stuck in the past than Dems. That said, anyone who follows party lines is also stuck in the past. Get someone elected based on ideas, not party.

Both parties need a swift kick in the arse.

How about we get back to a smaller government where people are responsible for their choices and we, the people, take back the government and teach these people whom they work for. I'm quite content in saying the average citizen of the United States just wants to live his/her life as best as they could w/o bothering others and w/o others bothering them. Unfortunately those corrupted by ideology feel the need to push their beliefs on others and don't respect a difference in opinion.

Electability also matters, since donors typically don't want to pour money into a candidate that they know doesn't stand a chance of winning. So no, money is not the only thing that matters.

The Democrats have their own set of problems but lack of forward thinking is definitely not one of them. That is some hilarious mental gymnastics to make yourself belief that. Rasmussen should hold itself up to a higher standard than that. I also laughed when the writer implied Obama and Kerry are liberals, that is some funny shit. Anyway, the writer seems to have a flawed understanding of the phrase "stuck in the past" which mainly has to do with social policies that are behind what general American society thinks. Aiming to fix problems that haven't actually been fixed in the past is a very silly interpretation of that in my opinion.

Yes, but Republicans base all of their of money and a book that was written thousands of years ago

If the Democrats are stuck in the past, then the Republicans must be stuck in the last Ice Age.

@whipassmt:

Public financing has built in rules and limitations to prevent just any joe schmoe from running and getting tax dollars for funding, most notably, raising at least $5,000 from at least 20 different states.

I would argue that even independent expenditures from outside groups should also be illegal. Neither corporations, nor unions should be allowed to contribute, and the maximum contribution from an individual should be even lower than it is today.

Politics should be a battle of ideas, not whomever manages to become a more obedient puppet for billionaires.

@MrGeezer: Does electability really matter that much? Maybe theres an argument that more electable people manage to raise more money. Maybe? But electability seems to take a pretty big back seat to whomever has connections to moneyed donors.

My point is that it's pretty hard to get moneyed donors without them already thinking that you're a good candidate. Just because someone has a bunch of money doesn't mean they're willing to just flush it down the toilet. If they're giving you the money for your campaign, then in all likelihood that means that they think you stand a chance of winning. And from that point on, people get more money for their campaigns by establishing themselves based on things like credentials, policy, charisma, etc.

Money obviously matters, but it's not like it's enough to buy you the election if everyone already thinks you're a shitty candidate. Stating that money is the ONLY thing that matters is just plain wrong. Simply being a good candidate also matter a LOT. Hell, that's precisely one of the things that contributes to people getting money for their campaign.

@MrGeezer: And i disagree heavily with your point, very much. I dont believe that the rather abstract concept of "electability" is anywhere near as important as you may have thought.

You have professional whackjob Michele Bachmann who ended up raising nearly $16 million dollars. She won by 1.2 percentage points against a democrat who raised $2 million.

I just feel like you are severely underemphasizing the value of money raising. Am i overstating its importance? i don't think i am considering the statistics. Enough money can outweight nearly any amount of inelectability.

A lot of what democrats believe in can't really be considered progress. Affirmative action isn't progress, not when it should be targeting people based on their income instead of their ethnicity. Gun control where only the criminals have guns isn't progress.

Your post kind of illustrates my point. I never said that money doesn't matter, but look at the numbers there. Even with an overwhelmingly larger campaign budget, she still end up only BARELY winning. By contrast, her opponent came damn close to winning on a meager $2 million campaign. It's clear that Jim Graves was getting a lot more votes per dollar than Bachmann was, because he was the better candidate.

From a votes-per-dollar perspective, every dollar spent on the Jim Graves campaign was worth FAR more than every dollar spent on the Michelle Bachmann campaign. If it took her spending that much money just to BARELY win then it's unlikey that even doubling her campaign budget would have that much of an effect on the outcome of the election. By contrast, if Jim Graves came that close to winning with only $2 million, then he probably would have won if his campaign had been doubled. I mean, let's be real here: if this had been Graves $4 million campaign vs Bachmann's $16 million campaign, then in all likelihood Graves would have won despite spending only 1/4th as much as his opponent.

There also seems to be the implicit notion that campaign funds beyond that required to run a successful campaign have the same value as the funds up to that amount. Obviously there's a certain amount needed for a candidate to reach his prospective voters. Whether you're "electable" or not, obviously no one's gonna vote for you if you lack the funds to get your message out to them. So, let's say that $5 million is enough to get you 35% of the votes. It does not follow that doubling the campaign budget will double your votes. Sure, you'll see some increase in votes, but in all likelihood it won't be proportional to the necessary increase in campaign spending. You might only spend $4 million reaching the 35% voters who were gonna vote for you anyway, with the next $10 million in campaign funds only gaining you another 5% of the votes. With regards to the example that you cited, we don't know HOW MANY of the votes that Bachmann got were the result of her spending beyond, let's say, $5 million. It's likely that a very significant percentage of the people who voted for her still would have voted for her even if her campaign budget was a lot smaller, and that her massive campaign spending beyond a reasonable amount only served to squeeze out a few percentage points that BARELY allowed her to win.

Anyway, I never said that money doesn't matter, I was objecting to the notion that money is ALL that matters. Money might not even be the thing that matters THE MOST, but I wasn't even going that far in my argument. I was just saying that money isn't all that matters, and your example actually proves my point. Michelle Bachmann spend nearly 8 times the money on her campaign that Jim Graves spent on his, and even then that was BARELY enough to pull out a win. If money was all that mattered, then we'd expect the results of the election to be more proportional to the amount of money spent on each candidate's campaign.

Who cares when the laws were passed if they are current issues?

I would say those first two things would be attempting to update old laws to better fit the times of today.

The third would actually be something that didn't work and thus still relevant today seeing as how a difference between what men and women are paid for the same work currently exists.

As for the fourth? Yeah it is stuck in the past to dwell on the last president who was considered to be great at the job. That being said at least Bill is still alive and working to better the world through the Clinton Foundation. It's the sort of thing I wish all non-sitting presidents would do.

maybe, but not as much as some people...

@lamprey263 said:

maybe, but not as much as some people...

Hahahahahaha!

Our tax money already funds things we, individually, don't like. Republicans crack me up...the party of white people threatened by change.

You listed two things...that hardly constitutes "a lot" of which democrats believe...and those two views aren't even shared by all democrats. That's like saying a lot of what republicans believe in is preserving women as baby machines and keeping uppity minorities in their place.

Gun control isn't about keeping guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens. It's about making sure guns aren't legally sold to criminals and restricting access to weapons that have no purpose other than to kill indiscriminately (e.g. assault rifles and sub-machine guns). Your characterization of gun control is a gross misrepresentation.

i agree.

social issues have no place in the future of politics.

what is important now is letting companies control civil rights.

This is my absolute number one issue.

There's plenty wrong with the democratic party, however I would hardly describe them as 'stuck in the past' when compared to republicans. You'd have to be a master of mental gymnastics in order to believe that. Maybe I'd start to waiver if republicans dropped their religiocentric platform coupled with scientific illiteracy. Then maybe they could stop their love affair with Ayn Rand styled economic beliefs.

@lamprey263 said:

maybe, but not as much as some people...

Why are social cons always dumb?...

Machine guns are already heavily restricted(as in you need a few thousand dollars to even get the permit process started), so I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about. No, it's not a gross misrepresentation. Criminals don't follow gun control laws. Handgun bans only affect non-criminals. Banning weapons based on their aesthetics(having a foregrip, compensator, collapsible buttstock, etc) only affects non-criminals. You're just delusional. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about with regards to gun control.

Does "stuck in the past" really have to do with "social issues" or is the label more pertinent to economic issues. Social issues in some ways stay the same, an abortion either is or isn't taking an innocent life, marriage is either between a man and woman or between any consenting adults, all that really changes is which position is more popular (maybe even more "fashionable") in any given time, hence one on abortion may predominate pre-1960, while the other predominates in the 1970s and then in the 1990s the tide begins to change again.

But economics seems to actually change over time. An agrarian economy is not the same as an industrial or service-oriented economy (although Industrial and service-economies do still depend on agriculture), so economic policies and tax policies that may have worked during a different economy (for instance tariffs or high corporate tax rates) may not work in a more globalized, advanced economy. Hence in a less globalized age you could tax corporations more, but now high tax rates just push them to put more resources into countries with more reasonable tax rates. Or Social Security might work well when there are more workers than retirees, but if there are more retirees than workers then there is a problem.

@lamprey263 said:

maybe, but not as much as some people...

Like the liberals in Vermont who wanted to secede over climate change and the Iraq War?

Can political issues really even be progress any way. Technology progresses of course, but is changing a law really "progress or retrogress" or is it just changing a law. I guess what one man sees as progress another man sees as a step-back, to quote Troy Landry "some people see progress in a world without wilderness, I see a cage". Is progress inherently a good thing or is it really "going from the slingshot to the atom bomb". Is the wiping out of the bison and the replacement with the plains and railroad tracks a tragedy or is it progress?

@whipassmt: as a matter of fact its republicans stuck in the past because they keep using "we were against slavery" as an excuse for being insensitive dumb asses

You seem to be equating progress with progressivism. They are two very different things. Progressivism believes that laws should change based on societal advances of science, technology, economics, or social structure. Even extremely conservative people will agree to this view, though the debate between them is a matter of how malleable should the laws be based on those changes. I think there are very few "tradionalists" (opposite of progressives) that agree to little or no changes to laws based on advances.

So, in a way your question of "can political issues even be progress anyway" is very much a no, its not progress. Progressivism is about adapting to those changes. How quickly, and by how much? Well, thats real debate, no?

The two are different, but it seems that progressives treat them as if they are the same, and the more fanatical ones seem to justify stepping on people and forcing their views on them in the name of "progress" (or really of their vision of progress). Of course laws do change, conservatives (in the Burkean sense) tend to take the view that laws should change slowly and that society should evolve organically rather than having the government try to force changes on the population (whereas revolutionists take the opposite temperament). The point of the post you quoted, was basically me saying that a lot of progressives treat their own opinion as if it is the only valid one and that step taken according to their agenda is "progress" as if they were always right and as if history rolled out in such a fashion that things always improved, rather than having peaks and valleys.