Whoa, weird, I wonder what precipitating event in 2003 caused Republicans to sort of defensively recoil rightward for the next few years?? And then toward the end of the '00s something happened that the Republican party REALLY radicalized over! What could that have been??? ? 
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Cory Doctorow posted an item yesterday (3/6) that can, IMO, function as a primer that contextualizes and lays-bare the evolution of the right’s closed-loop rhetoric distribution system - which importantly shows just how necessary the reification of their alternate universe has been.
I would add that Krugman’s essay on the GOP/right’s inability to fathom - let alone implement - actual policies serves as an excellent “companion piece”.
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Does no one else find it a tad suspect that there is ANY shift towards the left to be found anywhere in that graphic? Obamacare notwithstanding, I see no significant evidence that the neoliberalism-embracing Democrats haven’t been merrily waltzing to the right as well. The past couple of decades should show the Republican median accelerating rightwards, with the Democrat one losing ground, but following in the same direction.
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You’re probably right about the last point. I don’t really know what to do about this either - my parents are trump supporters and trumpet a lot of the same stuff, but the issues you’re talking about aren’t easy to prove/disprove because we’re talking about major systems in place. In all fairness at least they believe in global warming (so uh good job parents) but believe that Trump will do much better for the rest of the country so it makes up for it.
Shit’s all fucked, man.
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I blame the other side.
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Not quite as animated a the OP, but still showing the same process in Congress 1949 - 2011:
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I’m guessing it’s dependent on what they decided to count as “left” issues. This is covering voters. Neoliberal economic policy is so entrenched in both parties that it doesn’t really get brought up as an issue by either party, and people are generally ignorant of the shift that has occurred. So it’s not a point of contention between voters, and thus the issue doesn’t help to distinguish “left” from “right” at this point. That means that although it makes sense that they wouldn’t include it, issues that are widely agreed upon not being used in the metrics causes it to ignore rightwards-shfts that includes enough people. That is, it’s not really taking into account issues that would indicate shifts in the Overton Window.
Not yet, anyways…
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Fox News launched in October of 1996. You do the math.
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I’m pretty sure this means something, I’m just not sure what.
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Sure. I’d suspect that in the 1850s, people didn’t necessarily expect the civil war either.
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This statement involves a lot of amnesia for what the Democratic party was like even a decade ago - they’re much further left now. Just compare the 2008 to 2016 party platforms. No, they aren’t a party of full socialism. But where they are currently on healthcare, LGBTQ rights, reproductive justice, paid family leave, cheap-to-free higher education, anti-racism, and any number of other issues is much more progressive than 10 or 20 years ago.
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[quote=“Shuck, post:27, topic:96520”]
Neoliberal economic policy is so entrenched in both parties that it doesn’t really get brought up as an issue by either party, and people are generally ignorant of the shift that has occurred.[/quote]It may not be brought up regularly by either party much (cough Bernie Sanders cough), but that doesn’t make the graphic accurate. How on earth do they posit that the Dems have actually shifted to the left? The mind boggles.
[quote=“Shuck, post:27, topic:96520”]
That is, it’s not really taking into account issues that would indicate shifts in the Overton Window.
[/quote] Hell, the damned thing is in and of itself just a visual representation of the Overton Window, inaccurately labelled
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It’s not hard to build a case for media involvement in the political schism. The FCC under Ronald Reagan during the '80s rolled back a guiding principle for broadcast media (in particular, news media) called the Fairness Doctrine.
This opened the floodgates for “entertainers” like Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, and many others. It eventually brought us Fox and Friends. So it provided a handy outlet for those with large hoards of money and the willingness to deeply confuse rural voters to dish up the conservative gospel.
So the electoral college went from being almost as boring and fusty as the Federal Reserve to being a superstar workhorse for the mega-wealthy. That brings us up to the present. This is not to give the impression that we’ve gotten wherever we’re going, I’m not making that mistake. Strap in, kids!
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That, in contrast to Warner Studios, someone is able to make a good Harley Quinn costume?
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We’re supposed to treat the sides as equals but how do you treat someone with respect who won’t respect you?
This is one of the reasons I think “Meet in the middle” is utter foolishness. You can’t meet a philosophy that is constantly running away from you. (The Democrats desire to catch them is why Obama was the best Republican president since Reagan.)
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Me meeting in the middle with the Republicans would end up with what Bernie Sanders was campaigning for.
If they are OK with that, then I am more than happy to do so.
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There’s no shift to the left at all. The range has gotten smaller; there are fewer Democrats close to the center line. But no one has gotten more liberal since 1871.
Conversely, the range of Republicans is about the same, maybe a little smaller, but it very definitely started to shift rightward with Ronnie, to the point where almost half are now over the +0.5 line.
Another interesting bit: in the early years of the graph, a few members of the Republican party actually crossed the line over into Democratic territory.
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That might be an overstatement. Plenty of Democrats still thought slavery was a pretty great idea in 1871, and considerably fewer than half wanted women to have the vote.
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The Dems belatedly followed majority opinion on GLBT rights, reproductive freedom, etc. On economics and foreign policy, the Dems have shifted substantially right since the 1970s.
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