By Damon Linker The Week
With Democrats confronting the imminent failure in Congress of their bills to expand social spending and voting rights, recriminations have already begun. As Politico reports, progressives are especially preoccupied with how to talk about their defeats with their presumably angry and demoralized constituents.
Not that I imagine it will happen, but I think the Democratic Party would benefit from setting aside spin for a change and telling its voters two hard but essential truths about American political reality.
The first truth is that, according to recent data from Gallup, only 25 percent of the country self-identifies as “liberal,” with “moderate” and “conservative” pulling in more than a third each (37 percent for the former and 36 percent for the latter). That’s more than in the past (thirty years ago, just 17 percent of the country described themselves as “liberal”), but it’s nowhere near enough to ram through a progressive agenda in Congress.
