No kidding. When your starting point is that the party has just won a historic election and everyone hates the other party, giving your party a 62% approval rate, of course you're going to be in decline. It would be virtually impossible to go in the other direction from that starting point. The problem for the GOP is that while the Democratic Party's approval ratings have declined, the GOP's have declined even more since their big win in 2010. So they simply haven't capitalized on whatever problems the Dems might be having.
Are there any figures for the other party? Would be interesting to know if both parties share the same pattern.
duh... in the past 12 years, you continue to see a shrinking middle class and little progress... you can argue whatever the cause (or keep the blame game going), but most people only care about the end results. My guess is the REP is in steeper decline. They are going so far right, they might one day wrap around and take over the left Good, they both sucks. I'm not that pessimistic. IMO, the younger generation will work this current mess out (in 20-30 years).
Yeah it's a loophole because not everyone has to have a background check. The private citizens can often do their sales at gun shows. The fact that a private seller can go to a gun show and sell his weapons to anyone without having to record the information or do a background check is a loophole to the idea that people can't buy guns without background checks. The intent of the background check was that in order to buy a gun people would have to have a background check. This gets around that requirement.
Both parties are in decline, the Republican Party just happens to be quicker, thanks to private bankers blowing up the economy, and the general gloom and doom that imples. http://www.pewresearch.org/data-trend/political-attitudes/republican-party-favorability/ The Democrats are fighting a divided shell of a party that doesn't believe in itself. they could be near their lowest---the Republicans are AT their lowest.
seems like as good a thread as any to post the [OFFICIAL] CNN Democratic Presidential Contenders Power Rankings for September: https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/13/politics/2020-democrats-ranking/index.html
Save the Democrats! Vote Republican https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/vote-for-republicans-to-save-democrats/
SUmmary: Don't vote democratic to save America from Trumpism as a bunch of never-Trumpers are suggesting . First, Trumpism is fake (cause she doesn't know anyone 100% for Trump in her echo chamber). Second, progressives are much worse - just look at the Kavanaugh hearings. Kamala & Hillary accused the nominee of being against birth control. (oh and by the way, fake news thesis is true, because those two are apparently journalists now and tweeter has become a reputable publication). And and and! Feinstein dared to use underhanded tactics. Oh and by the way, deregulation rocks.
also remember what Emerson said, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines
what Republican positions are you referring to? quasi-serious question. Mostly I think the leftward drift of the Democratic party is a mistake. that and many Democrats are morons. Call me a Jimmy Carter Republican if it helps
related opinion piece from the NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/12/...-youre-not-as-smart-as-you-think-you-are.html Opinion Liberals, You’re Not as Smart as You Think By Gerard Alexander Mr. Alexander is a professor of political science at the University of Virginia. May 12, 2018 I know many liberals, and two of them really are my best friends. Liberals make good movies and television shows. Their idealism has been an inspiration for me and many others. Many liberals are very smart. But they are not as smart, or as persuasive, as they think. And a backlash against liberals — a backlash that most liberals don’t seem to realize they’re causing — is going to get President Trump re-elected. People often vote against things instead of voting for them: against ideas, candidates and parties. Democrats, like Republicans, appreciate this whenever they portray their opponents as negatively as possible. But members of political tribes seem to have trouble recognizing that they, too, can push people away and energize them to vote for the other side. Nowhere is this more on display today than in liberal control of the commanding heights of American culture. Take the past few weeks. At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, the comedian Michelle Wolf landed some punch lines that were funny and some that weren’t. But people reacted less to her talent and more to the liberal politics that she personified. For every viewer who loved her Trump bashing, there seemed to be at least one other put off by the one-sidedness of her routine. Then, when Kanye West publicly rethought his ideological commitments, prominent liberals criticized him for speaking on the topic at all. Maxine Waters, a Democratic congresswoman from California, remarked that “sometimes Kanye West talks out of turn” and should “maybe not have so much to say.” Liberals dominate the entertainment industry, many of the most influential news sources and America’s universities. This means that people with progressive leanings are everywhere in the public eye — and are also on the college campuses attended by many people’s children or grandkids. These platforms come with a lot of power to express values, confer credibility and celebrity and start national conversations that others really can’t ignore. But this makes liberals feel more powerful than they are. Or, more accurately, this kind of power is double-edged. Liberals often don’t realize how provocative or inflammatory they can be. In exercising their power, they regularly not only persuade and attract but also annoy and repel. In fact, liberals may be more effective at causing resentment than in getting people to come their way. I’m not talking about the possibility that jokes at the 2011 correspondents’ association dinner may have pushed Mr. Trump to run for president to begin with. I mean that the “army of comedy” that Michael Moore thought would bring Mr. Trump down will instead be what builds him up in the minds of millions of voters. Consider some ways liberals have used their cultural prominence in recent years. They have rightly become more sensitive to racism and sexism in American society. News reports, academic commentary and movies now regularly relate accounts of racism in American history and condemn racial bigotry. These exercises in consciousness-raising and criticism have surely nudged some Americans to rethink their views, and to reflect more deeply on the status and experience of women and members of minority groups in this country. But accusers can paint with very wide brushes. Racist is pretty much the most damning label that can be slapped on anyone in America today, which means it should be applied firmly and carefully. Yet some people have cavalierly leveled the charge against huge numbers of Americans — specifically, the more than 60 million people who voted for Mr. Trump. In their ranks are people who sincerely consider themselves not bigoted, who might be open to reconsidering ways they have done things for years, but who are likely to be put off if they feel smeared before that conversation even takes place. It doesn’t help that our cultural mores are changing rapidly, and we rarely stop to consider this. Some liberals have gotten far out ahead of their fellow Americans but are nonetheless quick to criticize those who haven’t caught up with them. Within just a few years, many liberals went from starting to talk about microaggressions to suggesting that it is racist even to question whether microaggressions are that important. “Gender identity disorder” was considered a form of mental illness until recently, but today anyone hesitant about transgender women using the ladies’ room is labeled a bigot. Liberals denounce “cultural appropriation” without, in many cases, doing the work of persuading people that there is anything wrong with, say, a teenager not of Chinese descent wearing a Chinese-style dress to prom or eating at a burrito cart run by two non-Latino women. Pressing a political view from the Oscar stage, declaring a conservative campus speaker unacceptable, flatly categorizing huge segments of the country as misguided — these reveal a tremendous intellectual and moral self-confidence that smacks of superiority. It’s one thing to police your own language and a very different one to police other people’s. The former can set an example. The latter is domineering. This judgmental tendency became stronger during the administration of President Barack Obama, though not necessarily because of anything Mr. Obama did. Feeling increasingly emboldened, liberals were more convinced than ever that conservatives were their intellectual and even moral inferiors. Discourses and theories once confined to academia were transmitted into workaday liberal political thinking, and college campuses — which many take to be what a world run by liberals would look like — seemed increasingly intolerant of free inquiry. It was during these years that the University of California included the phrase “America is the land of opportunity” on a list of discouraged microaggressions. Liberal politicians portrayed conservative positions on immigration reform as presumptively racist; Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, once dubiously claimed that she had heard Republicans tell Irish visitors that “if it was you,” then immigration reform “would be easy.” When Mr. Obama remarked, behind closed doors, during the presidential campaign in 2008, that Rust Belt voters “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them,” it mattered not so much because he said it but because so many listeners figured that he was only saying what liberals were really thinking. These are the sorts of events conservatives think of when they sometimes say, “Obama caused Trump.” Many liberals might interpret that phrase to mean that America’s first black president brought out the worst in some people. In this view, not only might liberals be unable to avoid provoking bigots, it’s not clear they should even try. After all, should they not have nominated and elected Mr. Obama? Should they regret doing the right thing just because it provoked the worst instincts in some people? This is a limited view of the situation. Even if liberals think their opponents are backward, they don’t have to gratuitously drive people away, including voters who cast ballots once or even twice for Mr. Obama before supporting Mr. Trump in 2016. Champions of inclusion can watch what they say and explain what they’re doing without presuming to regulate what words come out of other people’s mouths. Campus activists can allow invited visitors to speak and then, after that event, hold a teach-in discussing what they disagree with. After the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that states had to allow same-sex marriage, the fight, in some quarters, turned to pizza places unwilling to cater such weddings. Maybe don’t pick that fight? People determined to stand against racism can raise concerns about groups that espouse hate and problems like the racial achievement gap in schools without smearing huge numbers of Americans, many of whom might otherwise be Democrats by temperament. Liberals can act as if they’re not so certain — and maybe actually not be so certain — that bigotry motivates people who disagree with them on issues like immigration. Without sacrificing their principles, liberals can come across as more respectful of others. Self-righteousness is rarely attractive, and even more rarely rewarded. Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. A version of this article appears in print on May 13, 2018, on Page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline: Liberals, You’re Not As Smart as You Think
