I think the US is actually a very responsive democracy—liberals just don’t like the revealed preferences of the polity.
My dad is a blue dog democrat. Has voted democrat ever since becoming naturalized. Wouldn’t even vote for Larry Hogan. Yet he’s apoplectic about inflation and gas prices, and hates the idea of raising taxes on people making $100-200k/year like himself. At the end of the day he cares more about those things than anything else Democrats care about.
Liberals keep pinning their electoral prospects on people like my dad. Before it was Bangladeshi immigrants it was Irish and Italian immigrants. But these folks came to America for the American dream—two cars, a house with a pool, drive through McDonalds. As a result, liberals take it in the chin every time there is the slightest threat to the low tax consumerist suburban lifestyle. The last time it happened, in the 1970s, we got two decades of Reaganism.
My dad is a blue dog democrat. Has voted democrat ever since becoming naturalized. Wouldn’t even vote for Larry Hogan. Yet he’s apoplectic about inflation and gas prices, and hates the idea of raising taxes on people making $100-200k/year like himself. At the end of the day he cares more about those things than anything else Democrats care about.
Liberals keep pinning their electoral prospects on people like my dad. Before it was Bangladeshi immigrants it was Irish and Italian immigrants. But these folks came to America for the American dream—two cars, a house with a pool, drive through McDonalds. As a result, liberals take it in the chin every time there is the slightest threat to the low tax consumerist suburban lifestyle. The last time it happened, in the 1970s, we got two decades of Reaganism.