How Did The Democrats And Republicans Choose Their Positions?

[TheReasonator]

Why for example is more interventionist economic policies paired with supporting legal abortion and gay rights?
Why is opposing legal abortion paired with supporting the death penalty, and why is supporting legal abortion paired with opposing the death penalty?
Why is supporting a bigger defense budget paired with a preference for less social spending?

For gay rights I especially don't get it. Since black people have more homophobia in their demographic than white people and Democrats rely a lot on the black demographic why didn't the Democrats adopt homophobia into their agenda. I don't know the relative support for abortion rights or opposition among black people, but considering part of the propaganda is that it's "Black genocide" from all the black abortions you'd think a better political strategy would've been for the Democrats to have adopted an anti-gay, anti-abortion agenda as part of a wider agenda where they pose as the traditional "Christian values" party while at the same time being the "helping the poor and regulating big business" party. Indeed putting together propaganda for such a party wouldn't be too hard, you could even lump the economics into the religious aspects more easily with quotes like "the eye of the needle" suggesting that it's hard for rich people to get into heaven so they better support the Democrats to help the poor.

Putting aside race, the "social issues" agenda is mainly how Republicans get poor people of any race to vote for them. Why didn't the Democrats just adopt economic interventionism along with social conservatism to deny them that easy propaganda spot?

The environments another one. I once heard that a long time ago self-identified "conservatives" were more likely to be environmentalists than "liberals". Conservatives wanting to "conserve" the environment as it is and liberals wanting to "advance progress" by opening it up to development.

And then there's trade policy. The Republicans used to be the tariff party, in fact that was part of their appeal to Northerners at the beginning of their existence, and the Democrats leaned more to free trade. Now it's the opposite. How did that happen? Why did that happen?

[Yla]

You're asking a lot of questions with complicated answers, but I think you're kind of mixing cause and effect.

Politics does not come with a pre-existing set of two poles that individual positions are distributed to, and what is not belonging to one pole necessarily is assigned to the other.
Politics come about because people want certain things. These goals have varying reasons, but they have reasons other than 'Because the other guy wants the opposite' or 'Because someone has to have that position'. Politicians do not take positions for the position's sake.

Some of the goals from different people contradict each other, and politics ensue. People with similar goals form parties. In the US things coalesced over the last 100 years into only two parties. Elsewhere, more parties exist.

[TheReasonator]

You're asking a lot of questions with complicated answers, but I think you're kind of mixing cause and effect.

Politics does not come with a pre-existing set of two poles that individual positions are distributed to, and what is not belonging to one pole necessarily is assigned to the other.
Politics come about because people want certain things. These goals have varying reasons, but they have reasons other than 'Because the other guy wants the opposite' or 'Because someone has to have that position'. Politicians do not take positions for the position's sake.

Some of the goals from different people contradict each other, and politics ensue. People with similar goals form parties. In the US things coalesced over the last 100 years into only two parties. Elsewhere, more parties exist.

This may all be true on an individual level, but a party is an organization that strategizes. I'm sure there are anti-gay, pro-life people who are big on economic justice. In fact aside from racial minorities you would find that common among Catholics. I grew up in a majority Catholic town. Most people were Democrat, but most people were also pro-life. Many people held very, very liberal positions on every issue except for abortion.

[Smurfette Principle]

Can you stop saying that black people are more homophobic than white people? Your stupid is showing.

To explain the disparity between Catholics and Republicans (from an actual Catholic-raised person): many Catholics vote only on abortion, or only on gay rights. One-issue voting is a problem, especially when that one issue is a heavily divisive issue like abortion or the death penalty. When you factor this into a two-party system, it becomes more of a problem because you're voting in other policies that you might not necessarily support, and ironically the Tea Party is a backlash against this by forcing Republicans to cut down on budgets they wouldn't necessarily have (like defense spending) because they are deviating from the established norm.

[Cataclysm]

Can you stop saying that black people are more homophobic than white people? Your stupid is showing.

Well, at least within the democratic party.

Since black people have more homophobia in their demographic than white people and Democrats rely a lot on the black demographic why didn't the Democrats adopt homophobia into their agenda.

Having a homophobic agenda would alienate the white people who aren't homophobes, and there are a lot more whites than blacks. It's possible that they are able to get homophobic blacks to vote for them since blacks care about their equality more than putting down others.

Most of the time

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_20815049/obama-losing-support-among-african-americans-women-gays

“I cannot support him,” said Emmett Burns, an African American state legislator representing an overwhelmingly black district in Baltimore County when asked about Obama’s policy on same-sex marriage. “He has taken the black vote and people for granted.”

but considering part of the propaganda is that it's "Black genocide" from all the black abortions

No self respecting black person would take this seriously. Also, the people who promote the myth of "Black Genocide" are usually white.

traditional "Christian values" party while at the same time being the "helping the poor and regulating big business" party.

I don't know if you know this, but most Democrats are Christian. Obama has said that his economic policies are based on his faith.

Putting aside race, the "social issues" agenda is mainly how Republicans get poor people of any race to vote for them.

Yes, arresting people who look like they're illegal immigrants is a surefire way to get minorities to vote for you

The environments another one. I once heard that a long time ago self-identified "conservatives" were more likely to be environmentalists than "liberals". Conservatives wanting to "conserve" the environment as it is and liberals wanting to "advance progress" by opening it up to development.

That's because the facts show we can't continue destroying the environment, and liberals care about facts.

The Republicans used to be the tariff party, in fact that was part of their appeal to Northerners at the beginning of their existence, and the Democrats leaned more to free trade.

Who signed NAFTA?

[SaneChick]

Gee, I don't know. Maybe because sometimes it's not all about winning as many voters as you can, but about upholding ideas you believe in? Just a thought.

[TheReasonator]

Who signed NAFTA?

That was a Republican-appealing thing Clinton did just like his welfare reform.

[Undecided]

Who signed NAFTA?

That was a Republican-appealing thing Clinton did just like his welfare reform.

It's true that Clinton signed it, but not to appeal to Republicans. Clinton was one of the New Democrats—a movement that fomented Third Way politics in the Democratic Party in response to its impotence during the Reagan administration, as implemented by the DLC.


In a sense, political parties do not choose their positions at all. As motivated by the median voter theorem, for any given issue, one party's position must always be just to the left of that of the median voter, and the other party's position must always be just to the right. For any given issue, neither party can switch their position to the other side of the median, because voters who find that issue most important will switch (to, e.g., apathy, a single issue party, the other party, etc.) Furthermore, people's views on different issues tend to be clustered into left or right. As long as this clustering exists, the optimal strategy is fully determined: one party must take the views just to the left of the median on every issue, and the other party must take the views just to the right.

eta: tl;dr: In a two-party system, there's no choice but for one party to be a little bit to the left on everything, and for the other party to be a little bit to the right.

[nickiknack]

Anyone who votes on a single flame and burn issue such as gays or abortion is an idiot. People need to be aware pro choice doesn't equal pro abotion.You can be pro life, and still be for minding your own business, and not forcing women to give birth.

Who signed NAFTA?

That was a Republican-appealing thing Clinton did just like his welfare reform.

It's true that Clinton signed it, but not to appeal to Republicans. Clinton was one of the New Democrats—a movement that fomented Third Way politics in the Democratic Party in response to its impotence during the Reagan administration, as implemented by the DLC.

Also known as the reason I have little respect for the Democratic party anymore.

[TheReasonator]

Who signed NAFTA?

That was a Republican-appealing thing Clinton did just like his welfare reform.

It's true that Clinton signed it, but not to appeal to Republicans. Clinton was one of the New Democrats—a movement that fomented Third Way politics in the Democratic Party in response to its impotence during the Reagan administration, as implemented by the DLC.


In a sense, political parties do not choose their positions at all. As motivated by the median voter theorem, for any given issue, one party's position must always be just to the left of that of the median voter, and the other party's position must always be just to the right. For any given issue, neither party can switch their position to the other side of the median, because voters who find that issue most important will switch (to, e.g., apathy, a single issue party, the other party, etc.) Furthermore, people's views on different issues tend to be clustered into left or right. As long as this clustering exists, the optimal strategy is fully determined: one party must take the views just to the left of the median on every issue, and the other party must take the views just to the right.

eta: tl;dr: In a two-party system, there's no choice but for one party to be a little bit to the left on everything, and for the other party to be a little bit to the right.

I didn't literally mean to appeal to Republicans I was speaking shorthand and letting you pick up the gist.

My point was that regardless of the fact that Clinton did it if you take the policy and compare it to its opposite "not doing it" then you compared populations "Not Doing It" would have more Democratic popularity v. Republicans.

Why is there clustering? What does abortion have to do with universal health care?(to come to think of it, logically you'd expect pro-life people to support it) That makes it sound like most people only think about one issue and then just assume that because the party was right about it therefore they must be right about everything else.

How lazy.

[TheReasonator]

Anyone who votes on a single flame and burn issue such as gays or abortion is an idiot. People need to be aware pro choice doesn't equal pro abotion.You can be pro life, and still be for minding your own business, and not forcing women to give birth.

Would you say that if the shoe is on the other foot?
What about people who vote on a single flame and burn issue such as gays or abortion but they are voting pro-gay or pro-choice? Shhh... they might hear you.

[nickiknack]

To a certain extension, yes, but most of those who are in support of those issues, tend not to be single wedge issue voters.  Also people need to realize that there will always be gay people and abortion will always exist in one form or another, and learn mind their own business when it comes to those issues.

[Undecided]

Why is there clustering? What does abortion have to do with universal health care?(to come to think of it, logically you'd expect pro-life people to support it) That makes it sound like most people only think about one issue and then just assume that because the party was right about it therefore they must be right about everything else.

No it doesn't. It means that people subscribe to similar ideologies that lead to the same conclusions on a variety of issues. As a leftist example, radicals believe that all people, by the fact of their very existence, are equally entitled to a variety of rights and privileges, but that most are denied these rights by great self-sustaining distortions in the distribution of power which must be ameliorated through activism. In the U.S. (e.g., socialists), such ideologies naturally entail feminism, environmentalism, queer politics, social justice, and perhaps redistribution of wealth and provision for welfare. At the opposite end, reactionaries believe that, through the inclusion of and interaction with undesirable elements, society has undergone threatening decay which can only be reversed by bringing back the status quo ante and re-empowering once-dominant institutions. In the U.S. (e.g., the Constitution Party), this basically means a harsher attitude towards immigration and homosexuals, devolution of rights to the states, protectionism, isolationism, moralistic restrictions of civil liberties, and abolishing government-funded welfare programs.

How lazy.

This statement has no merits.

[syaoranvee]

Can you stop saying that black people are more homophobic than white people? Your stupid is showing.

To explain the disparity between Catholics and Republicans (from an actual Catholic-raised person): many Catholics vote only on abortion, or only on gay rights.

Interestingly enough, Catholics are more liberal then other christian sects:

[Smurfette Principle]

Can you stop saying that black people are more homophobic than white people? Your stupid is showing.

To explain the disparity between Catholics and Republicans (from an actual Catholic-raised person): many Catholics vote only on abortion, or only on gay rights.

Interestingly enough, Catholics are more liberal then other christian sects:

Yeah, I know. That's because we have things like social justice Catholicism. My parents are liberal Catholics precisely because they are Catholics, and several of my college options were liberal Catholic colleges. A lot of Catholics are fine with gay people (so long as they don't marry in the church), women (there are certain heretical sects that have female priests, and many priests, including the one who married my parents, believe that women should be priests), and science (I have met several creationist Protestants, but I got the best explanation of evolution from my eighth-grade Catholic school science class).

This is why my church's brand of Catholicism freaks the fuck out of me - while our priest is pretty liberal and a very nice dude, our church council and Sunday school teachers (often the same people) are fanatically conservative Catholics, hence my horrific Confirmation experience that was the final impetus to leave the church.

But trust me: a lot of that goes out the window whenever someone brings up how those pro-choicers are killing babies. My parents are deeply closeted pro-choicers for this very reason.