People have been taught to disdain the label 'liberal', and so are less likely to own up to being liberal in their views, even though quite often their views, when expressed on a case by case basis, add up to consistent support for liberal positions and policies.

still don't care about culture wars, their esoteric xenophobes, who are only concerned with 1% of the culture they aspire to become. Look at the way Mitt was trying to win us over , while letting the 1% know he was their boy . They don't need to care what we think, that was sealed by SCOTUS when they sold our elections .

Either way, we're principally liberal.

Here's Cenk Uygur on the subject:

Nor about any of the other evidence Uygur uses to support his argument. Your single link is weak sauce.

The United States is a global bastion of liberalism.



-Laelth

The United States remains the wealthiest nation on Earth (despite the fact that our wealth is distributed poorly), and it's our liberalism that has created our wealth.

Ben Franklin and Ted Kennedy were Liberals, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama are Neo-Liberals because of the way they've governed our country in reference to the rest of the world . And I'll have a sip of that Sauce your drinking if you think Liberalism explains our wealth, exploitation and corruption are the elements LIBERALS are SUPPOSED to keep in check and not enable, Hence the difference between the two, one feigns the other .

I sincerely hoped that Obama was a closet liberal, but if he is, he's still mostly in the closet. That said, we had enough liberalism left over from FDR and LBJ to allow us to survive 30+ years of Reaganism, but, at this stage, income inequality in the United States is at about the same level it was in 1928 (or 1918, depending upon the study cited and the metric used). We have been abandoning liberalism and marching back toward the unrestrained capitalism of the Gilded Age.

Nevertheless, I maintain, as did Adam Smith, that free and open liberal capitalism is what made us so wealthy compared to other nations. Liberal laws saw to it that the benefits of capitalism were distributed more fairly across all segments of society.

-Laelth

...to paraphrase someone in the Reagan administration (in the context of spinning the Nicaraguan Contras as "freedom fighters" and "the moral equivalent of out founding fathers&quot .

For the last two generations conservative activists have worked to stick halos over their own heads and stick horns on liberals'. Starting with William F. Buckley and those around him with books and magazines, through the 70s when Heritage and other spin tanks were founded, through the 90s with Gingrich and Limbaugh weaponizing vitriol against liberals, they've consistently painted themselves as good and reasonable and sensible while channeling peoples anger and resentment onto liberals.

This doesn't mean that they were always wrong about everything or that liberals were always right about everything. What it means is that they were consistent in their messaging and marketing -- they made sure that whenever people were angry or frustrated or resentful that the blame could be laid at the feet of liberals. And the media stopped questioning them after campaigns against "liberal media bias" left the major media worried about appearing partisan.

Let us not forget that the driving nodes of these campaigns have been funded by right-wing billionaires and business interests, allowing a long-term strategy that has avoided the major fragmentation of sub-groups spinning off into their own narrow interests. (until now, maybe.)

Your Right !! or I mean Correct !! In the end it's ambiguous characterizations to justify our ends .

-Laelth

some first-rate branding people from Madison Ave.

And they would - if they really wanted to change this story. But the way it is seems to work for an elite few.

People "hated" the bill while it was being debated.....but they "loved" most of the major parts of the bill.

Cognitive dissonance at work, fueled and funded by the RW echo chamber.

Wish presented as fact, a complex reality reduced to partisan drivel.

?

whether more Americans actually are conservative than liberal is hard to say. There certainly are more rabid rightwingers ranting away in your typical neighborhood bar or barber shop than there are rabid leftwingers ranting away in your typical neighborhood bar or barber shop. I think rightwingers are much more likely to feel that everybody agrees with them and are thus entitled to rant away in public. In the big picture I think the conservative movement is in a state of decline.

Well done

conservative.

When people are "in the middle", one way to manipulate them is to get them to follow the crowd. Get them to think they are part of some larger social group.

So when the media says "most Americans are conservative" they are creating a crowd that the folks in the middle can join. And if you can get them to self identify with that label, you have a better shot at getting them to act the way you want them to.

Later, if they find themselves conflicted, they simply have to figure out what "conservatives" are doing.

Its a persuasion technique.

My wife once described herself as such but has voted Democratic right along with me since we married 16 years ago. It is what it is...I think to most people "Liberal" seems and sounds a little risque or flamboyant. Just my take on it. Of course we who know the difference and political consequence of which term used to describe one's self would obviously choose the correct response instead of the what feels or sounds comfortable.

-Laelth