Mainstream and not.

This is pretty interesting.

One of the things that is most interesting about these polls is that they illustrate how liberal the American public is on certain social issues. It's encouraging to read that 90% of Americans favor sex-education programs and that just 15% favor abstinence only. There's a pragmatism there that is refreshing. (Quick note: the Christian Right is usually about 15% of the electorate, so thats probably where it comes from). Nate makes the argument that democrats should use social issues against republicans where Republican philosophy is outside the mainstream. I think that sex-education is probably the most promising, of the issues that Nate brings up, for this approach.

Nate doesn't give much detail on abortion polls, but the divide in America over abortion is striking. More polls here and here. Most people believe Roe vs. Wade should be legal, but most people also believe that there should be more restrictions on abortions. This isn't surprising, considering the fact that American abortion laws are less restrictive than most countries in Europe.. As an otherwise conventional liberal, I can attest to the ambivalence I feel about certain abortion laws we have in this country; its not an issue where I feel myself to be on particularly firm moral ground, particularly once we start getting into the third trimester of a pregnancy and beyond. Anyway, the point is that the abortion issue also reflects a healthy pragmatism on the part of the American electorate; it is our abortion laws that are not particularly pragmatic--as opposed to those of western european countries, which are less dogmatically pro-choice.

I find the vast support for hate crime legislation rather fascinating, particularly given how unsympathetic mainstream America is to other features of discrimination and oppression (such as disproportionately large numbers of African-Americans in poverty and/or in jail). But I also don't think that most people will hold it against Sarah Palin for being against hate crime legislation. My guess is that if you asked most Americans how much they cared about hate crime legislation the response would be 'not very much'. Given that 70% of Americans will consider voting for someone who disagrees with their views on abortion (an extremely hot-button issue) its hard to believe that Obama could make much of an issue out of Palin's opposition to hate crime legislation.

Its not clear exactly what Palin's position on global warming is. I'm pretty sure the quote that Nate uses is in response to questions specifically about climate change in Alaska.. If it does turn out, however, that she is a straight-up denier of global warming--in the James Inhofe mold--that could be a huge problem. Nevertheless, I suspect that its not quite the case. As Nate's conclusion here illustrates, Palin's position on global warming is not really defined. That means she will almost certainly define it in a way that is passable on the national stage.

The rejection of evolution as an empirical, scientific theory, by the majority of Americans, is quite striking, except for the fact its not just Americans, half of the British population also share a similar disbelief. As cognitive psychologist Paul Bloom has points out repeatedly in his excellent book Descartes' Baby, the theory of evolution is, for whatever reason, profoundly counterrintuitive to the human brain. Children, are even when raised in secular households, are naturally predisposed towards a creationist view of the world. Another way of putting this is to say all of us are naturally predisposed towards creationism. This is not conditioning but, ironically, the way that evolution has wired our brains to think. In this sense, it makes sense that so many people reject evolution because they are predisposed to reject it unless they are conditioned to think counter-intuitively.

I'm going to try and post more about evolution and its conflict with human perception in the coming days. But for now, we can at least feel comforted to know that the majority of Americans reject evolution not because of some weird aspect of our culture that makes half the country ignorant. If its a cultural problem, as we sometimes think, then its a multi-cultural problem, one that across different countries and regions.

Obama's Speech: The Partisan Divide

I had been saying for weeks that Obama needed to pivot towards a more traditional democratic platform during the convention and away from the post-partisan stance that he often struck throughout the primaries because he was running against Hillary Clinton and--by definition--Bill Clinton's administration. Obama's speech did that. Here's how you know. After his speech, commentators did something that they don't usually do when commenting on an Obama speech: the split down partisan lines in their reviews. Progressive commentators loved the speech (as did I). Most of the 'nuetral' pundits such as John Dickerson, Mark Halperin, Marc Ambinder etc. also found it very effective. No surprises so far. Obama gives a good speech, we all know that. But the conservative reaction was mostly negative. This was particularly striking among more sophisticated conservatives like Ross Douthat, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks, who have been demonstrated quite a bit of attraction to Obama throughout this election. Ross captures conservative frustration pretty well.

But from where I sit, to the right of the political center, Obama the generic Democrat is a big disappointment. He started this campaign with two promises: That he'd tell us what we needed to hear, rather than what we wanted to heart, and that he wouldn't be captive to the old left-right divide in American politics. But there were no tough choices presented in last night's speech, no hard truths told. There was just the promise that we can have it all: Energy independence (within ten years, no less!), universal health care, an army of new teachers, tax cuts for the middle class, the working class, and the upper-middle class, zero capital gains taxes on small business owners, a perpetually solvent safety net, plus a dose of protectionism - and all of it paid for by (unspecified) spending cuts, and tax hikes on just five percent of America. Meanwhile, the speech's concessions to conservatism were largely pro forma - an acknowledgment that fathers matter, that programs can't solve every problem, and that government "can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework" - and its proposals for common ground (reduce unwanted pregnancies, keep AK-47s out of the hands of gang members, etc.) were equally thin.

Again, if you're a liberal, none of this is going to sour you on Obama's speech, or on the candidate: Why should he concede anything to the Right, you might say, given the disasters of Bushism, and given that the political wind is finally blowing liberalism's way? Which is fair enough. But for those who aren't liberals, but who have been drawn, in varying ways, to Obama's transformational promise anyway, his claim to stand for "new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time" looks a lot more hollow today than it did a year ago.

It will be interesting to see how McCain responds at the Republican convention. Assuming that it happens in anything other than a procedural sense because of Gustav.