Survey results: Mostly Democrats and Frustrated Conservatives
This blog tells Democrats they are right--but should stop being stupid and self-destructive.
This blog tells Republicans they are smart, cynical, and effective--but should stop letting Trump undermine democratic government.
Apparently it is mostly Democrats who want to read that.
Wednesday morning I got an email from an American ex-pat living in the Caribbean and voting in Alaska. He said he was "Populist Right." He was only the second Populist Right person to respond to my survey, and he moved the number of responses from 199 to 200, and on that even number, I stopped accepting new responses.
Establishment Liberal: 35%
Progressive Left: 22.5%
Democratic Mainstay: 16%
Outsider Left: 5%
Stressed Sideliner: 6%
Ambivalent Right: 8%
Committed Conservative 6%
Faith & Flag Right 0.5%
Populist Right 1%
My readers don't match the profile of the general public.
I am not surprised and should not be. I have written repeatedly that Trump actively and intentionally worked to undermine a bedrock element of democratic government, that leaders are elected by the people and that the loser respects that vote. I write that Republican thought leaders and office holders who sit quietly and let Trump assert that he won the election and bully election officials into changing or overturning the vote count share Trump's guilt. Their verbal gymnastics, saying they "acknowledge that Biden was inaugurated," but refusing to say that he was inaugurated because he won the election, makes them party to the erosion of our democracy.
People in the Populist Right, the Faith & Flag Right, and Committed Conservatives groups generally support Trump wholeheartedly and believe him--or desperately want to believe him--and so have good reason to dislike what I write. Only 7.5% of my readers are in that group.
Most of my attention is toward Democrats. I write what many of them dislike reading. I say that the puritan know-it-all shaming that they do on cultural issues is a giant turn-off and it creates backlash, not "personal growth." I live in a purple county, and I rode the bucking bronco of our politics here as an elected official, so I know that people view things very differently, and they experience politics with their guts, not their logic. My farm is in an area that voted three to one for Trump. I try to explain to my educated, urban, politically liberal friends that the price of gasoline is likely a bigger and more motivating issue to working people than is the notion of "climate change."
I would undoubtedly have more readers if I were a cheerleader for the left--if I said that Bernie was wildly popular, that Biden is sharp as a tack, that AOC speaks for the majority of people. More people might send me "attaboys" and my posts might get circulated more. I don't say those things, because whatever my own political instincts and desires in a perfect world, I don't think those things are true. The progressive left hasn't made the sale to enough people to win elections. My friends on the left can be as deluded by wishful thinking as are the voters on the right who are certain--absolutely certain--that Trump won by a landslide because, after all, almost everyone they know shares their view that Trump is great.
I realize the survey was far from "scientific." The 200 responses are likely-unrepresentative. The survey questions were awkward. Maybe it was garbage-in-garbage-out, but the results seem generally plausible to me. I intend to write for everyone but I had guessed that my readers skew toward people sort of like myself: Left-friendly Boomers. That is what the survey showed.
Meanwhile, I will keep writing, urging Democrats to be better at politics and urging Republicans to realize that Trump is a dangerous authoritarian.