Taxonomy: The science of naming, describing, and classifying.
How do you understand and interpret the American electorate?
A survey I posted last November sorted people into nine sub-groups, based on answers people submitted in a Pew organization survey. "Establishment liberal" and "Faith and Flag Right" are examples of their categories.
Here is how Pew says the public sorts itself:
I learned my readers skew about 70-30% Democratic. My blog post describing the results from my readers is here. To go directly to the Pew survey itself, go here. Those two links will give readers a thorough description of each category.
The survey and classifications elicited complaints from readers saying the categories were wrong.
This week "Susan" sent me her own interpretation of the American electorate. It is simpler than the Pew one. It made intuitive sense to me. Its broader brush meant it aggregated the fine-point categories that drew complaints from readers about the Pew survey. At election time, people usually make a binary choice of the most acceptable candidate, so fine distinctions get ignored. And maybe the fine point between "Democratic Mainstay" and "Establishment Liberals" was phony. If you were "Clean for Gene" in 1968, and still vote Democratic, you are are a single category, regardless of your opinion today on charter schools. Maybe simpler is better and more accurate.
Susan recently retired after 38 years as an elementary school teacher in Portland. She is a Baby Boomer, a type-2 Democrat in her own classification system, and a former member of the OEA union. She asks to be anonymous because she never wanted to disclose her politics in her work, lest it create frictions with parents. She still doesn't.
I invite other readers to send me their own taxonomy of the American electorate.
Susan's taxonomy:
1. The New Left. These are mostly younger, well-educated, good with social media.(e.g. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.) They have read Ibram X. Kendi, the anti-racism author. They automatically end their emails with their pronouns. They change their social media photos constantly to show their support of Ukraine, of Colin Kaepernick, of BLM. I agree with their causes but not their self-righteousness.
2. The Old Left. These are mostly Baby Boomers, including some former hippies, plus middle class, pro-union, pro-environment, pro-civil rights people (e.g. Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio) Some are well-educated; some are blue collar. They love Martin Luther King. Being gay is fine with them. They’ll use the correct pronoun but only to make people happy, because they are puzzled by all this fuss.
3. The Old Right. These are mostly Baby Boomers again, but these are people whose issues and focus are to be against deficits, against Communists, and for a smaller government. They are mostly pre-Newt Gingrich Republicans who admire Barry Goldwater, Bob Dole, and John McCain (currently, e.g. Mitt Romney, Bill Kristol, David Brooks.) Some of them might even support abortion in some cases. They liked the NRA until the NRA went crazy. Some are Christian, but not the fundamentalist nut-job sort. They have actual issues they would like to work on in Congress, but the New Right stops them. They would work on bipartisan bills, but the new Republicans would crucify them for it, and they submit to that pressure.
4. The New Right: These are mostly younger people, with some exceptions. Some are well-educated, Ivy League elites, but they pretend not to be (e.g. Tom Cotton, Kristi Noem, Nikki Haley.) They NEVER compromise. They worship guns. They support Israel, mostly for the campaign contributions from AIPAC and the signal it sends to Christian groups who believe in the Rapture and the End Times, which have been imminent since 30 CE. They really don’t have issues. They are just against things—except private schools, guns, and ending all abortions. Those they like.
5. ????????? This is the questioning, drifting, lost group of public intellectuals, and their fans. This group includes Jordan Peterson, Liel Leibovitz, Bari Weiss, Bill Maher. This group has a wide range of ages. They are very highly educated and mostly elite academics or writers. They are very angry with the elitist Democrats for cancel culture and woke culture. Some were Democrats and left the party. They mostly write brilliant essays about how destructive wokeness is, and rarely speak of any other issues. As far as I can tell they are Group 3 Republicans now, but the Group 4 and 6 Republicans are so embarrassing that Group 5 won’t admit it.
6. MAGAs, (e.g. Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Ben Shapiro, Tomi Lahren, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott etc) These are Looney Tunes people all trying to out-Trump each other. Again, they have no real issues or solutions—they just do symbolic posturing for their voting base. They advocate slogans and thoughtless bumper-strip ideals, e.g. don't-say-gay, arrest parents of transgendered children, put cameras on teachers, "Build the Wall," "Stop the Steal." Q Anon is an even crazier subset of MAGAs. A lot of rank-and-file Republicans thrill to this group and send them money. Group 3 and 4 are afraid of them.
GREAT analysis!! Thank you, Susan!
Thoughtful analysis, Susan. Thanks for posting, Peter.