Time has an essay by a woman named Caitlin Flanagan, a liberal Democrat and supporter of many of the correct causes, who feels herself being driven, by Democrats, into the Republican party. You'll have to read her entire essay to see why, but she concludes with this:
The Democrats made a huge tactical error a few decades ago. In the middle of doing the great work of the '60s--civil rights, women's liberation, gay inclusion--we decided to stigmatize the white male. The union dues--paying, churchgoing, beer-drinking family man got nothing but ridicule and venom from us. So he dumped us. And he took the wife and kids with him.
And now here we are, living in a country with a political and economic agenda we deplore, losing election after election and wondering why.
It's the contempt, stupid.
I'm sure there are lots of women like her in the Democrat party who feel estranged because the Democrats have abandoned traditional liberalism for a radical leftism that carries the banner of every minority group with a grievance, no matter how bizarre. This abandonment of traditional values in favor of pushing the envelope of social revolution is alien to what many people in the country believe is just and fair. As long as the Democrats are perceived as the party of "anything goes" they will continue to lose voters who, in terms of their values if not in terms of the policies they would enact, are intuitively conservative.
Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.
