independentsforkerry.org

In many respects, the demographic profile of Democrats nationwide is similar to what it was in 2008, according to a new Gallup poll, although Democrats have become somewhat less white and more liberal than the party that nominated Barack Obama as its presidential candidate that year.

As a group, Democrats are more likely than average to be women, less likely to be religious or married, much less likely to be conservative, and much more likely to be liberal than the U.S. population as a whole. Democrats remain decidedly more female on average than the national population, with little significant change in this pattern over the last three years. This contrasts with the male skew in the Republican Party rank-and-file.

Perhaps the most significant change in the composition of Democrats between 2008 and today is the two-point increase, from 35% to 37%, in the percentage describing their political views as “liberal.”

Gallup: These results are based on a special Gallup analysis of the demographic and ideological composition of the U.S. population today (based on Gallup Daily tracking from June-August 2011) versus the start of 2008 presidential election campaign (from January-March). This is a follow-up to Gallup’s earlier piece on the composition of the Republican rank-and-file.

For this analysis, the Democratic population is defined as those who either identify as Democrats or who identify as independents but say they lean toward the Democratic Party. Between the start of 2008 and today, the percentage of Americans identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic has fallen from 50% to 43%. The percentage identifying as Republicans has risen from 37% to 40%, while the percentage of “pure” independents who do not lean toward either party has gone from 12% to 15%. The years 2006-2009 were recent high points in net Democratic affiliation, whereas the current figures showing a close split between Democrats (43%) and Republicans (40%) are more in line with the pattern that was in place between 2001 and 2004.

Key differences between Democrats and U.S. adults nationally, and changes since 2008, include:

1. Perhaps the most significant change in the composition of Democrats between 2008 and today is the two-point increase, from 35% to 37%, in the percentage describing their political views as “liberal.” This occurred at a time when the country as a whole became slightly more conservative, thus expanding the political gap between Democrats and the rest of the U.S.

The change coincides with the decline in Democratic affiliation in recent years, and it may be that moderate or conservative Americans were less well-attached to the Democratic Party and were the first to shift their allegiance — thus leaving a higher concentration of political liberals among those who continue to align with the party.

2. The racial and ethnic composition of the Democratic Party has also changed slightly. The proportion of Democrats who identify their race as black grew by three percentage points, from 16% to 19%, over the last three years, while the proportion that is white (non-Hispanic) fell by three points, from 66% to 63%. This contrasts with a smaller one-point increase in blacks and two-point decrease in whites nationally.

The percentage of Democrats who are Hispanic rose by two percentage points, from 12% to 14%, identical to the increase among all Americans.

3. Democrats remain less likely to attend church weekly and more likely to seldom or never attend church than the national average. The slight two-point decrease in Democrats who attend church weekly is similar to the one-point decrease in the national adult sample.

4. The proportion of Democrats who are Catholic or who identify with a non-Christian religion declined slightly between 2008 and 2011, while the percentage not identifying with any faith increased by four percentage points. The same trends are seen nationally, although they are less pronounced. In general, Democrats are slightly more likely than the national average to have no specific religious identity.

5. There has been little change in the composition of Democrats along age and gender lines. The percentage of the total national adult sample and the sample of Democrats in the 18 to 29 age group has increased slightly over the last three years. The percentage in the 30 to 49 age range has decreased in both groups. Young adults continue to make up a slightly greater proportion of the Democratic base than of the overall population.

Democrats remain decidedly more female on average than the national population, with little significant change in this pattern over the last three years. This contrasts with the male skew in the Republican Party rank-and-file.

6. Democrats are significantly less likely than the U.S. population as a whole to be married, as was true in 2008. The percentage of adults in the U.S. population who are married has dropped since 2008, as has the percentage of Democrats who are married — each by a similar amount.

7. Democrats are now slightly more likely than the national population to be college educated, although the differences are not large. The percentage of Democrats who are college educated has risen from 30% in 2008 to 32% today. The college-educated percentage in the national population rose by one point over the same period.

Bottom Line

Gallup finds relatively little change in the demographic composition of either major party’s supporters since 2008, even though the nation has become less Democratic, and more Republican and independent overall. All in all, Democrats remain decidedly less white, more female, more liberal, less religious, and less likely to be married than the general population.

Liberals and nonwhites have come to make up a slightly greater percentage of the Democratic base since 2008, perhaps indicating that the decline in Democratic affiliation since 2009 was proportionately greater among conservatives and whites.

The 2012 elections will thus likely show the same demographic voting patterns that prevailed in 2008, and that in many cases have been evident in presidential elections going back further in time.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking Jan. 2-March 31, 2008, and June 1-Aug. 31, 2011, with random samples of more than 88,000 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 400 cell phone respondents and 600 landline respondents per 1,000 national adults.

Democratic Blog News

 The Constitution Condones Slavery?

In a recent series called “The State Against Blacks,” John Stossel interviewed Rep. Charles Rangel and made the case that big government has failed the black American family. Congressman Rangel, an unabashed proponent of big government, asked Stossel, “What do you want? No government?” Stossel held up a copy of the Constitution and answered, “No. I want it this size again. The Constitution and the Declaration — great government right here.” To which Rangel responded, “No, that government will throw me back into slavery. You don’t want that government. Come on, now. I mean, they weren’t thinking about me when they wrote that book. I wasn’t even three-fifths of a guy. So let’s pass that book and say that it was a good beginning and it’s there to improve order and that’s what we’ve done.”

Rep. Rangel ought to be asked to explain how limiting the size and scope of the federal government to constitutional standards would throw him back into slavery. The idea is preposterous, but it’s clearly one that liberals like. Liberals are terrified at the rise of serious talk in America about going back to the principles of the Constitution, and I believe we will see Rangel’s invidious argument trotted out again and again. But the “Constitution was an instrument of slavery” argument will be effective for the liberals only if we are ignorant of the truth.

It should be understood that if the Founders had failed to organize the states into a union, slavery would have continued unabated — certainly in the South, and perhaps in the North as well. Once the conventional representatives decided to satisfy both the Northern and the Southern states with two houses of Congress, the question then became which “inhabitants” of each state would be counted for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives. The Northern states insisted that only free citizens of each state be counted for purposes of apportionment in the House. The Southern states, wanting to garner as much power and influence in the new government as possible, argued that all people within their borders, whether free or not, be counted for purposes of apportionment.

This was a deadly serious impasse. It must be said, however, that many of those representatives at the convention who owned slaves recognized that slavery would be a blot on the new nation and that it had to end. But it was also certain that if they tried to abolish slavery immediately with the Constitution, it would be rejected by the southern states, and the union would fail.

Two compromises were made.  First, the Southern states agreed to count only three-fifths of slaves.  In turn, the Northern states agreed to a clause prohibiting Congress from abolishing slavery for twenty years, until the year 1808.

Charles Rangel and many others argue that under the Constitution, a black man’s worth was only three-fifths of a white man.  But the Constitution says no such thing.  Article I, Section 2 reads (in part), “Representatives … shall be apportioned among the several states … according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons … three fifths of all other persons.”  “All other persons” referred to slaves.  In other words, only 60% of slaves could be counted for purposes of a state’s representation in the House.  That’s a far cry from arguing that the Constitution valued black men at three-fifths of a white man.  And what would Rangel and others have preferred — that all slaves be counted, thus increasing the power and influence of the slave states when the time came to vote to abolish slavery?  What if the Founders had allowed all slaves to be counted for purposes of representation in the House, thus eliminating the three-fifths compromise that so offends Rep. Rangel?  And then what if, because of increased slave state representation, the legislation to abolish slavery had failed in 1808?  Is that what Rangel would have preferred?

The result of these compromises was that a major obstacle to a union of the states and the establishment of the nation of America was overcome, and slavery as it was known in early America was eventually abolished.  It should also be pointed out that America, its flaws and imperfections notwithstanding, has become a beacon of individual liberty to the whole world.

We modern Americans allow ourselves a certain self-congratulatory pride because we think we are morally superior to the Americans of the eighteenth century. But let’s consider what it is we so smugly condemn them for. What is slavery? Is not slavery the idea that the fruit of a man’s labor is deemed not to be his own by the system of laws under which he is held in servitude, and that it is taken from him by those who have power and authority over him? When one adds up all the taxes and fees — local, state, and federal — that Charles Rangel and many other like-minded persons of power and authority have gradually imposed on us, we have certainly become a nation of slaves.

I don’t mean to suggest that there is equivalency between eighteenth-century slavery and slavery today. The slavery of two hundred fifty years ago was a hard slavery, while today’s slavery is much more subtle. Yet there it is: a large portion of the fruit of our labor today is taken from us by people like Charles Rangel, who then use those fruits to purchase the votes they need to keep themselves in power to rule and reign over us.

Liberals’ defense of today’s soft slavery is essentially the same as what the slave masters of the eighteenth century said: this is our system, and the economy depends upon it. But in truth, their own personal wealth and influence also depend on it.  In addition to legally confiscating large portions of the fruit of our labor, they control our compulsory education system.  They tell us how much water we can use to flush a toilet and what kind of light bulbs we must use. They have shut down vast reserves of our nation’s natural resources which we require for our energy needs, intentionally driving up the cost of energy.  They intend to disarm us.  They intend to tell us what doctors we can see and when. They insult and demean us in our airports. They seek to divide and inflame us by race and by economic status. They intervene in every aspect of our personal and business lives. They are destroying the value of our currency.

These are the soft, but ever-hardening, slave masters of the twenty-first century.  And sadly, most Americans seem to support this system.  We are a generation who self-righteously condemns the eighteenth-century American for the moat we see in his eye, all the while largely blinded to the beam in our own.

The Constitution is a framework for a government intended to protect the individual liberty of each citizen — his life, his liberty, and his property — from the encroachments of his neighbor. But the Constitution is an impediment to the slave masters, and they have no regard nor use for it. Remember that the next time you hear Charles Rangel, or anyone else, dismissing the Constitution as the antidote to our national decline.

As for this American, you can count me among the twenty-first-century abolitionists.

Written by John C. Greene.

Democratic Party News – The News of the Democratic Party.

Recently, while campaigning for the upcoming midterm elections, President Obama engaged in classic liberal race-baiting by demagogically asserting that Republicans are counting on blacks not turning up to the polls. However, despite Obama’s agenda in making that assertion, unfortunately, the underlying premise of his comment is accurate: the majority of blacks unthinkingly vote for Democrats in droves.

It is my contention that black people who diligently vote for Democrats are intellectual slaves to the liberal agenda, inasmuch as they, for the most part, are ignorant of the history of the Democratic Party and vote for policies that harm their communities. It is only a black intellectual slave who can observe the impact of liberal policies on the black community without having a scintilla of unease about pulling the lever for Democrats — election after election.

Black liberals have been cleverly coaxed into believing that Democrats have their best interests at heart because these Democrats no longer don white pointed hoods, lynch people, and burn crosses. With more sophistication than the mass-murdering tactics they employed in the days of yore, Democrats continue to actively perpetuate insidious policies that keep blacks on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic totem pole.

The most prominent method that Democrats currently use to advance their atrocious policies in the black community is the use of black liberal elites as decoys.

Capitalism for the Goose, Socialism for the Gander

Unsurprisingly, the actions — as opposed to the rhetoric — of people who promote the “magnificence” of socialism show that they believe socialism is good only for others, whereas capitalism is fit for their lives.

Career race-baiters, like Al Sharpton, would not be doing what they do if there were little to no financial incentive. Fanning the flames of racial division across the country and incessantly calling for socialist handouts for blacks, frankly, would get rather boring without a lucrative ,000,000 paycheck at the end of the year.

Likewise, Barack Obama has earned millions of dollars in royalties from his two soporific, self-important books, and he plans to continue his book-flogging bonanza by inking another deal for close to ,000,000 for a children’s book series.

Quick question: Why aren’t these black men expectantly waiting with their hands out for food stamps from the government?

Sharpton can happily advocate socialist health care and all other sorts of government freebies that sound good on paper but are sub-par in reality because he is a multimillionaire. When he gets sick, he can afford to be treated at the finest hospitals with the best doctors in the world. Champagne socialists would never deign to subscribe to the policies they hypocritically foist on the masses, but the capitalist perks of promoting the “benefits” of socialism to black intellectual serfs is too profitable for a decadent hypocrite like Sharpton to pass up.

Socialism is nothing more than a deceitful left-wing farce that inherently creates a super-exclusive oligarchy under the laughable guise of egalitarianism.

If the Republican message to blacks of “stand up on your own two feet, stop relying on government handouts and benefits, get a stellar education, hone your native skills and talents, and work incredibly hard to make a massive success of your life” is something so extraordinarily depraved, why is it that the elite black left invariably follow the Republican roadmap to success in their private lives while advocating failed socialist tripe for the liberal black intellectual serfs?

From rappers to athletes to academics, every single black person who has made it out of unfortunate circumstances, climbed, and sustained his or her place at the top has done so through hard work and taking advantage of the capitalistic meritocracy in America.

Only mass intellectual serfdom in the black community can present an adequate explanation as to why the myth of “Benevolent Big Government” continues to prevail — and why the black vote is almost monolithically given to the Democrats.
Uncle Sam: The Black Intellectual Serf’s Worst Relative.

A basic rule of economics is that if you want more of an activity, you subsidize it, and if you want less of an activity, you heavily tax it. Sadly, what Democrats have been doing for decades is subsidizing every bad action of impoverished blacks.

The most deplorable example of this is the exponential rise in the illegitimacy rate that came as a result of its liberal subsidization.

As was argued by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan — a rare sensible liberal — the subsidization of illegitimacy poses all sorts of problems for the black community, including stymied economic progress, low IQs in children, high dropout rates, crime, and the dismantling of the black family.

Today, as a result of the Democrats’ “well-intentioned” welfare policies, we now have a 70% illegitimacy rate in the black community, which will likely increase if the largesse of Big Government is not stopped.

Democrats have successfully addicted black liberals to the crack cocaine of government aid, so like any addict, black liberals keep coming back to the voting booth and pulling the lever for everything with a (D) after its name so they can get that next fix of Uncle Sam’s free money.

Meanwhile, Sharpton and his profiteering ilk are raking in millions of dollars while countless blacks are suffering in intellectual slavery — and are blinded to the fact that they’ve been robbed of all entrepreneurial vision and power that would allow them to create wealth and lift themselves out of a cycle of poverty.

The Democrat Emperor Has No Clothes

It’s been nearly fifty years of failed Democrat policies, and all black intellectual slaves have to show for their decades of cultish allegiance to liberals is worsened poverty, a broken family structure, failing schools, massive black genocide via abortion, run-down communities, perennial joblessness, and almost every other social malady that can be imagined. Yet with recent approval ratings for President Obama remaining steady at 91% among blacks, there is no sign of black devotion to their Democrat oppressors changing anytime soon. Black liberals are suffering from political Stockholm syndrome. These blacks are the Uncle Toms they accuse us freedom-loving black conservatives of being.

The need for Democrat cross-burning in order to keep blacks in the underclass is over. Democrats have succeeded in creating black intellectual serfs who are so swayed by the blandishments of Big Government and the empty anti-capitalist rhetoric of the left that they don’t even realize they’ve been hoodwinked by some of the biggest beneficiaries of capitalism!

Unless black liberals realize they’ve been the victims of a decades-long election-buying rip-off perpetrated by the Democrats — and advanced using the cat’s-paws of the black faces in the leftist elite — the black community will remain in the quagmire of despair it has been in since the Democrats started handing black people their scraps to live off.

The black community’s allegiance to Democrats is among the most shameful political facts in American history — and it can be ended only by the articulation of a true conservative message from passionate, intrepid, and ethnically diverse messengers.

Written by: Chidike Okeem

Democratic Party News – The News of the Democratic Party.